Simpson Group in £250,000 software spend

The firm has made the investment in order to remain competitive in its core point-of-purchase (POP) market

The self-developed store profiling system, Popfit, allows retailers to profile their stores POP requirements to reduce over-ordering print and to ensure that graphics and displays are appropriate to the size and spaces available in each store.

It also produces a picking list for Simpson's staff to collate jobs and a customer advice note for the stores. It replaces manual administration based on Excel files for both the printer and its clients, saving time and reducing errors.

A new pre-press workflow from Esko has just gone live. The system includes i-Cut Suite, Automation Engine and WebCenter, and is integrated with the firm's SolPrint MIS.

"We're looking to drive everything out of the MIS using XML data," said Mark Simpson, chairman of the Tyne & Wear-headquartered firm. "We're driving the MIS much harder now - using shopfloor data collection to identify areas for further improvement."

A warehousing and pallet tracking module in the MIS is being used to improve internal logistics, in order to prevent machine downtime from waiting for materials.

Lastly, the firm has installed a Ricoh Pro C901 cut-sheet colour digital press.

"A lot of the jobs we quote for include A4, A5 sheets and shelf ticketing, and while we could gang them up on our large-format machines, we were often losing out because we weren't cost competitive for smaller items," said Simpson. "With the Ricoh we can now do those, and we can do smaller value orders - jobs worth £20-£30 - that weren't profitable before."

Simpson chose the Ricoh after investigating the options at Drupa last May. "We looked at rivals including Xerox and HP Indigo but Ricoh stood head & shoulders above everyone else in terms of price/performance," he said, adding that the print quality was also "excellent".

While the firm has no immediate plans to invest in additional wide-format hardware, having installed two HP Scitex FB7600 flatbed machines in the last few years, he said the firm was always reviewing developments in digital kit to keep abreast of the latest developments. Latex was a technology being watched closely, while developments that reduce operating costs were very important.

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