THE BERNARD GROUP CASE STUDY
A RELATIONSHIP BEST DECRIBED IN NUMBERS
THE BERNARD GROUP
Background
PrintFactory is the large format color and prepress workflow of choice for The Bernard Group during their exponential growth.
Based in Chanhassen, just outside of Minneapolis, The Bernard Group (www.thebernardgroup.com) is a visual merchandising company serving the needs of some of the most prestigious retailers and franchises in the industry. They set themselves apart by providing top-notch quality for global high end customers. The company’s nearly 600 employees operate in a purely digital facility. On-site concepting, design, engineering, fabrication and digital printing capabilities enhance custom-designed solutions for merchandising fixtures and displays.
Our North America partner GMG, has been an invaluable partner to The Bernard Group during their growth from a $30 million company to a $100 million company.
Since we installed PrintFactory, we have at least doubled, and maybe tripled our sales numbers. We have 250% of our previous job volume, but it’s operated by only 20% more prepress and production staff. PrintFactory powered by GMG offers the premier large format solution that allows me to manage jobs and color across all of our devices, even for people who are not color experts, it's a great tool to have.
What Were The Problems?
Before installing PrintFactory software, The Bernard Group relied on RIP systems from one vendor, each managing one printer with its own color management. This setup required three full-time color management experts to create and update profiles for each substrate and device from scratch, and to remake them when colors drifted. With 7 digital presses, this process was time-consuming and resulted in significant lost man-hours.
The previous method also lacked a reliable way to verify and maintain color accuracy across machines, ink sets, and media. When color drifted, it was challenging to restore it to the original standard. Additionally, file preparation was mostly manual and very time-consuming.
By adopting PrintFactory, The Bernard Group sought to improve color matching and maintenance, verify color accuracy, fine-tune profiles, and enhance overall productivity.
The Bernard Group Story
Before installing PrintFactory software, The Bernard Group's reliance on individual RIP systems for each printer required three full-time experts to manage color profiles manually, leading to significant lost man-hours, challenges in maintaining color accuracy across machines and media, and time-consuming file preparation.
We came across a promotional email about a GMG workflow system, and it sounded interesting given GMG's great reputation for color management
The complete package of productivity tools and color management attracted The Bernard Group to PrintFactory. They wanted to maximize media yield, and the PrintFactory solution offered a fast and easy way to step and repeat graphics automatically, create print files, and send digital cutting instructions to die cutting machines. It also eliminated the waiting time for RIP files to the same devices simultaneously. The training and implementation went well, with PrintFactory’s North American distributor GMG, creating one profile for each printer type on the floor and training The Bernard Group in the complete PrintFactory suite.
WHAT DID PRINTFACTORY DELIVER?
- Getting more accurate color, faster
Spike in Productivity
HOW DID WE DO IT?
PrintFactory’s tools ensure consistent colour quality across different printers and materials, and over long periods of time.
Then we introduced the management team to PrintFactory’s browser-based reporting tools. These monitor ink and media usage, which makes it possible to work out far more accurate job costings and – with this level of detail – that in turn means TBG can offer a more competitive proposition.
It doesn’t matter what the device and substrate combination is TBG knows that, by automatically calibrating devices and using smart colour profiles, PrintFactory will compensate for differences and calculate the colour output precisely.
It all went smoothly except for the human factor. When you have a big change, people tend to blame the system when there's a mistake. So, we did an analysis where we ran one printer with PrintFactory, and all of the others as we previously ran them. We recorded and monitored all jobs on that device for six weeks. On the PrintFactory printer, only 0.8% of any problems were from software issues—and they were reported and fixed within a month. After that, it was easy to switch everyone over to PrintFactory.
It is generally difficult to make color management work in a busy environment like wide format production. PrintFactory is much better than what we were doing before. I look at how easily we can now correct a color drift on the printers by a simple recalibration. With our previous RIP system we could never get printers to match this close. For example, we could never make our 7 Canon printers print identically, but with PrintFactory this is easy. It used to take us 3 hours per printer (times 7), per media (3 medias) for a total of 63hrs, and the results would not be perfect. Now, it takes us about 6 hours per media (times 3) for a total of 18hrs to make all 7 printers match perfectly.
Most large format companies have prepress systems that preps a file to a point, and then places it into an output folder,. The press operator locates the file and sends it to the RIP for some additional work. With PrintFactory, the press operator receives the file and just prints. The way the PrintFactory workflow works is much faster and efficient. Before, about 10% of the files Bernard processes needed correction. On average, it would take two to four hours before print production could start, and the machine was usually idle for 1-3 hours. Those idle hours are very expensive, since the hourly cost is not offset by any revenue. With PrintFactory, Bernard has reduced the need for retouching a file by more than 90%. Less than 1% of jobs need correction and these 1% usually go through faster as well. The presses rarely stand still. Since we installed PrintFactory, we have almost tripled our sales numbers. We lean heavily on PrintFactory to keep up with our growth.