Enhanced Productivity Mode Helps PSPs Stay Ahead of Customer Demand

Faster deliveries. Shorter turnarounds. Decreased lead times. Every print service provider (PSP) is facing a shifting communications landscape putting relentless pressure on production and delivery speeds, with little – if any – compromise on quality expectations. It’s a classic conundrum; how do you produce more jobs, faster, while maintaining excellent print quality and a profitable cost per piece? Many PSPs feel clients may as well ask to have their cake and eat it too.

HP Indigo (Booth 1241) customers have a new answer: Enhanced Productivity Mode (EPM). This feature gives PSPs a 33 percent productivity boost by eliminating black ink from the production process altogether. Fewer separations mean less time is spent putting HP ElectroInk on the paper, and users can produce more jobs in a given time frame.

For instance, the HP Indigo 7600 Digital Press runs at speeds of up to 120 pages per minute printing in four colors. But when this same press runs in Enhanced Productivity Mode, the press speed increases up to 160 ppm, a significant increase for any production environment.

While learning about EPM, the first question that many customers ask is how the print quality compares to standard CMYK prints. Images created using HP Indigo EPM deliver exceptional quality and a broad color gamut, including black, but with less time and ink compared to a four color process.

EPM allows for this wide color selection because of the unique way that the HP Indigo printing process works. The press creates thin layers of ink that dry as a flexible, rubbery layer onto the ITM cylinder, and then the image is transferred onto a substrate as a ready dry film. This enables the higher color saturation needed to reach dark color tones without black ink, including black text as small as 7 point.

The technology is easy to use as EPM will automatically change press functions with minimal operator interference. When a PSP chooses to operate an HP Indigo digital press in EPM, the job is sent to print as usual but the server converts the process to CMY. Operations run as usual and prepress work is unaffected, but prints are created more efficiently.

Many HP Indigo digital presses support EPM, including the Indigo 10000 Digital Press, HP Indigo 20000 Digital Press, HP Indigo 30000 Digital Press, HP Indigo 7600 Digital Press, HP Indigo 5600 Digital Press, HP Indigo W7250 Digital Press, HP Indigo WS6600 Digital Press and HP Indigo WS4600 Digital Press. The EPM option is also available for previous models of the HP Indigo 7000 family, HP Indigo 5500 Digital Press, HP Indigo W7200 Digital Press, HP Indigo WS6000 Digital Press and the HP Indigo ws4500 Digital Press.

Upgrading to include HP Enhanced Production Mode on a new or existing HP Indigo Digital Press saves time and cuts costs while delivering high-quality HP Indigo digital prints. This means you are closer than ever before to having your cake and eating it too.