Connecting with Moran Printing
Mark Vruno
May 5, 2011
At the EFI Connect user group conference last week in Las Vegas, I sat down with Neill Cato, chief information officer of Moran Printing in Baton Rouge, LA. Moran, a 130-year-old firm with annual sales of approximately $17 million and 130 employees, offers offset and digital printing as well as fulfillment services. While sales have suffered over the past couple of years, “We’ve been fortunate,†Cato said -- more on why in a moment.
Sheetfed presses in Moran Printing’s 55,000-square-foot plant include a 4-color, 40-inch Komori Lithrone perfector, installed in 2007, along with a 6-color, 26-inch Komori of 1990s vintage, and an even older, 40-inch Heidelberg Speedmaster 102. On the digital side, Moran runs an HP Indigo 5500, two Xerox 6180s, two Nuvera 120s and a Konica Minolta 6501 color printer.
A niche is the health-care vertical market, where one of its customers manages a network of more than 100 hospitals. Moran digitally prints monochrome, short-run forms; full-color marketing collateral; and higher, offset volumes of finished good components. “The medical field wasn’t hit as hard [by the recession] as the economy in general,†Cato reported.
As print on demand has increased to between 200 and 300 daily line orders, “We’re doing more web-to-print,†added the CIO. Moran runs a front end from Australian supplier Online Print Solutions (OPS). It was the browser-based, EFI Pace software installed two years ago that really brought together Moran’s operation. “We were using two different systems,†Cato said. But making the switch wasn’t easy. “There was a lot of customization,†he recalled. Despite “tremendous APIs,†it still took six months.
Automating is still a top priority for Cato, who needs to complete integration of the firm’s OPS web-to-print templates to Pace. “We can take basic orders but have to take them manually,†he admitted. He also told me he wants to explore EFI synergies related to the Minolta 6501, which runs a Fiery RIP. www.moranprinting.com and www.efi.com/pace