Admore Inc. Sees Gains in Makeready With IntelliLoop from Rutherford

Rutherford Graphic Products has announced that Admore Inc., a subsidiary of Ennis, Inc., purchased the IntelliLoop + IntelliSet product suite. Admore’s primary business is short-run, 9x12-inch pocket folders, as well as wallet-sized folders. They exclusively serve the trade press market, dealing with other commercial printers and other qualified resellers as opposed to going to the customers directly. They put a high value on the quality of their work — if either the printer or the end-customer isn’t happy, Admore will redo the job, no questions asked.

But even though they were running shifts around the clock, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, they still couldn’t keep up with demand. So, notes Bill Tignanelli, general manager, they started looking at their operations, trying to find ways they could squeeze more production out of their current equipment. “We had a lot of makereadies, so we had to find a way to decrease the makeready times between our press runs. With the new system from Rutherford Graphic Products, we’re already seeing improvements. We’re saving 50-100 sheets and more than 10 minutes of time on every job we do. We were doing 16 jobs a day on that press — now we’re able to do one to two more, without any other changes.”

In time, Tignanelli notes, they may look at installing a third press, but the next upgrade will likely be installing the Rutherford Graphic Products system to their second press first, maximizing their productivity across the board.

The Rutherford Graphic Products IntelliLoop + IntelliSet suite is compatible with the X-Rite IntelliTrax color management hardware — which Admore also invested in. In addition, features of the product include: a server system, preset accuracy report, works with both web and sheetfed presses, a packaging feature, individual color tolerance, roll-back ink key settings, presetting with CIP3 or TIFF, and a maximum 20 ink units.

Before Admore starts the press, the IntelliSet system pulls all of the color information out of the prepress files and automatically sets all of the ink keys on the press, saving both time and money. The operator just tells the system what type of paper, selects the job, and then lets IntelliSet do the rest.

Other features of the system include:

• Auto-Learning by Paper Type: the system learns by keeping a preset-accuracy history file of each paper type.
• Preview: a bar graph of computed presets overlaid on plate image. In-sweeps shown numerically.
• Auto-Key Compensation: the ink-key openings are automatically compensated if sweeps are manually changed before presetting action is initiated.
• Adapts to most any prepress job-naming convention: job numbers displayed at the press match those shown on operators' documentation.

“Since we’re the trade, it is our job to make our customers look good, and get their customers the orders when and how they want them,” says Tignanelli. “It didn’t take us long to decide on this system — we talked to X-Rite, who passed us along to Rutherford, and within a few months we were up and running.”

“We are incredibly happy to be working with Admore Inc.,” says Katie Stull, Pilot Marketing Group, an authorized distributor for Rutherford Graphic Products. “They are an amazing company, and we are proud to be able to support them as they continue to grow, both today, and in the future as their operations continue to expand.”

In addition to automation benefits from Rutherford, Admore is automatically uploading and tracking the measurements from their Intellitrax, on the press, directly to ChromaChecker.com, Pilot Marketing Group’s color cloud. ChromaChecker is designed to provide centralized process control reporting and G7 curve iteration for any device, affecting color reproduction, in any location. ChromaChecker has pioneered a process (E-Factor) that quantifies the expectations of a color match by the given printer, customer and/or brand owner. This manufacturing dashboard then enables Admore to assess all the variables in their print production environment to define when the device is in or out of control (Expectations). ChromaChecker can also send alerts, when necessary, to warn of potential problems before they happen, proactively assessing press/operator/instrument/plate setter and more.