How to Choose the Right DFE for Your Business

For many print shops, a lot of time is spent deciding what digital press to purchase. Buyers expect quality, speed, and a specific sheet size. Other characteristics such as special toners or finishing capabilities are also important considerations. The digital front end (DFE), however, is often overlooked even though it plays an important role in improving overall quality and productivity — while also making it easier to produce new and more complex applications.

The pre-sale analysis needs to include an end-to-end view of the workflow, and a total cost calculation that goes beyond the cost of the DFE itself. Rather, it should look at the cost savings, productivity enhancements, improved turnaround time, and differentiation in the printed products that can be achieved with the right DFE and press configuration.

While a DFE can be used to simply process files for print, today’s DFEs offer much more than that. Taking advantage of all of the capabilities of the DFE can increase throughput and quality, reduce errors, and eliminate the need for investment in other third-party solutions—thus reducing the overall total cost of ownership.

While capabilities will vary between DFEs, these are the key features a press buyer should seek:

Lights-out automation: It is not financially viable to have humans touch each and every job as they come through the shop. In these cases, it’s critical to automate from order entry to printed job—and even finishing, shipping, and invoicing. This level of automation removes touches, time, and potential for error from the process. In such an environment, the DFE can play a significant role as an important element of workflow automation for the shop.

Every shop is different: Not all printing businesses choose to perform file preparation and makeready tasks the same way. Many feel the operator should be focused on keeping the press calibrated, the color quality up, and the media loaded, rather than spending time on file manipulation of any type. In this approach, DFEs with the ability to manage multiple presses from a single interface allow press operators to focus on optimum press usage. Other shops appreciate the flexibility to do prepress/makeready tasks either in prepress or at the DFE.

Variable data processing: DFEs can also manage production of template-based variable data jobs, merging templates with data to produce the final output. This can be vastly more efficient than multi-record, print-ready PDFs that can take longer to process before printing begins, depending on file construction and the number of records.

Multi-vendor environments: Multivendor environments can complicate the choice of a DFE. In many cases, it can result in separate DFEs, with different workflows for each press. Having two different front ends can have some troubleshooting advantages, such as when a problem occurs on one RIP and not the other. However, load balancing or running the same job on multiple machines can be more problematic. Using the same type of DFE across all digital presses, when feasible, offers many productivity and workflow advantages.

Key Considerations

Each printing business is different, and there is no single approach to choosing a DFE that fits them all. Here are some of the key considerations to keep in mind as you make this decision.

Performance: Consider how the DFE will handle both large, complex jobs, as well as a high volume of smaller jobs. Both need to be efficient in order to eliminate press wait time. Test your most complex files on all available DFEs to verify performance differences.

Workflow automation and end-to-end integration: Analyzing your job mix provides insight that is important in making decisions about both the DFE and the press. Consider job types and complexity—including specialty work—average run lengths, numbers of jobs, and pages typically produced in a shift, day, or week; plus typical turn times. Be sure to also analyze the current state of your production platform and organizational infrastructure. Investigate how workflow automation tools included with the DFE can take touches and cost out of your current production process.

Integration with business systems: Assessing how well a DFE “plays with others”—like MIS systems—is an important part of the DFE decision-making process.

Variable data: If you want to increase your volume of variable data work, keep in mind that while there may be some benefits to preparing everything in prepress and sending print-ready PDFs to production, very large and complex files hitting the RIP can slow down production and affect press utilization. New file formats such as PDF/VT can mitigate this if variable data files are prepared properly to run at the DFE. Since not all DFEs/digital presses support PDF/VT, or other variable data formats such as PPML, VPS, and other composition software file formats, be sure to give full consideration to variable data needs when you select a DFE and associated workflow elements.

Color quality: Print buyers are getting more sophisticated, and it’s likely that color accuracy will continue to grow in importance. If you have a multivendor shop, what processes do you have in place to ensure color consistency across the entire platform? Is your color management software fully integrated into the DFE? Are your press/DFE suppliers in a good position to provide training and/or certifications to comply with customer requirements, or to meet your own internal quality goals? These are all considerations when adding or upgrading a digital press.

Employee skill level and training: Revisit the skill sets of your employees. Is more training needed? Is there a certification program that would improve skill levels and overall production? Your press and DFE investment will have a higher ROI if you have the right trained staff in place.

Next Step

Acquiring or upgrading a digital press is an important decision, as is the choice of the DFE for the press. Both decisions will have long-lasting effects on your business and your bottom line.

To ensure you get the most out of a digital press investment, take the time to fully examine DFE options. Even if you think your mind is already made up, investing a little extra time in this assessment will help you make the best possible decision for your business. Your investment decision today should enable you to take advantage of the many ongoing innovations in DFE software and workflow that will keep you competitive in the future.

Read more in How to choose the right DFE e-book.