Midland Reaches 100 Million Feet Milestone on OCE
Océ, a global leader in digital document management and delivery solutions, has announced that Midland Information Resources (MIR) is the first U.S. based printing company to reach the milestone of 100 million feet printed on their Océ VarioStream 9210 continuous form digital printer in just one year of operation.
“During the year the Océ VarioStream 9210 has been in production, we have been very pleased with its reliability, quality and cost effectiveness,” said Randy Epkes, Director, MIR Solutions. “Midland needed a solution that would help leverage the cost and productivity advantages of digital continuous technology over litho and cut-sheet digital printing. With the Océ VarioStream, we now have a technology that differentiates us beyond speeds and feeds to provide even better solutions to our clients. The Océ VarioStream 9210 capability has enabled us to shift a wide variety of applications to this platform.”
The majority of applications that Midland runs on the Océ VarioStream 9210 are technical support material and educational books that are bound in a variety of methods. The continuous form system is able to print whatever applications our customers require and helps to encourage and support the transition from offset to digital for many applications.
“The Océ VarioStream 9210 and Océ PRISMA software provide an ideal combination for innovative companies like Midland that leverage technology as a differentiator and that are moving applications from offset to digital to provide better results for their customers,” said Joyce Virnich, Vice President of Marketing, Océ Digital Document Systems.
Since March 2005 when the Océ VarioStream 9210 went into production at Midland, it has proven to be a very dependable solution for producing high-quality digital output. It has helped to decrease manufacturing turn-time, increased our overall capacity and provided an automated workflow which allows us to achieve ultra-short print runs previously limited to cut-sheet devices. The Océ PRISMA front end lets Midland store a standard PDF file that can be sourced to the printer with automated imposition and job set-up. This eliminates manual intervention by an operator and helps Midland achieve extremely fast print runs.
“Our customers have been very pleased with the quality off of the 9210, with many shifting their work from lithographic presses to this digital printing process,” said Epkes. “As a result, these jobs can be completed with a high degree of productivity without sacrificing the quality of the product.”
The Océ VarioStream 9210 has demonstrated itself capable of producing high-quality screen and halftone output – previously not found in digital printing. This excellent quality level has allowed us to take on jobs such as manuals, journals and textbooks that require printing of photography and fine-line images.
Additional value and flexibility come from the system’s migration path from its current 2/2 color configuration to 3/3 and eventually full-color digital printing. As our customers require more color in their applications, we will be able to respond without investing in new hardware or learning new systems.
The Océ VarioStream 9210 has given Midland the opportunity to provide our clients with fresh, innovative ideas. Our partnership with Océ has allowed us to continue our commitment to our customers by providing them leading-edge information management and distribution solutions.