New Delhi’s Royal marries hardware and software to manage cost, quality, and time

“Customer satisfaction is important for us,” Arora says. “From offset to digital, we have the entire setup. We provide solutions from the concept to the final delivery. Today, customers want small volumes and want to get the job done quickly. Thus, we are seeing more demand for digital printing. For our part, we are happy to serve our customers in terms of cost, print quality, and time.”

How EFI has proved to be the ideal partner 

Vikas Arora explains. Beside the Xerox Iridesse, Royal has also been running the Xerox Versant 2100. Now, thanks to the EFI Fiery digital print solution, a single operator can run both the print¬ing presses, as the user interface for the Fiery digital front-ends in both the machines are intercon¬nected. 

“We have been using Fiery since 2015 when we installed the Xerox Versant 2100. The best part while operating the Fiery is the production and reproduction of colour. We are very happy as it helps double our production without additional labour,” Arora says. 

The Fiery Workflow Suite has helped Royal streamline and automate the printing process, as Fiery ImageViewer offers the op¬tion to see a preview of file print im¬ages and if there are any changes, it can be done even after RIPing. “So, it has helped us improve our quality at the same time allowing faster turnaround for our custom¬ers,” he says. 

Talking about the Fiery that was bundled with the Iridesse, Arora says, “The Fiery that came with the Xerox Iridesse has helped us break heavy jobs into pieces and the RIP doesn’t get stuck. It’s a fast RIP. It gives us mileage. We can also print short-run jobs in between with the help of rush RIP. It prints all jobs well, whether small or large.” 

Royal rollout 

Royal Offset Printers was started by Bansi Lal Arora, who migrated to Delhi during the Partition, and made his way up in the indus¬try, from working in a bindery to starting his own, Royal Binders, in Old Delhi in the 1970s. Later, he shifted to Naraina Industrial Area, and as he got into offset printing, the name was changed to Royal Offset Printers. 

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Arora, the next generation, joined the business in 1996 and took charge from his father in 2010. Soon, the focus shifted to digital, the culmination of which was the investment in the Xerox Iridesse. 

“We went for the Xerox Iridesse (CMYK with silver, gold, clear and white) because of its special col¬our printing capability, as it’s the requirement of the market right now. Metallic colours give us the edge,” he says. 

Right now, it can print seven colours. The company has or¬dered for white, which will be installed soon. Arora said the addition of white will help the company print short-run packag¬ing jobs. 

“We can print six colours at one time, CMYK plus metallic (gold and silver). We have printed dark black and red paper on this press and up to 400 gsm paper with clear ink,” he adds. 

How does Fiery fit into all this? 

Arora says Fiery has an important role to play. “Fiery has improved our operational and employee productivity. For example, we have five workstations and all are networked. So we can operate Fiery from any of our stations. If my press operator is busy with the machine, my designer can control the print through Fiery,” he says. 

The facility manages both the Fiery servers from a single station. So, a single person can control both Fiery servers. “If we have more jobs on a single Fiery server, then we can shift the jobs from one to another. It gives us good compatibility between the machines,” he adds. 

Royal handles all commercial jobs, including books, catalogues, flyers, posters, visiting cards, invi¬tation, wedding cards, and so on. On average, it produces 300- 350 jobs per day. With the Fiery servers, Arora says, when there is a heavy workload, it can move files from one machine to another. 

“We have clients for whom we have produced 10,000-15,000 prints. By using Fiery, we can RIP a heavy file in 3-4 minutes. It also helps keep the machine in run¬ning position,” he adds. 

Arora believes Fiery makes ROI on investment easy as it can print different artworks on dif¬ferent sizes and multiple types of substrates. “We print on both Xerox print engines because of Fiery,” he says. “My return is easy, especially the investment on my hardware.” 

Embracing new technologies, in recent years, Royal has made huge investment in hardware. So, for Arora, it made sense that he should also invest in Fiery because the software takes care of the hardware. “The answer is simple. We have invested in hardware and we have invested in software to support the hard¬ware,” he explains. 

And the hardware and software is there to give the customer what they want — quality printing, and quality printing means colour. Colour is a critical part for us as well as for our customers,” Arora says. “We have three decades of experi¬ence in offset printing. I am in the business from last 22 years. I am aware of the offset colour gamut. I am now trying to replicate the same in digital by doing more and more profiles to the stocks.” 

In this, Fiery offers a helping hand. With Fiery, Royal is using Color Profiler Suite. “It’s a great tool, and user-friendly. We save profiles of jobs and if a customer comes for the same job after some time, we can print it as it is. We are using this from the last years. In future, we will also be doing colour profiling with the help of EFI Fiery,” he says, add¬ing, “The Fiery servers provide a scalable approach to colour management that allows us to create the perfect colour recipe, designed to meet our customer’s specific needs.” 

He says variable data print¬ing is another area where Fiery has proven to be a good tool, as it allows the company to make a master file and print thousand of prints. 

Firing up with Fiery 

The operators at Royal Digital are trained in using Fiery by the EFI personnel, and Arora says he is happy with the training. “EFI has an eLearning tool which helps our staff on daily basis. If someone forgets something, he can im¬mediately consult the eLearning tool,” he says. 

The job submission process is semi-automatic. “Sometimes, we get imposed files from our cli¬ents, so we RIP the file and shoot directly to our machines. In most cases, however, we have to do impositions. Here, Fiery Impose does a great job for us. There are pre-sets already in the system. We impose and shoot the file. Fiery Impose gives us the confi¬dence to do the jobs in the right way,” Arora says. 

Arora is excited about the tool Fiery Go, through which one can see live operations at the pro¬duction facility. With this, opera¬tors can change the sequence of the jobs as per the requirement. 

Another tool that Arora uses is Fiery Navigator, which helps get reports about what is happening right now and what did happen in the past. “I can see the details of the printed jobs in the past, such as like colour, volume and so on. It helps with duration-based reports. It can also help us in analytics so that we can schedule more jobs during our free time,” he adds.