Linus Wittich KG publishes more than 1,000 different official journals and newsletters in Germany and Austria. What began as a small family business in 1963 has developed into one of the leading publishing houses in Germany with around 1,000 employees at 13 locations.
The company also has a site in Föhren near Trier, where a prepress solution was already in use until 2009. However, this proved to be unwieldy during the correction process, as all adverts had to be printed out. If these contained errors, they were corrected and printed out again for approval. This resulted in about a lorry load of paper every year. Consequently, Michael Grundmann, System Administrator at Linus Wittich, was therefore looking for a way to reduce this high paper consumption and the associated costs. He came across the company 3f8h.net / electronic publishing, a workflow and automation partner of Impressed GmbH and a long-standing Gold Partner of callas software GmbH.
‘Sebastian Nafroth, owner of 3f8h.net / electronic publishing, recommended callas pdfToolbox to us after analysing our requirements,’ explains Michael Grundmann, adding: ’As the software alone could not meet our complex requirements, we also implemented Enfocus Switch as the central control component and Pixometry (formerly Elpical Claro) as the image processing software.’
Since then, Linus Wittich has mapped the correction process completely digitally. To do this, Enfocus Switch transfers the PDF files to callas pdfToolbox Server, which splits the adverts into individual PDF pages. These are then sent to the proofreaders, who make the necessary corrections in comments in Adobe Acrobat. The typesetters then incorporate the corrections and the adverts can be released.
‘The combination of pdfToolbox Server and Switch has already saved us several tonnes of paper in the first six months,’ emphasises Michael Grundmann. ‘The integration into our existing workflows was realised by 3f8h.net / electronic publishing in such a way that no further conversions were necessary for us.’
Due to the associated time and cost savings, Linus Wittich has extended the combined solution of Switch, Pixometry, and pdfToolbox to its twelve other locations.
Since then, the publishing house has not only benefited from a faster and, above all, paperless correction process, but also from automation: the company receives all texts and adverts for its more than 1,000 publications to be produced every weekday by 9 a.m. and has to provide them as a printable PDF version by 3 p.m. Due to this high time pressure, automated processes are essential. This applies in particular to preflighting, as the publisher receives more than just flawless PDF/X files. ‘We sometimes receive PowerPoint or CorelDRAW files, to name just two examples,’ says Michael Grundmann. ‘Of course, these are not designed for printing. Fortunately, pdfToolbox can automatically create perfect PDF/X files from them.’ Some incoming images also have to be post-processed, which Pixometry takes care of.
Linus Wittich also uses the OCR function integrated into pdfToolbox to find published press releases in all editions more quickly. ‘This allows us to tell the agencies how many press articles have been published on which pages,’ explains Michael Grundmann. ‘This service is particularly appreciated by agencies, as they don't have to manually search through all editions.’
In addition, other departments at Linus Wittich KG, such as accounting and human resources, also benefit from the PDF/A technology in callas pdfToolbox by automatically converting documents into the ISO standard for long-term archiving.
The newly implemented digital correction process alone enables Linus Wittich to save 40 tonnes of paper per year, which means that the investment in the solutions from Enfocus, Pixometry and callas software has quickly paid for itself.
Michael Grundmann wants to use these solutions to automate more processes in the future and knows that he is in good hands with 3f8h.net / electronic publishing and callas software. ‘The support is first class,’ summarises the system administrator. ‘Errors and requests for improvements are dealt with immediately and we receive a solution promptly. A big compliment for this service, which cannot be taken for granted these days.’
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