In today's digital age, jobs can come into the shop via the Internet, be automatically preflighted, and sent directly to a digital output device, to a DI press, or to a CTP unit. From there, modern presses or digital printers can crank out thousands of sheets per hour which then are sent to the bindery where, in many shops, the production process can slow to a crawl. So, why is there this bindery bottleneck and how can it be streamlined?

One problem is that in this age of hybrid digital and offset production, bindery requirements can be quite different.

"Many printers today, the successful ones for sure, are diversifying," says Chris Harrington, director of sales at Graphic Whizard. "Business cases for short-run digital in commercial sheet-fed shops are being more and more justified every day. The quality, productivity, and cost per impression are to a point that printers cannot overlook the value of going digital for short runs. With this can come a new set of challenges for the finishing department."

What are these challenges that printers face? Jerry Sturnick, manager of finishing strategy at the Xerox Production Systems Group, says the mix of offset and digital output requires different approaches to finishing. "There are both technical and operational challenges a printer will face when handling the bindery/finishing requirements for a mix of offset and digital jobs," he says. "In general, the digital jobs differ in terms of much shorter run lengths, turnaround times, and unique media handling characteristics of digital printer output."

According to Si Nguyen of Duplo USA, a major concern arises with equipment limitations. Mixed output requires "the capability to program intelligent feeding sequence and interposing sequence along with the issue of image smearing and cracking when dealing with digital stocks. Because of the difficult challenges when mixing different media, print service providers often opt to print all in offset or all in digital."

Adds Harrington, "Many traditional shops that are set up for long-run commercial work are not always equipped to handle the short-run finishing steps required. Bottlenecks are caused when makeready times in the bindery can take longer than the run times."

Sturnick agrees. "Most customers I visit who have created digital operations to complement their offset business quickly find that they need to have a dedicated digital finishing operation since the turnaround times and job mix would be too great a disruption on their traditional bindery in terms of interruptions of larger jobs, finishing device compatibility with short-run digital jobs, and managing larger quantities of small jobs."

Get Inline?

Whether short-run or long-run, the pros and cons of inline versus offline finishing are still worth noting. Obviously, inline finishing can be a seamless adjunct to a digital output device. Stitching, folding, stapling, punching, bookletmaking, etc. all can be accomplished inline on today's digital devices. Inline finishing on more advanced units can also allow for a mix of stocks or feeding and collating of offset output. So, what's not to like?