With the economy being what it is, it was great to run across some good news in a back issue of American Printer: Action Printing, a Kodak customer, was elected to the NAPL's Management Plus Hall of Fame.

Action Printing's President, Gregg Davies, credits their success to one single business philosophy — excellence — in employee relations, print quality and service. They empower employees and pull out all of the stops to meet and understand the needs of their clients. But that's only two-thirds of the secret.

"Maintaining a high-level, consultative relationship with our clients and providing consistent quality requires not only a highly trained staff and innovative management, but the ability to move forward with advancing technology," says Davies. "As an example, Action Printing was the first printer in the United States to digitally link its customer service department to its high-speed saddle stitchers, replacing time-consuming hand adjustments with CSR-generated instructions."

The digital link Davies mentioned is actually KODAK UPFRONT Production Planning Software. Using UPFRONT's job building wizard, the CSRs at Action Printing digitally create their folding dummies, plan their jobs, and then export JDF data to automate the setup of their bindery equipment. Adjustments to set fold, cuts and more are no longer manually done. This automation has reduced setup times from 65 to 24 minutes. And wasted plates have declined from 3% to 1.4%. For this achievement, Action Printing received the CIPPI award for best cost/benefit realization from automation. You can read the more on about this story here.

An author named Patricia Gallagher recently contacted us because she was "in a bind." She was scheduled to do a book signing in less than a week and her printer wasn't able to fulfill the order in time.

Patricia googled "print on demand," found Kodak, and called us. Our team connected her with a local printer, Alcom, located less than a half hour from her house. Alcom was able to turn the job around in less than two days, and far exceeded the customer's expectations.

Alcom printed the book using a KODAK NEXPRESS 2500 Digital Production Color Press with WATKISS Booklet Maker, KODAK NEXPRESS Glossing Unit, and KODAK DIGIMASTER EX150 Digital Production System in their new digital book factory.



I share this story as a thank you to Alcom, a valued Kodak customer that deserves all the credit for this successful outcome. Kodak only succeeds if our customers succeed, and we commend Doug Yeager, COO; Rodger Weyman, Manager Prepress Digital Print; Sharon Tucker, Marketing Manager; Allyson Dorn, Production Planner; and the entire Alcom team on a job well done.

Thank you Patricia for putting your trust in Kodak and our customers and letting us share your story.

Dear Doug, Rodger, Sharon, Allyson, and Krista:

I am still pinching myself to make sure this is all real. How could I really have this beautiful book in my hands when just three short days ago, I was at a total loss about what I was going to do?

For a mom who is very low-tech and was just googling around on the Internet to have come across something about a Kodak NexPress printer, how I even got my call transferred to Kodak Public Relations and then to Alcom is unfathomable. The whole scenario happened, with one blessing after another, and within 48 hours, I had a van loaded with the highest quality book, with a beautiful cover and very classy paper stock.... all that I could wish for!

I know that all of you worked so hard to make this happen. I can't even imagine what it took for all of you to do it, but you did. Your ingenuity in handling the flap and photo concerns was so innovative. The book just looks STRIKING to me.

Everyone in my family loves the book. The cover is so attractive with the high gloss finish. We will be so proud to bring the books with us on Monday night.

One thing that struck me as so unusual in these stressful times - there seemed to be no "grumpy people" at Alcom. Everybody who I met while there, even a couple of employees in the parking lot and the receptionist, said that Alcom is the greatest place to work.

I thank you from the very bottom of my heart.

With gratitude and admiration for all that you do to help your customers,

Patricia Gallagher
Worcester, PA

In the Grow Your Biz blog post, "Your Chemistry Free Plate Requires Chemistry", I challenged Agfa's "chemistry free" messaging claiming that Agfa's "chemistry free plates" were neither free of chemistry nor is the chemistry itself free. The posting triggered many to ask and a few to pose the question on PrintPlanet.com, "what chemicals are in that 'chemistry free' solution?" Agfa replied with "Agfa rolled-out the Azura implementation with the preservative gum as the only 'chemical.'" Our point exactly...

Just this week, Simon Nias of PrintWeek reported that "Fujifilm will replace 'misleading' chemistry-free tag with 'low-chemistry' for plate ranges". Kudos to Fujifilm for challenging the credentials of "chemistry free"..

Agfa - the cat's out of the bag. It's your turn to revamp your misleading marketing slogans and be honest to your customers.