Case Study - 8
Secondary School

The school in question had some very distinct needs. The first concerned the print room where there was a need to produce in house letters and colour posters and other school collateral. The second cantered around satellite copiers around the school for staff use.

When the initial consultation and audit of stock was carried out the following issues were identified:

Print Room

The Colour copier was slow and expensive to run with colour prints costing around 12p, it had no duplexing facility and no finishing function. The Black and White machine had produced over 2 million copies and there were issues with quality.

Satellite Copiers

Old machines with an antiquated control system, mostly analogue and none linked into the computer network. These machines were mainly taking up space and underutilised, it became most members of staff were in fact printing to expensive ink jet printers in quantity.

In conjunction with the Bursar and IT manager the following solution was developed:

• For the Print Room colour print and copy would be provided by a Canon iRC4080i with booklet finishing. This provides 36 pages per minute in full colour and can be used to produce programmes, year books and other collateral quickly and efficiently. As a secondary benefit the i-Send function provides network scan to file location and email recipient. For the Black and White high volume print the existing 50 copy per minute machine would be provided by a Canon iR6570 with finisher, this new machine increased print speeds by 15 pages per minute and offered an enhanced paper supply. Both machines were also linked to the school computer network and made available to all staff.
• The satellite machines would be replaced by new Canon iR2870 devices, linked as printers, with internal staple finishers and all with i-Send function to provide high quality scanning to staff. At the same time providing laser quality print at 28 pages per minute with duplex print. Access to these machines is controlled by a simple pin number and ensures the machines cannot be used by pupils.
• Leasing was provided over 5 years and service is charged monthly including all service support labour, parts, toner and consumables. Black and white costs have been reduced from 1.2p per page average to .6p per page, colour costs have been reduced from 12p per page to 6p. Print speeds have been dramatically increased, in the print room colour speed is up from 11 pages per minute to 30, black and white from 50 pages per minute to a combined 105 pages per minute and satellite machines form an average of 20 pages per minute to 28 pages per minute.

The solution was to introduce 2 Canon iR5075 high speed black and white photocopiers with network print with staple finishers and a folder unit to perform the folding post fuser. This meant that the folding became part of the print production and reduced the manual element. The paper supply means most jobs can now be processed in one run, the machine has a 4,200 sheet on line supply.

Labels are processed through a bypass feed that means they are printed on a straight through paper path, this has reduced jams to virtually nil and reduced wastage dramatically.

On larger jobs split across the two machines the client is printing at 150 pages per minute, which in real terms means a 10,000 page print is now produced in around 1 hour with a minimum of paper refilling, (one per machine) that can be performed whilst the Photocopier utilises other paper trays so no lost productivity.

Currently the client is considering introducing a colour printer and at a later date will be looking into introducing variable data printing as part of their offering to clients.