Ultimate Tech was the first company in the industry to use computers for imposition, and the signature software, Impostrip, is used globally by thousands of companies. In the past years, Ultimate Tech has developed products for binderies and large-format, and here at PRINTING United, the company shows its BestCut solution, helping operators optimize the guillotine work. As always super interesting listening to CEO Julie Watson.
Morten: This is Morten from INKISH and we are here at the first day at fantastic Printing United in Las Vegas.
I am here with my best friend, you must be my best friend, Julie.
Julie: Hi, nice to see you!
Morten: I can help thinking about you, because you are the one that gave me these wonderful T-shirts, probably because my clothing taste is not good enough, but it’s ok. 🙂
So we are here at Printing United, how is it to be back here in Las Vegas.
Julie: Well it’s for sure that we had a very big, succesful DRUPA and we wanted to bring some of our innovations and technologies here in the US at Printing United, so we are very excited to be here.
Morten: I tell you, every time I saw your booth at Drupa it was crowded, there were a lot of people. I guess you were one of the exhibitors that benefited from being there, right?
Julie: Yes definitely. I mean, yes there were talks about trafic, but for us we had a very succesful Drupa. We are about Automation, Innovation and yes, we’ve made a lot of new customers.
Morten: Every time we meet each other at Printing United it seems you have new iterations, new software, new solutions. Last year you said that a flatbed solution was new to the Ultimate Suite. You have, in the meantime, changed names and now you are focussing on Ultimate nesting products. Tell me a little bit more about how you see the world from an Ultimate perspective.
Julie: We always want to bring something new, have a good understanding of our customers’ challenges for today and future challenges and how we can bring solutions to help them overcome these challenges. So last year we had a nesting solution together with Kongsberg Cutting Tables, that was also a very successful showing, but at this show we really wanted to address the issues with staff shortages. Everywhere around the world, customers we talk to, this is an issue that they have, which they have to overcome. There are different ways in our industry to deal with that. Sure, we can try and recruit young people, we can train them, there are a lot of initiatives happening, but another way is to make these devices even more comprehensible, easier to use, and that is what we are doing with the Ultimate BestCut project and this Itotec paper cutter.
Morten: It also seems to me, and we are going to talk about it later, that Impostrip has been the main product for you for many many years, and Bindery was in the portfolio, but it seems that you have like a renewed focus on bringing these branches out of the automation journey and I remember that we spoke about, I think it was last year, how you see that 2024, 2025 are the years where customers should really look into how many different workflows they have and maybe consider consolidating. Is that also part of what you do in order to make it easier to choose Ultimate as the sole supplier?
Julie: There is a word that has been used a lot which is: ‘Conversions’. So definitely customers that were only doing books are now doing books and commercial printing, wide format and getting into labels and some packaging, so customers are trying to produce all kinds of products. And with our solution, it’s a professional imposition solution that is dynamic, has the speed but can also address all these applications. So it doesn’t matter if they want to do a box on their wide format or a book on their digital press, they can use Ultimate Impostrip for that reliably and get the throughput they need for their productivity.
Morten: So, let’s dig a little bit into BestCut because obviously we have a guillotine behind you and we are going to get a demo in a moment, but what is the idea of automating the guillotine process?
Julie: You know it takes a unique skilled operator to operate a paper cutter and as we talked about some of these skills are sometimes hard to come by. So the idea is, how can we simplify their lives as well as make it easier for anybody to operate the guillotine?
For example, what happens if your operator is sick one day or on vacation? We don’t want all the jobs to just stack on the floor, we want jobs to get out of the door. That’s the objective of automating it. So, this BestCut can tie in to the workflow via JDF, it’s an open solution, so it can be tied-in to any workflow. Of course with Ultimate Bindery and Ultimate Impostrip as well, but, it can also be interfaced with any workflow and basically it will automate and indicate to the cutter the measurements as well as the best sequence of actions to cut the job as fast as possible, as efficiently as possible, and we can even estimate the ETA of when the job will be finished based on the operators’ skill level.
Morten: I was just about to say that when it comes down to what it actually does is that the sequence is very important because if you have complex post jobs of course the sequence is important. It needs to be done in the right sequence, right?
Does that also allow you to do even better impositions because now if you combine the cutting with very good impositions then you can basically utilize the software even better?
Julie: Well, imposition is about finishing, so when we create an imposition process we always factor in how the solution is going to be finished anyway. So we tie that all together, that’s always very important. But definitely there are a lot of time savings that can be done. Some jobs, you know, take a long time to cut, so saving any time there definitely helps to get out more jobs out the door. That’s what we want to simplify.
Morten: I have a question and it’s not intended to be a provocation but I have to ask it anyway. When we have been visiting a lot of your customers, it seems that some of your customers are really usilizing your software to the max, right. But some of the customers seem to be just scratching the surface. When you have all these types of products, do they understand how they interconnect and operate or is that a big learning process for you? I know you do webinars and you also the videos you do with us and you are very very good at marketing in general. How do you actually get to utilize your software to the max?
Julie: We offer training programs and of course we go as fast as we can with the customer. So we go at the speed as the customer wants to go at. They are juggling a lot of different challenges in their business and we are there to help them when it’s needed. So, we can train them, we can help them leverage even more of the solutions. So we have a team of experts they can rely on, so yes, that’s how we do it. But we can only go at the speed the customer wants to go at.
Morten: Of course. It must be like that, right? If you look at it from an investment perspective, the short term repayment time and expenses?
Julie: The ROI is a no-brainer with our solutions. The amount of savings that customers get from automating the processes, within days, or weeks and in some cases, hours, they get their ROI on the solution.
Morten: Right now you are showing it on this guillotine from, Best Graphics – Itotec.
Julie: It’s an Itotec SC-series paper cutter, brought here by Best Graphics.
Morten: OK, with Best Graphics. I was just thinking that because we spoke before we turned on the camera that it requires a high level of integration because you need to communicate both ways with the machine. Of course you can not put it on any machine. Are you working with other manufactureres getting this as part of their offerings as well?
Julie: Currently, what is available is what you see here at the show.
Morten: But I can imagine that, just like Bindery, you will start looking into different partnerships?
Julie: I mean, of course we have the knowledge to do this kind of integration, so, we don’t know what the future holds.
Morten: So this is a good opportunity for selling these Itotec machines right?
Julie: Yes, well it defininately makes them very attractive. It makes them even easier to use. It’s a very modern interface. So, to attact a younger workforce this is an ideal solution. I think print service providers can use technology to attract this younger workforce. So, I definitely encourage them to look at this solution.
Interview by Morten B. Reitoft on INKISH.TV