The power   
"The power of Océ Doc Works® can be seen in many areas," says Marc ter Steeg, a Repro employee and project leader. "First, in the 'what you see is what you get' concept; second, in the absolute user friendliness; and third, in the fact that a person can send a document to us via the network from any PC. A user no longer has to come to our counter, which, considering how large our campus is, saves him or her a lot of time," he explains.

 

"Take the example of a professor who has created a document in MS Word® and wants 300 copies made. He or she can select Océ Doc Works® instead of a standard printer from the print menu. This brings up a job ticket interface that shows a complete overview of the services we offer: colour or black-and-white, desired format, paper weight, binding possibilities, etc. After filling this in and clicking 'OK' the user is finished, unless he or she wishes to check the document again. The document is sent to us as a PDF (Portable Document File). Next it's transformed into a universal language (Adobe PostScript) that can be read by any printer, Océ copier/printers included. This ensures that the document that comes into our Repro looks exactly as it did on the customer's PC. As proof of this, we can send the document back to the client if he or she wishes. Certainly in the beginning, our customers wondered whether something so simple could work so well."
 
World premiere as a pilot site
After discussing the system thoroughly with Océ and seeing it work at diverse exhibitions, the Economic Faculty wanted to serve as a pilot site. Ter Steeg: "In March, we put in a trial system. Océ advised us to add two Océ DPS400s to our existing set-up, which comprised an Océ 3165 system. That immediately solved our digital capacity problem. It also meant that we had the world premiere of the complete solution at our location."

 

"The Océ DPS400 is the first real Océ high volume machine," says repro employee Rein de Lange. "It produces more than 6,000 copies or prints per hour with excellent, 600-dpi resolution. Despite all its possibilities, the system is surprisingly compact. This is a real blessing in our limited space. Also, covers, for example are 'a piece of cake, thanks to subset scanning, and digital and analogue tasks can be performed simultaneously."

 

Flexible job tickets
Ter Steeg describes other aspects of the Océ solution. "Océ also installed an Océ Doc Works® server, delivered and implemented the software and provided us with training," he says. "We attended a short class at Océ in Den Bosch (the Netherlands) and later received instruction at work. This latter training primarily involved programming the job tickets that the user sees on his or her screen. You can customise this precisely as you want it. We put everything that we had to offer-and that's a lot-on the ticket.  Choices can be indicated on pull-down menus or as check boxes. There are also separate text fields in which we can bring special offers or new possibilities to the attention of our users.

 

"With Océ Doc Works® our transition from analogue to digital, which we started a year and a half ago, has attained a new dimension. The digital way of working was already more efficient, even in delivery of hard-copy materials. Machines are less prone to breakdowns and wear, because a hard-copy original is scanned once, then reproduced from the digital information stored in memory. Rasters and grey tones hold up. The hundred thousandth print is the same as the first, and that without having to continually check the lighting. In other words, digital printing means consistent quality, time savings, lower maintenance costs and no more misprints.

 

"Digital printing with Océ Doc Works®, however, primarily means we can add enormous value to our services.  We've noticed that we get more jobs over the network every day. And that's not all; this method of working simply brings us more jobs.

 

"Océ Doc Work® has been installed on all 550 of our faculty workstations since last summer.  It is also in our Graphics Support Centre, where the staff designs high quality graphic documents from digital files and photos or drawings for all sorts of school groups. These documents often used to be printed externally. Now we can work faster, better and cheaper than anyone-and all at the touch of a button. The Centre and others make grateful use of these services.

 

The future
"And yet we have barely scratched the surface," says Wim Poort. "Océ Doc Works® offers nearly endless possibilities. The inclusion of an accounting system, which we will use in the future, is a perfect example. Remote support is also a possibility, although we don't find that necessary at this point. But thinking ahead, we could allow instructors or others to send their documents to us over the Internet from their homes. Sent in the evening. Picked up by us in the morning. That's what I call service and that will surely come to pass for us."