A broad range of customers is serviced from here. This comprises numerous smaller specialist toy dealers, mail order establishments, large department store chains and discounters. “We issue about 600,000 invoicing documents a year,” says Inga Kalweit, Accounting Manager. At peak turnover times, her team processes around 6,000 jobs a day. The invoices are sent to three separate countries, additionally increasing the load. “Customers in Germany receive different invoice forms than those in Austria or Switzerland”. Not only do the headers and footers vary, but also due to legal reasons, the terms and conditions on the reverse side of the form differ.

 

Optimum control of the process
The complete invoicing process is based on the fully automatic generation of documents and efficient output management. A solution that saved on manpower and time while being easy to operate and—most importantly—offering the highest levels of reliability, would be ideal. Where was a technology to be found, however, that satisfied all of these conditions? This question occupied Ms Kalweit’s thoughts over a long period. After an intensive round of consultations and tests of various systems, the decision was finally made in favour of Océ PRISMAsatellite. Using its job store and sorting table, this software now controls the complete document workflow—from generation of the data to output on the digital printing system—from one control point.

”Océ PRISMAsatellite completely satisfies the special demands of a complex invoicing operation,” confirms Ms Kalweit, praising this technology, now installed for over two years.

 

Jobs run during the night
An accounting staff member explains just how much easier handling has become using the computer in the printing room. Previously, before converting to Océ PRISMAsatellite, the invoicing jobs had to be generated individually in Post-Script country by country, customer by customer, and then printed one after another. These manual intermediate steps were a great hindrance to prompt printing.

 

These times are long past. “When I look at the screen in the morning I already find all of the invoicing jobs for the previous day, sorted exactly according to the various customer groups, the countries and the postal addresses. Everything is ready to print.” The trick is that during the previous night the jobs are transmitted from the LEGO headquarters in Billund in Denmark, identified automatically by Océ PRISMAsatellite in the computers in Munich, analyzed and intelligently processed.

“We save a lot of valuable time,” says the staff member. “I can initiate all of our daily production in the morning.” Océ PRISMAsatellite controls everything else, without errors and with a high degree of reliability. The many small invoicing jobs are collected into the job store, sorted according to customer address and then automatically stored in order folders. The accounting staff is presented with an ongoing overview, with all folders appearing on screen, allowing the staff to place these in the print wait queue. The sorting of the digital documents according to customer number, country and postcode is done in the sorting table. The software additionally defines to which printer output tray the individual invoices are later to be directed: that for Germany, for Austria or for
Switzerland.

 

Printing at full speed
As soon as the day’s production is kicked off with a mouse click, the Océ digital printer (at LEGO this is an Océ 8465) comes into operation at full rated performance. Not awkwardly in single steps and order for order, but dynamically and flexibly. Moreover, always on the right business paper. The printed invoices are sorted according to customer using the HVS 4000 high capacity stacker and stacked ready for sending. Coloured separator sheets are placed between each stack as an additional safety measure. Even this is done automatically by Océ PRISMAsatellite. “We used to have to start every printing run individually and remove it by hand after output,” explains the staff member. “A complete day’s invoicing run now takes one hour at the most.”

The conversion to Océ PRISMAsatellite to face without problems of any sort, emphasizes Ms Kalweit. “No expensive or complicated changes to the existing SAP system were necessary. Together with the Océ specialists, we’ve found a solution that is optimally tailored to our needs.”