Company
Minnesota Life
St. Paul, MN

Profile
Founded in 1880, Minnesota Life serves millions of customers with more than $181 billion of life insurance protection — and its Graphic Services Department does a lot of printing. The department has 46 employees and annual revenues of $7.5 million. While 80 percent of its business is internal, the Graphic Services Department also insources a good deal of printing for clients under the Lafayette Litho name.

Keeping the large operation competitive in the new millennium is the job of Graphic Services Director Tom Neckvatal. Neckvatal has made a commitment to computer-to-plate to ensure the inplant’s future. Because of the broad array of jobs it produces, Minnesota Life’s in-plant had to work through many of the critical issues facing the printing industry, such as handling hard-copy legacy documents, polyester vs. metal plates, visible-light vs. thermal platesetters, and PDF workflows.

Minnesota Life is located near the CTP platesetter manufacturer, Printware, LLC, and the two St. Paul-based companies have had a close relationship.

Behind the scenes
Before the in-plant purchased a CTP platesetter, it used film to image conventional metal plates. It also burned some polyester plates using a silver-halide plate camera, but the poor accuracy of the camera limited these plates to only simple imprinting applications. The ability to expand the use of polyester plates was key to justifying Minnesota Life’s CTP investment.

Assertive approach to CTP
Minnesota Life’s analysis for the high plate volume, singleand two-color printing on the web, two-up, and Jet presses lead them to a decision to use the Printware PlateStream- 46, an 18 x 27-inch platesetter, and Printware SilverStreamColor+™ polyester plates. This type of work has typical run lengths of 2,500 to 5,000 impressions, and includes policies, imprinting, and envelopes. For those plates, the in-plant selected The in-plant selected the PlateStream because, at 120 plates per hour, it was one of the fastest machines in its class, and its waste-reduction features promised to result in significant media cost savings. Its accuracy and registration were adequate for process color, although the machine is currently used for black-and-white and spot-color applications.

Neckvatal notes that the Printware system, was the key to the new workflow because it handled the jobs that used a high volumes of plates. “The PlateStream allowed us to go from metal to polyester for most of our plates, and that saves us a lot of money,” he says.

New system
The PlateStream automatically feeds plate material rolls and has an integrated plate processor. Because the plate material can be daylight-loaded, the PlateStream is located in the prepress area. The PlateStream’s plate-area-based processor-chemical replenishment system prolongs chemistry life and maintains consistent quality over the life of the chemistry.

The PlateStream is available with a Harlequin RIP. Minnesota Life elected to use the Harlequin RIP because of its simple user interface, especially for positioning the image on the plate and managing job queues.

Digitizing legacy forms was a key requirement of the small-format CTP system. Connected directly to the Harlequin RIP is a Printware Turnkey Scanning system, which allows for one-step realtime conversion of camera-ready artwork, such as legacy forms, to digital files without having to take the files off the RIP. The system uses an open architecture and a PDF workflow, and the scanned files are tracked with a digital asset manager that runs on the RIP. If required, the files can be edited and retouched with PitStop PDF editing software, which also runs on the RIP. The PlateJet system uses an Adobe RIP, but most of the file preparation is done in the PCC front-end software.

Because of the in-plant’s dependence on the CTP equipment, Minnesota Life had their own personnel trained to service the PlateStream equipment.

Pressroom improvements
In addition to saving steps in prepress, CTP has brought Minnesota Life other pressroom improvements including higher quality, faster makeready and the flexibility to switch between metal and polyester plates. Neckvatal notes that there was a “quantum jump” in quality improvement when his in-plant changed from analog silver-halide plates to digital plates. The digital plates can support up to 175-lpi line screens; compared to approximately 100- lpi line screens for the analog plates. The accuracy of the plates are ±0.001 inches, an order of magnitude better than the camera plates. This allowed for faster makeready and fewer errors, which yielded higher press utilization. Plate remakes with the CTP platesetter are much faster than with the camera system, as job files can be resent from the RIP without going back to the front-end system.

Depending on job requirements, there is a good deal of flexibility needed to switch between digital metal and digital polyester plates. Both the metal and polyester plates are five mils thick, which eliminates the need to repack presses when switching between these plates. Universal fountain solutions have worked well, so the press chemistry does not need to be changed between metal- and polyester- plate jobs. An example of the advantage of this flexibility is insurance policies that might have an initial short run on polyester plates, then a longer run on metal plates, after the policy is in wide distribution. Thicker plates are available for both CTP systems, but without a long-run-length requirement, the thinner plates are easier to handle and are slightly less expensive.

A successful landing
Neckvatal is pleased with the results of the in-plant’s jump to CTP, citing reduced costs and 25 percent shorter turnaround time. The operation now runs approximately 75 digital plates per day, most of which are polyester. It has a declining number of archival jobs that are plated from film, but virtually all new documents or page revisions are created with CTP. The increased use of polyester plates and reduced plate waste have significantly cut the inplant’s costs.

Minnesota Life is working to reduce its average turnaround time even more. Neckvatal notes that same-day turnaround is now practical on many jobs. CTP has increased customer expectations, and that they quickly come to rely on the fast turnaround.

Minnesota Life has made a large investment in its in-plant, but Neckvatal says, “Like any other business, in-plants today have to be competitive to survive. Computer-to-plate was a good investment, one we needed to make.”