CTP- a walk in the park for Quality Park Products

Part of parent company American MailWell, the largest supplier of envelopes in the United States, Quality Park Products is headquartered in St. Paul, Minnesota. The company owns and operates distribution centers in Atlanta, Georgia, Buffalo, New York, St. George, Utah, and Baresford, South Dakota.

Much of Quality Park's business comes from servicing large businesses with large requests, according to graphics manager Jeff Paulson, “We deal less with the general public and more with office products companies and large catalog companies. We have to service big customers with big demands”.

It was Quality Park Products’ need to complete large print requests and its commitment to great customer service that lead to the company's adoption of new and more efficient methods of printing.

During his 23 years of service, Jeff has been a part of the two largest decisions the company has made to service its customers better and more efficiently. The first was the decision to go digital. “We decided to go digital in 1989,” Jeff explains. “That’s when we made the conversion from outsourcing film with service bureaus and instead making plates inside.”

The next big decision involved the transition to a new type of platemaking. “We then implemented the CTP system next.” We chose the PlatestreamSC CTP system because it best fit our presses and thus Quality Park Products was able to automate and streamline orders at each plant.

“Everything went smoothly,” Jeff says of the move to CTP. “There were no surprises and everything went exactly how Printware said it would.”

A Change for the Better

Often change is a scary thing. And change is what Quality Park Products was facing when converting to a new type of plate material. They chose Printware SilverStreamColor+™ polyester plates because they were an ideal affordable high quality alternative to metal plates. However, they considered this change as necessary and exciting step to better serve their clients, “We didn’t have fear so much as questions,” Jeff says. “The only real anxiety we had going into this was getting used to a new system and the impact it would have in the plants.”

With the transition to CTP, Quality Park Products needed to completely overhaul the way its headquarters and four distribution centers printed materials. To better manage this daunting task, the company converted its distribution centers to the CTP technology one by one, starting with St. George.

“The Utah plant was really gung-ho about making the switch,” Jeff explains. “And what was nice is all the other plants used St. George as a guide and personalized certain parts for their area.”

For Quality Park Products, the modification has been met without surprises or drop-off in production quality. CTP technology has also allowed Jeff to continue to run a lean staff, which helps in cost savings. Including himself, there are only two other people who help manage printing requests. This group is responsible for supervising the production of 30 million envelopes per day, with over 100 envelope machines and 900,000 square feet of production space. The only change that Jeff can see is in the savings, “The payback for our CTP system was less than 10 months and that’s looking at real hard dollar costs.”

What the Future Holds

Now that the company has successfully transitioned to CTP, they keep their eyes on the horizon, looking for other improvements they can make to help service customers better.

Recently, Quality Park Products launched QP3, an online ordering system designed to take customer project requests. This addition is another way Jeff and Quality Park Products works more efficiently.

“We’re trying to get away from electronic files because of all the formats involved,” Jeff explains. “With QP3 we don’t have to worry about it.”

Jeff also says that QP3 allows his staff to reduce the steps needed to fill an order, “Ordering online allows us to complete projects faster which benefits our customers.”

With CTP Quality Park Products has continued to service its customers efficiently while providing a cost-effective and user-friendly printing system for Jeff and his staff. Making life a little easier for everyone.

Company

Quality Park

St. Paul, MN (Headquarters)

Atlanta, Georgia; Buffalo, New York; St. George, Utah; Baresford, South Dakota (Other Locations)

Profile

Quality Park Products is a leading manufacturer and distributor of envelopes and business paper products in the United States and Canada. In fact, the company has the manufacturing capacity to make 30 million envelopes per day.

Challenge

With the ability to make 30 million envelopes per day comes the responsibility of servicing customers more efficiently, not necessarily a walk in the park. For Quality Park Products to better service their customers, things needed to change. Transitioning to Computer-To-Plate technology has allowed Quality Park Products to service its clients faster and better.