Hamburg, July 27, 2015. The printing service provider, Advance Central Services Michigan, has a lot to do. They produce no less than 74 publications ranging from dailies, magazines to flyers. Meeting the various needs of customers, primarily newspaper publishers and retail customers, poses a serious challenge. That's why ACSMI has been using ppi Media's workflow solutions since 2003. During the course of these many years of cooperation, ACSMI has not only efficiently coordinated its orders from its headquarters in Grand Rapids, but also expanded its range of products to include additional services.

Complex requirements

"When our long and successful cooperation with ppi Media first began, we were in the planning stages to develop a new printing facility. We needed to look at more than just business as usual. We needed software solutions that would integrate with our existing systems as much as possible while automate as many tasks as possible. None except for ppi Media had a true end-to-end solution. ppi Media has proven its value time and time again and provided us with software solutions such as PlanPag and OM Job Entry that could not compare with others," says Brian Leonard, Executive Director, Production & Information Technology at Advance Central Services Michigan.

From start to finish

ACSMI is using ppi Media software throughout every area of their business. The workflow that they implemented is made up of PlanPag, OM JobEntry, ProPag, ppi Inkreduction as well as OM and constitutes a closed workflow constantly guaranteeing transparent, flexible and seamless production control over all products. As such, ACSMI is using PlanPag to plan their newspaper production and OM JobEntry to do their commercial production planning. Based on the production plans created in PlanPag and OM JobEntry, production proceeds via the central productions control system OM in all three printing facilities. Open, bidirectional interfaces allow for complete integration of all ad booking, editorial and press control systems. Information is only created once and automatically forwarded to the appropriate systems.

"Fast forward the twelve years since we went live in 2003, ppi Media has been core to our business. We have expanded our infrastructure to improve support and printing capabilities," explains Matt Fleming, Director of Ad Production and Information at Advance Central Services. This makes Advance Central Services Michigan leaner and stronger than ever.