Cochlear Limited, one of the fastest growing Australian companies, produce a variety of hearing implants and ship them to customers worldwide.

A "Document Package" must accompany each of these hearing implants. Document Packages can contain up to 22 different items of printed documentation such as the surgeon's instructions, warranty cards, user manuals etc and are produced in over 20 different languages.
Since there are regular hard- and software updates to the products, the information content of many of the printed items is updated frequently.

Cochlear is audited by the US FDA and other global health administration authorities; the correctness and completeness of the printed material sent out is critical.

For many years the Document Packages were produced using conventional offset printing technology. Lead times were long, minimum quantities had to be produced, every artwork update caused obsolescence of warehoused items.

When SOS took over the production of Document Packages for Cochlear Limited we had several targets:

• Due to the rapid growth of the company lead times for the production of existing and new products had to be reduced.
• The overall print cost had to be reduced.
• Better control over artwork and warehousing to reduce obsolescence.

To achieve this we audited the items that were produced. Every document was examined to assess gains that could be made by using a combination of traditional offset and modern digital print technologies. We offset printed shells in higher quantities and stored them until they were ready to be used for overprinting.
The contents were updated using our high speed black and colour lasers. This way even a production run of fifty for the Italian market became economical.

Artwork control

To enable "print on demand", the artwork for all items had to be stored centrally. SOS designed a managed pdf workflow, which enables the Cochlear marketing department to upload, view and replace files stored on the SOS webservers. SOS installed software and trained Cochlear staff to enable them to produce pdf files. As soon as they are uploaded these files are pre-flighted by the SOS prepress department and marked ready for production. Items from this secure central depository of files can also be made accessible to other suppliers.

Print Management & Online systems

On the site the status of all jobs in production is published in real time, the client can check progress and history of current and past jobs.

• The site contains a pricing calculator, which uses complex lookup tables to allow Cochlear to price items at any quantity.
• The site includes a stock level management system, which informs about items in the warehouse in real time.
• The site contains a specification database, which describes the production details of every item including stock, colours, binding etc.
• The site is linked to the online asset management system.

Conclusion

By utilising a combination of printing technologies; managing and standardising the artwork and using the Internet to facilitate production and administration and make processes transparent, SOS is saving Cochlear Limited several hundred thousand dollars off their annual print spend.SOS set up a website which fulfils several functions and simplifies the management of print jobs.