Shift to Inkjet Printing at Reynolds and Reynolds Increases Productivity, Reduces Waste and Staffing Needs
Discover how Reynolds and Reynolds, a leading provider of document services for automotive retailers, is realizing welcome advantages after transitioning from digital toner to production inkjet. A pair of Canon varioPRINT i300 sheetfed inkjet presses and a ProStream web-fed inkjet press are boosting throughput, cutting waste percentages, and accelerating turnaround.
Transforming High-Volume Print Production
For more than a century, Reynolds and Reynolds has served as a foundational pillar in the business forms and commercial printing industry. Operating a massive 75,000-square-foot facility in Celina, Ohio, the organization has spent the last 75 years meticulously perfecting its manufacturing processes to deliver high-quality printed materials to a vast, nationwide network of clients. The Ohio facility is a powerhouse of modern productivity, operating across three full shifts, five days a week, and successfully shipping out roughly 300 highly customized orders every single day.
Despite this impressive historical success and a deeply ingrained, highly functional printing infrastructure, the company recognized that maintaining its competitive edge in a fast-paced market required a strategic technological evolution. To continuously meet strict customer expectations and comfortably handle massive daily volumes, the organization needed to look beyond its legacy equipment and fully embrace the future of high-speed digital production.
Legacy Bottlenecks and a Shrinking Labor Pool
Historically, the facility relied heavily on traditional digital toner-based equipment and complex lithographic printing presses. While these legacy systems had been refined down to an exact science over decades of continuous use, they presented several critical operational bottlenecks that severely hindered the company's ability to scale operations. The traditional offset workflow was inherently time-consuming and labor-intensive, requiring operators to spend an entire production day simply making physical printing plates and strategically ganging distinct jobs together just to make print runs financially viable.
Furthermore, the legacy equipment required intense, hands-on mechanical maintenance, effectively forcing machine operators to act as mechanics who spent valuable production time rebuilding complex ink trains, operating grease guns, and turning wrenches. These heavy mechanical demands directly collided with a rapidly shrinking industrial labor pool, making it increasingly difficult for the facility to find and retain the specialized craftsmanship necessary to run older equipment. The organization desperately needed a modern, automated solution that could help increase overarching facility efficiency, improve critical service levels, and seamlessly adapt to the shifting demographics of the modern manufacturing workforce.
A Comprehensive Inkjet Transformation
To solve these pressing labor and workflow challenges, Reynolds and Reynolds embarked on a comprehensive technological transformation by partnering with Canon to shift its production floor heavily toward advanced inkjet technology. Beginning this strategic transition in 2019, the organization initially installed two Canon VarioPrint i300 sheetfed inkjet presses, specifically tasked with producing high-quality marketing services and vital dealership collateral, such as targeted service reminder letters sent to automotive customers across the nation.
To handle their massive volume of laser-fired forms, the facility also installed a Canon ProStream 1800 continuous feed inkjet press. This specific machine has proven to be a production beast. The success of this initial digital integration was so profound that the facility is currently in the process of installing a second Canon ProStream 1800 to help further combat unscheduled machine downtime, significantly increase production capacity for loyal clients, and provide the necessary time to strengthen its internal supply chain by linearizing paper stocks.
Slashed Waste and Empowered Operators
The integration of Canon production printing technology has helped to deliver transformative, hard-data benefits across the entire Reynolds and Reynolds organization. Operationally, the shift to Canon inkjet eliminated the cumbersome platemaking process and the logistical nightmare of holding orders for ganging. Today, production scheduling is highly streamlined and dictated simply by the substrate; operators can seamlessly line up all relevant jobs the moment a roll of 20-pound bond paper is hung on the digital press. This incredible workflow efficiency is paired with a reduction in physical material waste. By eliminating complex makeready processes and specialized setup stocks, the facility successfully slashed its total waste from an average of more than 13 percent in 2019 to well below nine percent in 2023. Furthermore, Canon technology ensures color consistency, meaning a job printed today will perfectly match a batch printed a year ago without requiring operators to constantly stop the press for manual color inspections.
Perhaps the most significant benefit of the Canon implementation is how it helped successfully resolve the company's crippling labor constraints. The advanced Canon ProStream operates primarily via an intuitive tablet interface, which is vastly less intimidating for the newer, younger workforce and perfectly fits today's digital-first working culture. Because the technology is incredibly user-friendly and requires less mechanical maintenance, the company was able to successfully repurpose associates 26 different plant positions, allowing existing staff to grow, expand their professional skill sets, and take genuine ownership of their modernized roles.
Throughout this entire multi-year technological journey, Canon has acted as a dedicated vendor partner, providing meticulously orchestrated support ranging from initial site surveys to weekly implementation calls and comprehensive post-installation operator training. By fully embracing the market-leading innovation of Canon inkjet technology, Reynolds and Reynolds has successfully future-proofed its historic operations, ensuring consistent manufacturing productivity for decades to come.
Interested in learning how Canon production printing technology can help your business grow? Contact us today.