Your article about R.R. Donnelley’s announcement that we are standardizing our workflows through the creation of Digital Solution Centers (“R.R. Donnelley Starts Shift to All-Digital Prepress Operation,” April 15) needs clarification.
It is a mischaracterization to state that R.R. Donnelley is just now adopting digital prepress technology. In fact, our prepress platforms have been digital since the mid-’80s for gravure printing and the early ’90s for offset printing. Donnelley has been first to market with every significant technological advantage in the printing industry for over 25 years.
The development covered by DM News was around another first – the first large commercial printer to commit to standard file formats and workflows across their entire print production platform, beginning with the offset print platform. This, coupled with the deployment over the next 18 months of new tools to give our customers unprecedented access and control over the production process, is the real story.
Donnelley’s first Digital Solution Center to roll out opened earlier in the year, serving the short-run trade magazine marketplace in Pontiac, IL. There are no plans to create one single center to serve the catalog marketplace. We will configure our capabilities and locations based on customer needs and will be working with our customers and all of our current catalog operations to determine the optimal workflow scenarios for them. The offset printing platform will be the near-term area of focus.
Mary Lee Schneider, president of R.R. Donnelley Premedia Technologies Solutions, Chicago.
