Bytes Document Solutions has successfully improved the quality, control and turnaround times of the document output environment in the manufacturing, training and marketing departments of Ford Motor Company of Southern Africa through a facilities management contract.
In its 10th year of managing Ford`s document output requirements, in a contract worth R8 million a year, the sole authorised distributor of Xerox products and solutions in sub-Saharan Africa, provides the motor company with on-site digital colour and monochrome printing and finishing solutions and specialised services such as lithographic printing.
"Printing is not Ford`s core business; manufacturing and selling vehicles of the highest quality is," says Riaan Kleinsmith, IT director at Ford. "As such it was not our business trying to manage our document output environment by ourselves. The quality of the documents, the turnaround time of print jobs, and the overall cost and service of our in-house printing was unsatisfactory and not optimally managed. Over the last decade, Bytes Document Solutions has provided us with a printing and copying environment that is efficient and reliable, with output of the highest quality."
Through the facilities management contract, Bytes Document Solutions is responsible for document output at Ford`s Silverton office, its regional offices in Cape Town and Durban and its engine plant in Port Elizabeth.
Printing more than 20 million pages annually for Ford, Bytes Document Solutions provides print on demand capabilities using its latest monochrome and colour technology, specialised printing and decentralised multifunction digital equipment across the company.
"Before signing the facilities management contract with Bytes Document Solutions, Ford struggled to manage its company-wide analogue equipment, acquired from a wide range of vendors; or to maximise the output from its obsolete offset litho machinery and finishing equipment," says Rabin Ram, GM Xerox Business Services at Bytes Document Solutions. "Contracting Bytes Document Solutions has provided Ford with more than an efficient and better managed document output environment. It has also provided the company with a one-supplier billing environment that eases budgeting."
With a print room that contains four high volume output devices and a country-wide printing environment consisting of 62 decentralised machines, the facilities management contract is subject to a detailed service level agreement. Performance compared to this agreement is measured on a monthly basis.
"With a decade of successfully managing our demanding printing and copying environment under the Bytes Document Solutions banner, we are considering expanding the contract to include the printing on demand of car and service manuals and all wide-format colour printing requirements," Kleinsmith says.
Covering a total area of 113 hectares, Ford`s vehicle assembly plant is one of the largest in the southern hemisphere. It consists of a covered manufacturing area that is 157 000m^2 in extent and a production warehouse of another 21 700m^2. Inside, a 15km long conveyor belt provides the backbone of the assembly operation, which can produce 252 000 vehicles a year at maximum output.
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