People often use the terms "visionary thinker," "permanent inventor," and "professional career seeker" to describe Conrad Desende, the founder of Intergraphics. It is these excellent qualities that help Desender transform a small family printing house into a large printing company with 100 employees and millions of assets. Intergraphics currently offers a wide range of imaging and industrial printing services to a large number of customers in Canada, Europe and the United States.
Desender and his wife Yvonne founded Intergraphics in 1969. They just started with only one home-made printing press—no staff, no experience in business operations, but they have ambition, passion, and a strong desire for success. Born in Belgium, Conrad was introduced to a printing factory when he was a teenager. He had accumulated 13 years of screen printing experience before setting up his own company. Prior to establishing a printing plant with his husband, Yvonne had worked in a bank for six years. Although there was no screen printing experience, Yvonne's work background brought her a very good business sense. At the beginning of the establishment of the company, Yvonne and his wife mainly produced point-of-sale images and posters for customers.
Just two years later, Desender had a new opportunity and shifted his focus to decal production. This was a wise decision and brought great rewards to Desender. Matt Jones, Intergraphics' chief financial officer, said: "Conrad believes that this transformation has had an important and far-reaching impact on the company's development. It not only brought success to Conrad, but also helped him determine the company's core business."
In the next few years, Intergraphics has made great progress through this transformation. They not only recruited four employees, but also introduced a Cameo semi-automatic press. By the end of the 1970s, the company had already had 15 employees and installed a semi-automatic press produced by Mueller Graphics.
The hot forging technology that emerged in the early seventies gave Desender the opportunity to provide leading products and services to the market. In 1977, he purchased Canada's first hot die-cutting machine.
Digital technology
Intergraphics purchased a SignTronic Digital Flat Paper Cutter in 1986 and entered digital production. Intergraphics is the second company to introduce this technology to Canada. Although the cost of this device is very high, it also proves once again that Desender's business philosophy of using new technology to create profits is very successful. In just a decade, Intergraphics' sales have reached $7 to $10 million.
The next step that Desender takes in the digital arena is to use software programs to improve enterprise management efficiency and productivity. They started using the enterprise information system (IBS) in 2002. The system can connect different processes together and simplify the data exchange process so that customer service representatives can formulate production tasks based on customers, processes, and delivery times. All employees involved in a job have access to the same information. Intergraphics Company achieved unprecedented sales of US$12 million that year and attracted many large customers, including manufacturers of buses, coaches and recreational vehicles, as well as oil companies and other companies interested in printing.
New factory, new equipment and new products
As the business grew steadily, Intergraphics moved to a larger factory in 2004. They attached great importance to the environmental protection of the factory and introduced ventilation, dust removal and page layout equipment to increase the efficiency of the work process.
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Figure 1: Intergraphs company's new 46,000 square foot facility.
In this new factory, there are both workshops and offices for sales, production planning and management personnel.
Desender purchased a M&R Conquest six-color disc drive press to fill the space in the new plant and handle more complex jobs. Many factors prompted Desender to make such decisions, such as: fierce competition, falling printing prices, and the depreciation of the dollar. Therefore, the company needed to find a way to increase production while reducing production costs. It is understood that 80% of Intergraphics's live jobs are produced by screen printers.
Jones said: “The significant decline in labor costs, the acceleration of production cycles and the reduction in production costs have enabled us to sell products at more competitive prices, increase production and reduce production time.â€
What is most proud of Desender is that Intergraphics is often the first company to introduce new products to the Canadian market. Therefore, it is not surprising that he is interested in printing labels (Figure 2) because there are many wineries in Canada. Desender purchased a Galaxy label printer that can reproduce colorful colors, exquisite details, and ideal depth of field - this is no other label printing device can do anyway. In addition, this printer can print patterns of various sizes and shapes on a wide range of materials.
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Figure 2: Labels produced by Intergraphics with screen printers
Dispensing is another technique that draws attention from Desender. Desender is very interested in three-dimensional fonts, logos, and badges, but he soon discovered that the technology he was looking for would have a serious impact on the environment. Intergraphics attaches great importance to environmental issues and hopes to use environmentally friendly production processes and materials. This means that Desender must find a way to replace the technology of plastic drop in order to produce a more environmentally friendly, stable and modern way. Quality products. After extensive investigation and research, Conrad finally found Dymoflex (Dynamic Molded Flexible Graphic) technology in 2005, and bought its right to use.
Dymoflex is an ecological technology that can produce traditional 2D logos and multicolor 3D badges. The badges produced with this technology can be used for contour surfaces as well as for automobiles, equipment, appliances and furniture used as advertising or promotional products. Although Intergraphics has invested heavily in Dymoflex technology, it turns out that this is also a wise decision. It is understood that Intergraphics is the only company in Canada that uses Dymoflex equipment.
Today, Intergraphics has become one of the largest decals and product labeling companies in Canada and has successfully expanded its business to North America and Europe. The company uses a number of innovative technologies to provide its customers with a range of products including: coverings, images on floor and crosswalks, window decals, magnetic signs, vehicles and fleet images, Dymoflex logos and fonts, wine labels , warning and information labels, stickers and double-sided decals, web and sheet-fed labels, advertising boards and fenders, etc.
Advertising boards produced by Intergraphics often appear in local hockey games and other international events, such as the Olympic Games, the Canadian Games, and international figure skating competitions.
In the workshop
The Intergraphics company's design department has six employees who use Apple Computer and software such as Adobe Illustrator, CorelDRAW, Macromedia Freehand, and Adobe Photoshop to process jobs. The division also features an Agfa Stingray 6300 image processor with a Kodak processor and the Roland Quadra F 540 large format exposure system. In the wire mesh preparation area, you will also see a Dane screen cleaner and purification equipment.
The production department has three large-format presses, including a Viking XLS, a Renegade XLS, and a Cameo.
In addition, you can find three digital printers from Roland, Océ and Muto. In screen printing, the company installed medium-sized presses from companies such as M&R, Argon, and Svecia. Other equipment included: a Super Primex pad printer, Dymoflex drop molding system, and a Galaxy press. In the area of ​​post-press processing, Intergraphics adopted Brause thermal die cutters of different specifications, Polar flat cutters, various laminators, washer foot presses, and D'Slugger film release liquids.
These tools allow Intergraphics to produce a wide range of products for customers in different markets. The body and hull advertisements/images (Figure 3) are Intergraphics' most important product.
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Figure 3: Intergraphics has printed a large number of images used in cars
Some jobs may require workers to print images for 13 panels on a trailer, but also to make the images on these panels consistent. Jones claims that this technique of printing continuous images on multiple panels is very challenging.
Adhere to lean production
Intergraphics is proud to be a member of the LEAN Consortium. The league holds a monthly meeting to allow members to exchange their opinions and provide them with training courses. Every member of the organization can visit other members’ factories and their
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