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As appearing in The Seybold Report - Oct. 26, 2005

Article prepared by C. Clint Bolte, C. Clint Bolte & Associates, Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. For additional information please call 717-263-5768, fax 717-263-8945, or e-mail to clint@clintbolte.com.

PrintAction Seminar: Digitizing Postpress

Trade binders, general commercial printers, direct mail specialists, print distributors, consultants, journalists and suppliers were among the 65 attendees at the PrintAction seminar entitled "Time to Digitize The Bindery." Held convenient to the airport at the Toronto Board of Trade on September 1, the conference was timed to give attendees a preamble to some of the exciting equipment and technology announcements to be released in less than two weeks at the Print '05 & Converting '05 trade exposition in Chicago.

The keynote address highlighted the ground swell of new finishing technology that has been evident as early as DRUPA 1995 and was overwhelming at DRUPA 2004. Despite the worldwide printing recession of the new millennium, DRUPA showed the results of the continued commitment of 7-9% of revenues that suppliers had been pouring into research and development. The increasing proportion of the PIA/GATF Technology Awards being issued for postpress innovations confirms the proven practicality of this technology.

NAPL's Creating Value Survey completed in early 2005 qualified the strategic areas of expansion expected to be pursued by the 317 participants in the near future. Attendees to this conference and others have heard of the interest in digital everything plus fulfillment and mailing services for expansion in recent years. The clear objective is to distinguish you and your services from among the myriad of other vendors in your market.

It is so ironic that postpress and the finishing area per se does not seem to be designated among the specific arenas targeted for significant investment throughout the industry in this and similar surveys. On the other hand isolated printers see the light and are investing in these proven postpress tools as part of their strategic vision to complete a computer integrated manufacturing workflow. More and more of these leading edge practitioners seem to be reticent about sharing their favorable results out of fear of some of their closest competitors being copy cats.

Borrowing from MAN Roland's "life cycle management" concept, the total labor, spoilage (including uneven signature counts), spare parts, plant expense and consumables over ten years is often five times the original investment of the latest postpress equipment. This latest generation CIM-enabling resources will save 20+% of those life cycle costs. An AutoCutter replaces 2+ cutters in use from yesteryear while an auto-make-ready binder is more productive and replaces 2-3 older units plus creating opportunity capacity.

Heidelberg's Vice President Postpress Product Management, Ralph Pasquariello, described the 40+% make ready savings resulting from the servo motor integration on the 42 gap adjustments required for a new 4/4/4 folder roller configuration. Such an automated folder can switch over from "an 8-page signature to an accordion fold map in 60 seconds." Automated cutters have documented make-ready savings of 55% while autostitchers lop off at least 50% of the old make-ready times.

He remarked that many printers investing in the latest bindery technology are "spending more clock time moving skids away from and into pocket feeder position" than the complete automated change over of one job to the next. Some printers might think that this limits the actual ROI that should be realized. Other printers are aggressively selling the reality of most signature products having not one but two deadlines. The first is an urgent requirement for office copies or advance copies and the second is the deadline for entry into the Postal stream.

Printers with old legacy binders treat both of these deadlines as the same date since they don't even think about a separate make ready simply for 25 advance copies. Smart printers with automated stitchers and binders have a small hand truck with isolated stacks of 20-30 signatures, or whatever is dictated for the advance copy order. While partial skids from the just completed job are being moved out of the way, the advance copy person wheels in the hand truck and with the touch of a button literally sets up the equipment for a finishing run of only 30 advance copies. Again depending upon the similarity of finishing specifications, e.g., trim size, pocket count needed, even two advance copy jobs can be run before the next full bore job has its full skids moved into position.

Other signature (magazine or catalog) printers actually schedule the automated stitcher, including a break-in on an existing job if need be, to run advance copies the last hour of each day before the late afternoon courier is due to make its final run to clients' offices or UPS/FedEx pick ups. The actual jobs are scheduled to be run on the second or third shift or even a day or two in the future.

Ralph facilitated a panel comprised of full service printers and trade binders. When asked what plans his firm has for implementing the full integration of CIP3/4 data into the bindery, Mark Fortier, Executive Vice President of the full service PLM Group in Markham Ontario said, "We are monitoring (the technology) closely and looking to specific applications." A full bore transition may be quite challenging as "we're not sure what IT infrastructure (in the bindery) might be required."

When asked what future strategic growth plans they had, Brian Gagnon, President of Tri-City Trade Bindery, expects to "concentrate on more specialty finishing while continuing to develop strategic alliances with printer clients."

Escalating labor rates and limited skilled labor was a concern. Gagnon commented, "All key operators are being cross trained. No longer are there dedicated cutter or folder operators. This is resulting in more sophisticated skills and (therefore) more key operators are being paid at pressmen (wage) level." Bob Smith, General Manager of Battle Field, remarked, "It is difficult to get part time help in many locations." Fortier added, "More formal apprenticeship programs are needed (so that) competitors won't keep pirating (skilled) people from one another."

Gary Hughes, President of Muller Martini Canada, suggested that the leading finishing operations of the future will have management team skills and commitment to a number of manufacturing excellence precepts proven outside the printing industries. These include, though are not limited to, total equipment productivity (TEP), "kaizen" or continuous improvement, predictive maintenance programs (PMP), statistical process control (SPC) and just in time (JIT) manufacturing. JIT will include process-mapping techniques, which result in a quantified capacity plan, bottleneck analysis and work-in-process (WIP) minimization. While accounts may consider inventory to be an asset on the balance sheet, lean manufacturing enterprises know that bulging pockets of WIP is not good.

Hughes offered the TEP model being followed by the Saturn automobile plant. The measure of total equipment productivity is the result of multiplying availability, productivity and quality indexes as illustrated by this formula:

Availability X Productivity X Quality= TEP
80% X 85% X 98% = 67%

Saturn considers this 67% to be world class manufacturing performance.

One of the critical reminders offered by Mr. Hughes was that the building should be built to accommodate the work cell. Or stated another way the ideal work cell layout should not be compromised for an inflexible building. A prime example was a creative tandem designed pair of automated saddle stitchers. Two stitchers were so located in tandem that they could be operated totally independent of one another. And yet for this particular client when all 15 pockets were needed for a single title they could be so integrated to achieve this expansion without a double collection or pre-collection stage. The key is that the finishing area had to be large enough without interfering load-bearing pillars to accommodate the tandem design.

Mr. Hughes reiterated the frustration experienced by some investing in the automated assisted make ready stitchers as, "If material movement takes 30 minutes and the entire automated make ready takes only 25 minutes, the potential ROI is reduced" by that incremental 5 minutes because the job is not ready to run.

The afternoon was dedicated to discussions of the dynamics of information fulfillment and mailing service operations and how these value-added services meld well with finishing and particularly digital finishing operations. These were of particular interest to mailing houses that are increasing their amount of volume exported to the United States.

The seminar concluded with presentations by the seminar sponsors of product offerings and equipment configurations to be shown at the upcoming Print '05 & Converting '05 international trade show in Chicago September 9-15.

Article prepared by C. Clint Bolte, C. Clint Bolte & Associates, Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. For additional information please call 717-263-5768, fax 717-263-8945, or e-mail to clint@clintbolte.com.