Envelope system allows inplant to develop business

Print Management, the in-house print facility for Leeds City Council in the UK has installed a KAS Mailmaster Compact enveloping machine as part of a business development programme.

The effect of the investment has been such that during the last year as Print Management has upgraded the department, print orders have increased by 24 per cent.

The unit's operations manager, Martin Race, was faced with a challenge to transform the facility with a customer focussed service, installing up-to-date equipment and introducing new initiatives to improve the unit's competitive ability compared with external printers.

At the same time it was decided to change the unit's name from City Print to Print Management, which better reflected its approach to the management of print workflows and the way that it liaises with customers to ensure that the service works alongside them at all times.

Having played a significant role in developing the in-house mail handling facility, it was inevitable that the print management operation was realigned to meet the gap between the mail room service just handling mail, and capture document production front end.

Martin Race explained: 'We planned to introduce a one stop shop for all our customers' requirements, which made mailing and fulfilment a priority.

We wanted to offer this added value service at the production stage, so that we could take a whole job from repro to print, finishing and despatch, saving our customers turn-around time and the need to send work to more than one place.

Leeds City Council has a mailroom in the centre of the city to handle day-to-day post but Print Management needed a more robust folding and inserting machine to process larger volume mailings with a wide range of inserts including booklets.

Patrick Whitworth, print manager at Print Management, said: 'Initially we were unsure of what the market offered and what our specific needs would be.

We first saw the KAS Mailmaster compact in operation at Kirklees Council and were impressed by its performance and ease of operation.

The Mailmaster C4 Compact is a production folding and inserting machine that takes up a relatively small footprint, which handles envelopes from DL to C4 size.

Print Management ordered the fixed configuration of the system, comprising a sheet feeder folder, two insert feeders and a hand feed position.

An optional additional feeder and OMR, 1D or 2D Barcode reading are also available.

The Compact C4 operates at speeds up to 5,000 envelopes an hour, inserting documentation up to 12mm thick into a C4 envelope, with a duty cycle of over 500,000 a month.

Whitworth added: 'We liked its versatility of the Mailmaster Compact, particularly the way it batched a number of documents together for insertion into an envelope.

Sometimes we send up to four documents in one envelope.

As well as being robustly built and easy to set up, it's ideal for our type of business and represents good value for money.

As we process a lot of C5 documents, we have the Compact set for C5 but it only takes a few minutes to change it over to handle C4.

If we have a long run we fill two insert stations with the same document to help us keep up with it.

As one station empties, the Compact feeds documents from the second station while we fill up the first.

Print Management has also found that the Mailmaster Compact can process a wide range of stocks that would have been impossible before.

Continued Whitworth: 'Other machines that we saw weren't able to do this, which was another of its major benefits.

In fact, one of the first fulfilment jobs that we brought back in-house was the annual mailing of the wheelie bin stickers.

Theses shiny weatherproof labels were no problem at all for the Compact to insert.

Martin Race commented: 'Customer confidence has improved significantly.

We know that there is still a lot of work being outsourced to external printers but we are optimistic that as we build confidence the client base within the council will see what we can achieve, and more jobs, including fulfilment, will be coming our way.

And he added: 'Our experience with KAS Paper Systems has been very refreshing.

It's rare that you find an engineer involved in the installation who has so much knowledge and is passionate about how well engineered and adaptable the equipment is.

From that moment on not only did I know we had got the right equipment but I knew our investment was consolidated by the quality of service that KAS can provide in terms of pre-sales and after sales support, and, if called upon, response times.

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