Rapida presses' Flying Jobchange print on demand

The Euradius Group in The Netherlands will counter competition by buying four Rapida 106 press lines from KBA featuring KBA's new Flying Jobchange automation module at Euradius subsidiary Ten Brink.

KBA claims that it is unique in offering flying plate changing in sheetfed offset print, and the associated productivity-boosting options for short-run production.

The Euradius Group is active in many sectors of the graphic arts market.

Ten Brink and Hooiberg Haasbeek, one of the companies that relocated to Ten Brink, print books, magazines and business stationery under a single roof in Meppel, while Printforce in Alphen aan den Rijn delivers a range of other printed products.

Euradius also has operations outside the Netherlands, for example Cross Media Solutions and Sturtz in Germany and Eurasia in the Middle East.

This major capital investment was the final component in a project that united four printing plants under a single roof.

According to the newspaper, the icing on the cake was the fact that the company had invested heavily in new press technology: four identical Rapida 106 four-colour perfectors for two-backing-two, with Drivetronic SPC dedicated plate-cylinder drives, Drivetronic Plate-Ident pre-registration and a software package for switching flying plate changes to printing units one and three, while a monochrome perfecting job is printed on units two and four, then vice versa for the next job.

The presses are the first in the country to feature this capability.

HooibergHaasbeek specialises in literary books and Ed van den Ham, the company's deputy sales director, said: 'Books are generally impulse buys, and that impulse is stimulated by seeing the book in the shop and leafing through the pages.

A book standing on a shelf or lying on a pallet in a warehouse is dead.

In fact a book on a pallet is not just dead - it's costing money.

Editions have been declining for years, and production times have been steadily shrinking.

You can only afford to maintain a large stock of books if you produce a bestseller from time to time.

Publishers today prefer to print short runs rather than run the risk of having a deadweight of books lying around, he explained.

Euradius opted for automation of the production chain and the installation of four KBA Rapida 106 perfector presses featuring dedicated plate-cylinder drives and a flying job change capability (KBA Flying JobChange).

With Flying JobChange, the plates on the printing units not required for the current production run can be changed and the press made ready for the next job rapidly and more or less automatically, with virtually no down time.

This substantially enhances net press productivity.

Managing director of the company, Rene de Heij, said: 'Our press fleet has enabled us to corner 20 per cent of the market.

The Rapidas' cutting-edge technology is a major advantage, since it allows us to address a market shift towards shorter print runs and faster turn-around.

Thanks to the new flying job change capability we can match output to demand.

Our press downtimes are virtually zero.

In the months preceding the press installation De Heij and his team had to resolve a number of issues.

They had to decide how to integrate four disparate companies, each with its own culture, into one healthy enterprise, as well as deciding how to organise the new logistics system while keeping disrupting to the production routine at a minimum.

The pre-press department has four 70/100 CTP platesetters.

They are needed to maintain an uninterrupted supply of plates to the fleet of nine KBA presses, which have a total of 45 units.

With so many plates being changed at such frequent intervals, mistakes can easily occur, said KBA.

To eliminate this risk each plate is automatically furnished with its own individual data matrix code prior to leaving pre-press.

With the aid of this code - KBA calls the module it has developed internally Plate-Ident - the system recognises whether the plate is new or used and to which printing unit it has been assigned.

The module also checks whether the correct language version is being loaded.

Operations manager Hans Kleijn had his hands full while the presses were being installed and explained: 'We are working on an integrated production chain that starts at order reception and ends when the contract has been completed and the goods delivered.

If you're printing on an industrial scale, the individual links in the production chain must be 100 per cent co-ordinated, and this demands highly sophisticated systems.

We connected KBA's Logotronic Professional software directly to our management information system.

So on my computer I can view all the relevant management, production, purchasing and logistics data in real time.

We have automated wherever possible.

Ink feed to the KBA presses, for example, is via a central pumping system.

The Rapidas were erected in pairs, side by side, with a raised platform in between so that the operators can move to and fro.

This enables three minders to operate two presses.

The press crews in Meppel work in three shifts, and there are plans to expand this to continuous production.

At present Ten Brink is training 23 press operators to handle the new presses.

Rene de Heij said: 'In our line of business, job losses are inevitable.

For those affected this is a bitter pill to swallow, but at the same time everyone is well aware that, however tough this may be, we simply have no other choice.

The only way to maintain profitability is to streamline operations and invest in the most advanced equipment and processes on the market.

This is what we have done in Meppel.

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