Modernizing An Age-old In-plant

CHERYL BUXTON is pretty up-front about the fact that some of the equipment in her Topeka, Kan., in-plant is older than the employees who run it.

“As someone said, ‘you’ve got to start getting rid of some of your World War II equipment, Cheryl,’ ” she laughs.

In June, the director of the Division of Printing and Surplus Property for the state of Kansas took this advice to heart and replaced a 30-year-old stitcher with a state-of-the-art Muller Martini Bravo-Plus saddle stitcher with AMRYS (automatic makeready system). This is just the latest of several equipment upgrades for this century-and-a-half-old in-plant, spanning the past couple years.

Twice as fast as the shop’s old stitcher, the BravoPlus produces saddle-stitched work at 11,000 books per hour, Buxton says. Setup time is incredibly fast, she adds, thanks to the AMRYS. Operators can now make quick changeovers to meet deadlines that previously required overtime to complete.

“The speed of this machine [makes it] more productive than any saddle stitcher I have operated,” attests Danny Terry, senior bindery operator. “This machine runs smoothly and quietly even at very high speeds.”

The new stitcher can store up to 1,000 jobs, Buxton adds, which is great because “we do a lot of repetitive jobs.”

The Division of Printing produces numerous saddle-stitched booklets in a variety of formats for agencies across Kansas. Run lengths range from a few thousand up to 400,000. The stitcher can also double as a collator for coil bound jobs when run lengths are long. Being able to gather and trim three sides in one pass saves time and eliminates a lot of the hand work previously required. Buxton estimates that the new stitcher will pay for itself in cost savings before it is two years old.

A Century and a Half of Printing

In business for over 150 years, the Division of Printing is a self-funded operation with 47 employees. Buxton was hired in 2004 and her goal has been to improve the in-plant’s credibility with customers, gain new business and bring the division into into the 21st century. To that end, she and her managers put together a five-year business plan, and analyzed the current equipment, people, processes, jobs, revenues and expenses.

One of the in-plant’s first purchases was a 32˝ Herzog + Heymann M7 folder, which gave the Division of Printing the ability to fold the 28x40˝ state map accordion style, a job that was previously outsourced. The shop also purchased a used four-color 28x40˝ Heidelberg Speedmaster 102VP 4 perfecting press, which allowed it to keep more four-color work in-house, while cutting run times, reducing spoilage, decreasing overtime and increasing revenues. Last fall the in-plant acquired a Xerox Nuvera 288, which it uses to print legislative session work. It also added a Perfecta SD75F three-knife trimmer, which has improved turnaround time on perfect-bound jobs.

The biggest benefit of all this new equipment, though, may be the boost in morale it has brought for employees.

“They see that we’ve invested in the in-plant,” she says. “They are just happy, happy, happy.” IPG