Increased Automation at Woman's Hospital

Though it had served the in-plant at Woman's Hospital well, the shop's 1990 model MBO T49 folder was beginning to show its age.

Dale Johnson, manager of Graphic Services at the Baton Rouge, LA, in-plant says the old folder did a great job over the years, but it was in need of new rollers and he was concerned that replacement parts would soon be hard to find.

In his search for a replacement, Johnson said he considered products from multiple companies, but was drawn toward Standard Horizon based on the positive experiences he has had with the company and the two different Horizon booklet makers that have had a home in the in-plant.

"I had experience with Horizon," Johnson explains. "I was familiar with their automation systems, and we already had an interface that works the same way on our booklet maker."

Johnson decided on the AFC-566A model folder. It was installed in the hospital's offsite in-plant in March of 2014. Though the new machine took some getting used to, Johnson says he and his staff of 13 quickly found the increased speed and automation would allow them to produce jobs faster.

Particularly, the gate plate was a boon for the bindery as some gate folds had to be completed by hand previously. The new folder also brought with it a knife fold and the ability to program jobs into the machine's memory.

Johnson says one of the jobs that has become much easier to produce on the new folder is a fitness schedule that the hospital's fitness center mails out. The schedule contains multiple folds, similar to a map fold, only smaller. Once the schedule is unfolded, it becomes the size of a poster.

"Our design department has started designing more stuff like this that can be opened up into a full poster, but yet be mailed at lower cost," Johnson says. "These folds are coming out of this new machine in half the time, and the setup's already there. We are not fighting the more difficult folds now. They have been simplified and we're probably running some of those difficult folds now at twice the speed."

To help get the word out about the new equipment, Johnson says the in-plant announces new additions to the shop to its top 15 customers, including those outside of the hospital, as the in-plant receives much of its work through insourcing. To show off the shop's new capabilities, Johnson provided designers with samples of the new gate fold.

Overall, Johnson says, he has been pleased with how the folder has increased Graphic Services' level of automation in the bindery department.

"The time was right for us to request some new automation, and we were hoping to take advantage of new technologies," he says. "We have realized some of that."