Oklahoma Shop Sets a Standard in the Bindery

By Chris Bauer

Tina Gray saw the end of a lease agreement for an older Duplo saddle stitcher as an opportunity to bring more automated technology into her in-plant.

Gray, print shop manager of the in-plant serving the Oklahoma Department of Human Services (OKDHS) in Oklahoma City, decided last spring to install a four-tower Standard Horizon VAC collator system in-line with a Standard Horizon StitchLiner 5500 saddle stitching system with integrated three-knife trimming.

"With this equipment, there was no more setting anything by hand on the side guides," she says. "Everything is automated now, and that was a big factor for the operators; they really like the automated features."

Gray points out that the 10-employee OKDHS in-plant does a lot of scoring, especially on runs of 25,000 or longer. The StitchLiner allows operators to score without doing any stitching, which saves the staff from hand-feeding work into a smaller machine.

"Again, it's automated and saves us a lot of time," Gray says. "Plus the three-knife trimmer on the machine saves us a ton of man hours on cutting and getting jobs prepped for binding."

Cost justifying the StitchLiner was not a problem, Gray says. The OKDHS administration knew the in-plant needed to upgrade its bindery, and since the lease on the old stitcher was expiring, this was the perfect opportunity.

Because the shop already had a Standard bookletmaker and collator, Gray was comfortable with the decision to add another Standard machine.

"Plus, with all the cutting that we do, it was easy to justify that it would be put to good use," Gray adds.

The OKDHS in-plant is home to a pair of two-color A.B.Dick 9995 presses, a four-color Ryobi 3404 EDI press, a two-color Halm Jet Press Plus XL envelope press, a two-color Multilith 4620 XE press and a Xerox DocuColor 8000.

OKDHS has an in-house graphic design department right next door to the in-plant, and the departments work together to design jobs that will not have to be sent to outside vendors.

"We try to keep everything in-house," Gray concludes. "And we try to bring in equipment which will allow us to do that." IPG