Packaging
Druckhaus Kaufmann improves its processing capability
Monday 26. May 2008 - Growing quality consciousness on the side of the customer, increasing unit costs at German production sites and ever smaller time windows: for a printing house to become a leading player it requires highly flexible, complete production chains to meet the demands of the industry. The roll printshop Druckhaus Kaufmann in Lahr in the federal state of Baden invested almost three million euros in a large adhesive binding line by Kolbus that is coupled with an inserting line by Hugo Beck.
A new bookbindery within two weeks? What some at the Kaufmann company considered a joke at first quickly turned into reality in light of 12 fully loaded trucks in front of the company gates. Step by step, the assembly teams conjured up a new plant system from the machinery-filled hall. For Karl-Heinz Becker, Technical Manager at Kaufmann, the new Publica adhesive binding line had cast its shadow long before: “Because the roll is the pacemaker in our company and because we do large capacities with our 48-page machine, the print finishing must be able to quickly process large volumes in terms of print run and size. And only two or three suppliers were able to provide that.”
“It was a great help that Kaufmann analysed the order structure of an entire year and provided the data to our project planning department,” said Michael Klopfer, Sales Manager for South Germany at Kolbus. The data made immediately clear that a fast adhesive binder was needed. Their openness resulted in a very short planning and assembly phase that paid off for Druckhaus Kaufmann.”
The new plant system produces 10,000 to 15,000 catalogues per hour. It consists of a collating machine with 18 stations, an adhesive binder with Hotmelt and PUR paste application, two cooling towers and an automatic 3-knife cutting machine. For Druckhaus Kaufmann, it opens up completely new horizons. “We produce high-quality catalogues for the travel industry, for furniture, fashion, mail-order and publishing companies. This kind of production not only requires sophisticated colour management but also sophisticated print finishing,” said Managing Shareholder Markus Kaufmann. Even if we commission the most capable bookbinder, they are not as close to the customer as we are. The danger is that in the end you get only average quality even for high end products. Now we can say: We do these things in-house as well. Thats added value from the point of view of the customer.”
In the end, the planning staff was concerned about the required flexibility and diversity of the plant. Since more and more publications want to increase their communication and advertising effect through add-ons and insert media, the inserting lines by Hugo Beck were needed here. With the plug and play technology, the plants can be used both for adhesive binding and wire stitching application. In addition, the dockers may be used alone or as subunits with the saddle stitcher. Due to module-controlled components, the manufacturer of this flexible peripherals technology had no trouble getting into the Kolbus concept. “The combination of Kolbus and Hugo Beck is working perfectly,” said Horst Heimann, General Manager of Hugo Beck. “The glued products run through a conveyor line with buffer spaces to the fully automatic insert line without requiring manual insertion of the product.” This keeps unit costs low. While print finishing work including set up and assembly are often among the most personnel-intensive departments, at the Kolbus plant some 800,000 catalogues were processed in 10 shifts, with only three machine operators plus 2 – 6 further colleagues per shift.
“It was impressive how fast the plant was put into operation. The team was motivated because it had asked for just this system and it was fun to realise this with Kolbus and Hugo Beck,” summarizes Karl-Heinz Becker.