Country Pines Invests in Efficiency Boosting HEIDELBERG Prepress Automation
Country Pines, a family-owned full-service commercial printing company in Shoals, Indiana, recently installed a new Suprasetter 106 CtP from HEIDELBERG. The new Suprasetter, equipped with automated inline plate bending and Auto Pallet Loader, coupled with Prinect Production Manager, has helped increase the company’s productivity and improve throughput.
On-Demand Plating
Rather than follow market trends, Country Pines is a company that continues to evolve based on the needs of its customers. According to Chad Haycox, President of Country Pines, “Our philosophy has always been: how do we best serve our customers and how do we deliver in a way that they continue coming back?” The company, who specializes in book production for schools, churches, religious organizations, and other businesses, was previously outsourcing its 40” offset work to a partner company. Needing to keep up with customer demand, Country Pines decided to bring all production in-house by increasing plant size and adding a Speedmaster SX 102 from HEIDELBERG.
Today, Country Pines runs three shifts on its eight-color SX 102 in addition to its Speedmaster SX 74 and five Versafire digital presses. To aid with throughput, the company recently installed a highly automated Suprasetter CtP along with Prinect Production Manager – integrating all aspects of its production. Country Pines’s new Suprasetter includes efficiency boosting features such as inline plate punching and bending in addition to Auto Pallet Loader, which loads printing plates straight from a transport pallet. For top-level productivity, all sequences such as loading, imaging, punching, developing, beveling and job-dependent unloading are carried out continuously without manual intervention. “I essentially have no one manning my plateroom,” said Haycox. “In an environment where labor is harder and harder to find, these automated features are as much of a key player in the success of the system as the machine and lasers themselves.”
Additional automation from Prinect Production Manager has further streamlined Country Pines’s prepress production. With Prinect’s “Smart Automation” and “Ganging,” the company has switched to what Haycox describes as “on demand” plating. “I can wait until right before my press run to plate a job,” he said, “so if a last-minute job comes in, Prinect automatically finds the best way to fill my press sheet or even shift to a different sheet size to maximize efficiency.” With each step of the production process connected via Prinect, the workflow automatically triggers any job changes to the platesetter and print queue, eliminating the need to make new plates or unnecessary press runs – resulting in labor and material savings.
Complete Integration
Even prior to file preparation, Country Pines’s efficiency goals begin as early as the quotation phase. The company uses Prinect to create a “rules” based workflow to set parameters to define various standard products that the company produces. These rules help to simplify jobs for estimators and CSRs and can eliminate costly errors downstream. “Any one of my CSRs or estimators can select a preloaded job, and I know it’s going be right. I don’t have to worry about someone inputting an incorrect folding scheme that isn’t caught until the job is almost complete,” said Haycox.
Additionally, thanks to Prinect integration across its Speedmaster and Versafire platforms, including the SX 102 which is equipped with Prinect Inpress Control, Country Pines can produce repeatable and accurate color – a quality, according to Haycox, that sets his company apart from many of his competitors. “I have many jobs with crossovers, so if the color is wrong, your customers will tell you,” he said. “In some cases, I have crossovers produced not only on different machines but with different technologies – offset and digital – and they just they match beautifully.”
Later this summer, Country Pines will begin implementation of Prinect Business Manager MIS. “In principle, I dislike people expecting computer systems to think for them,” said Haycox, “but Business Manager really simplifies a lot of aspects of the business. And in a world with less hands to help, this type of technology is needed.” The company’s investment in Business Manager demonstrates its full commitment to the HEIDELBERG product portfolio as it also uses Saphira Consumables and POLAR and Stahlfolder finishing solutions. “All of my decisions come down to how can I best serve my customers,” said Haycox. “I have clients that initially come to us for hardcover bookbinding but end up turning the whole project over to us, turnkey. They know the components will be engineered correctly with the highest quality. That’s in part because of our end-to-end HEIDELBERG solutions. Their whole suite of products is completely integrated, and each component hands off seamlessly to the next.”
The preceding press release was provided by a company unaffiliated with Printing Impressions. The views expressed within do not directly reflect the thoughts or opinions of Printing Impressions.
