A Traditional Bindery Manufacturer Faces the Future

This is a story that's no doubt been repeated more than once. You're a company with a long and glorious tradition of manufacturing first-class finishing equipment. You've had a terrific run through the 70's, 80's, 90's and into the 21st century. But in the last four years, things have shifted.

The order stream that was usual in the past has slowly dried up. Face it, lots of your customers are simply no longer there. In the meantime, you've noticed all of the action in digital, with multi-million dollar digital presses seemingly landing all over the place. What to do?

Well, if you're MBO America, you embrace the digital revolution! MBO has long been renowned as one of the premier folder manufacturers. But seeing the digital tidal wave approaching, they decided to surf it and launched MBO Digital. MBO Digital was born from the Ehret digital web finishing systems that MBO acquired a few years ago. The base platform of a high-speed, high-precision web unwinder and sheeter was used as the starting point to provide a modular digital finishing system solution.

Starting from the MBO unwinder and web sheeter, a printer could connect a variety of sheet transfer, folding, and cutting and delivery units to produce a complete, finished direct mail piece from the roll. MBO does manufacture a wide array of specialty modules, including plow fold stations, tip-on units, inkjet addressing stations, and stackers. Some of the specialty units are Herzog + Heymann modules. H+H is part of the MBO group. This concept was put into practice at South Dakota printer Fenske Media.

Using the MBO Digital roll unwinder and cutter, Fenske has a complete "parking lot" of additional MBO modules that can quickly be connected to the sheeter to make up a complete finishing system according to the format of the finished piece. The goal is a single operator system where no additional "touches" are needed once the digital roll leaves the printer. The complete case study can be found on MBO America's website at www.mboamerica.com/fenske/- e

The good news here is that MBO America has realized where a large part of their future lies, and they've been fortunate enough to have the resources to take advantage of it.