The Value of Confidence—and the Cost of Losing It.

“Tim, we have a serious problem?  The Hennison book is messed up. They found a box with forms 5 and 6 reversed!  The entire job needs to be inspected.”

 

If you have been in the game long enough, odds are you have been here. And what transpires are such concerns as “Who signed-off on the check copy? Who was running the line that day? How much time do we have to fix this? What will be the COST to reprint and bind?”

 

Just the other day I was talking with a customer who told me that losing a key customer’s confidence cost them over a year’s worth of contract business. A year after the mistake this key customer finally decided to revisit the opportunity of doing business together again. In this very real situation, the COST to reprint and bind was far greater than ever anticipated.

 

It’s then that I talked with them about ASIR3, Muller Martini’s Automatic Signature Image and Barcode Recognition System that ensures that only correctly assembled magazines, books, and brochures reach readers. It’s like an insurance policy, safeguarding your customer relationships and future business opportunities, as well as protecting your hard-working employees when heavy workloads and long shifts can result in unintentional mistakes that can severely compromise once solid customer relationships.

 

Remember the Hennison book where forms 5 and 6 were loaded in reversed positions?

This is where ASIR3 featuring Muller Martini’s patented ASIRcode makes all the difference and represents your highest level of insurance. With ASIRcode your pre-press department embeds coded logic into the barcodes when configuring the job with “Smart Marks Tools.”  When embedding the logic, there are three key items coded:

  1. A unique job ID. Not necessarily your in-house job number, but rather a special job ID that can be checked to verify that all components on the gatherer belong to that job set.
  2. Form position.  Each form is coded with its unique position on the gatherer:  Form 1 of 12, Form 2 of 12, etc.
  3. End of book mark, which when detected tells ASIR3 that the book block is complete.

 

At makeready the camera scans the barcode for ASIRcode logic. Should anything be amiss, it will either stop your machine or reject the bad book through the gatherer reject, depending on how your default settings are configured.

 

Naturally, there’s more to learn, including ASIR3 advancements and the ability to use ASIR3 in combination modes of scanning for ASIRcode along with a customer furnished insert without a barcode, etc. But, probably your greatest ASIR3 takeaway is this: “Money can’t buy back your customer’s confidence, but it can buy ASIR3 to dramatically reduce the risk of ever losing it!”

 

Don’t hesitate to give your Muller Martini “Insurance Rep” a call to understand more about the benefits of ASIR3. We would be happy to help put a policy in place to protect you and your future opportunities.

 

Learn More About Rich Allart

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *


The reCAPTCHA verification period has expired. Please reload the page.