Legacy bindery equipment requires operators with deep mechanical and bookbinding knowledge and job-specific information to realize the highest production speeds. These skills are hard to find and develop in today’s labor market. Müller Martini’s newest user interfaces and barcode touchless workflow simplify equipment operation by minimizing touchpoints and automating repetitive setup activities. Our Setup Wizards and 2D barcode technologies are key features that reduce operator skill requirements and broaden your available labor market.
Set Up Wizards
For over 25 years, Müller Martini has designed equipment with Programmable Logic Controllers (PLC) interfaces to facilitate machine operation and job changeover. Once a novelty in the bindery, PLC user interfaces are a core differentiator for profitable operations. Embedded in all of our control designs is the Müller Martini Setup Wizard, which fuses our decades of knowledge and experience into a simple and sophisticated user interface. A powerful answer to today’s labor market challenges, Setup Wizards afford novice operators a standard and repeatable sequence of steps that simplify and enforce best practices for machine changeover and operation. This means a smaller skill set for prospective operators and reduced training burden for new hire. More experienced staff will also appreciate the ability to create setup templates to automate changeovers for repeat jobs and common size formats.
2D Barcoding
As a charter member of the CIP3 consortium, Müller Martini played a central role in the development of the JDF standards used across the industry as a common language for job definition and transfer among devices in the print shop. We have extended this technology with the use of 2D barcodes, which allow you to:
- Automate machine setup, product integrity, and linkage across processes and machines.
- Encrypt your job information upfront for each job—varying trim sizes, production runs, personalized content—and the machine takes care of the rest, thus minimizing costly and time-consuming human intervention and error.
- Eliminate the need for exchange protocols, format differences, databases, servers, or even internet connection. All the information needed to process the job is printed on each book to automate all downstream processes.
Case Study:
Linemark, Inc., a commercial book manufacturer in Upper Marlboro, MD, recently purchased new finishing equipment from Müller Martini to increase their efficiency for production of their photobooks, yearbooks, and commercial hardcover and softcover books. Together, we collaborated to develop a customized barcode protocol to automate several manual tasks:
- Assure correct cover match to book blocks in the Vareo Binder
- Provide book-specific information for in-line trimming of books of arbitrary size in the Infinitrim trimmer
- Scan and reprint barcode information on blank endsheets
- Recall common size templates for the new Müller Martini EMP casing in machine
- Assure correct case match to each book block
So, if you’re thinking of transitioning to a less “hands-on” approach, contact me to discuss how touchless workflow can improve your shop’s bottom line and productivity.