Two New KBA Rapida 106 41" UV Presses On Order RFor Beyer Graphics ecognizing the need to increase its capacity and maintain its high quality production, Beyer Graphics, a New York pharmaceutical, cosmetic, and over-thecounter packaging supplier, has placed an order for two new KBA (Booth 213) Rapida 106 41-inch UV presses—an eight-color plus coater and a specially-configured nine-color press that is one of only a few in the U.S. This large $8.4 million capital investment is the firm’s first partnership with KBA. “The investment in these two new high-performance presses will drive our business even further and enhance our capabilities,” says Dan Beyer, President of Beyer Graphics. “We’ll be able to provide our customers with faster, more efficient, one-pass, higher quality work due to the fast press speeds and unique automation found on the presses. With this purchase, we are certainly differentiating ourselves from our competitors, attesting to our strength and commitment to our customers.” The first press being delivered to Beyer in November 2015 is a KBA Rapida 106 eight-color press with coater. After removal of the two current presses from another press manufacturer, Beyer will take delivery in February 2016 of a specially-designed Rapida 106 nine-color press. The latter has a unique configuration of eight printing units plus a coater then two drying units plus another printing unit followed by another coater and a 12' extended delivery. “We chose KBA because of its leadership experience and reputation in the packaging field and the ability to provide this custom-made nine-color press,” says Beyer. “Plus, we felt KBA had superior technology and its upfront service and support have been very valuable to us.” Since 1982, clients have counted on Beyer Graphics for creative packaging solutions. Founded in West Babylon, NY, by William Beyer, Sr. as a provider of apparel packaging solutions, Beyer Graphics has grown and evolved into one of the leading printing and packaging design companies specializing in the pharmaceutical, cosmetics and apparel industries. Beyer Graphics produces approximately 20,000,000 structural, custom and folding boxes and cartons monthly for over-the-counter (OTC) pharmaceutical, vitamin, supplement and cosmetics clients from 71,000-sqft, state-ofthe art facilities in Commack, NY. These facilities also provide electronic prepress services for apparel packaging solutions manufactured overseas via Beyer Graphics Far East Ltd., a Hong Kong subsidiary, and a partnership in Honduras, producing approximately seven million packages monthly. Today, pharmaceutical and cosmetics packaging comprise about 80% of the company’s operation and apparel packaging the remaining 20%. Peter the Printer’s PProfitable Portals eter Lineal of Plum Grove Printers in the Northwest suburbs of Chicago is a printer that thinks big. Lineal, known to his customers as “Peter the Printer,” empowers his customers to do the selling for him through the use of branded print and marketing portals. The online portals Lineal creates provide easy access for his customers to view and order their business critical items. Portals contain brochures, sales collateral, stationery, and items as unique as earshaped jar openers for a client that provides hearing aid equipment. Portals allow companies to empower their staff while allowing marketing to protect the brand and finance management to control costs. Lineal’s portal strategy is focused on creating private ordering websites for organizations like franchises, wholesalers, government entities, and large companies. The private websites Lineal creates for his customers maintain brand consistency not only on the products within the portal, but also on the portal itself, which is designed to compliment the customer’s online identity. It’s this branding that provides Lineal with the opportunity to show the value of the portal to his customer. When setting up a new portal, Lineal will find a friendly supporter within the organization and set it up for the supporter’s use. Once the supporter can express the efficiencies created by using the portal, they become a strong advocate for the portal within their company. Lineal then asks the advocate to help set up a meeting with the executive level decision maker. When the executive sees how the portal has created efficiencies for one person, it becomes very easy to see the value in rolling out the portal to everyone. The executive quickly sees the portal as a way to empower his or her team, grow the company, and grow the brand. With portals, Lineal says price objections are removed: “It’s so much freaking fun to sell these portals. You stop selling on price. You don’t even start the conversation with price. You start the conversation with, ‘Here’s what the portal will to do to make you more efficient.’ When your customer sees first-hand how the portal will save them so much time, they stop buying print on price alone.” Lineal’s strategy shows that being proactive with portals is a great way to help customers succeed, which then leads to increased success and sales opportunities for printers. Lineal says, “The restaurant down the block can sell us as many meals as we’re willing to eat, they just need to create the demand. We as printers don’t need to sit and and wait for the phone to ring to get a printing order. We need to create demand. We need to get out there and help our clients with ideas to grow their business. Portals do that.” “Peter the Printer” and Plum Grove Printers can be found on the web at www.PlumGrove- Printers.com. His portals are powered by Websites For Printers, a service of Marketing Ideas for Printers (Booth 457). KBA Rapida 106 41" UV press Do You Need a LEAN Assessment? The evolution of the graphic communications industry has led to more and more new services being offered that attract and retain clients. The foundation of any production environment must be solid prior to building an expanded portfolio of products and services on top. Frequently, when Konica Minolta (Booth 1913) partners with its clients to perform the Konica Minolta LEAN assessment, it finds multiple workflows that never converge. This fragments reporting, KPI measurement, and even operator tasks to the point where one operator is unable to work on multiple production lines due to these divergent workflows. Stepping beyond these obvious problems, there are often excessive touches and bottlenecks. These tend to occur at the point of interface between operator-to-machine, machine-to-machine, and operator-to-operator. Focusing on an overall reduction of touches, and specifically the reduction of waste and non-value added steps, provides an opportunity to build an ROI around any investments you may make towards a more unified workflow. One recent project involved the workflow for a graphics communications company predominantly focused on direct mail within a specific industry. Following an in-depth Konica Minolta LEAN assessment, project leaders were able to determine that as many as 92% of the steps involved in delivering current product to their clients were classified as Non-Value Added. Non-Value Added steps are those that are required to complete the job, but which do not necessarily appear on an invoice as a billable item. For example, this may simply be obvious items; the cuts required to trim postcards from the master sheet size you are imposing; QC steps to ensure that all documents are inserted properly; but they may also include job review cycles, with reproofing requirements, etc. Once Non-Value Added steps are determined, then Konica Minolta project leaders must determine other sources of waste that may be occurring. Wasted time and space (think Work In Process staging areas), wasted materials due to re-runs or overruns, wasted movement, excessive inventory requirements, and even wasted transportation (perhaps to outsource bindery or foil stamping vendors) all become targets for opportunity. At the core then of any workflow or process automation solution must be the comprehension of these wastes and touches in to a new flexible unified workflow. A unified view of workflow throughout an operation allows you to leverage all resources. This includes labor as well as the simplification of training, inspection, certification or standards compliance, and reporting. But perhaps the most important benefit of this approach is the ability to now build added services that are more easily delivered, at higher profitability, and with the process improvements achieved- potentially with existing equipment. Such is the case in the example shared above. Once a platform was implemented that targeted the Non-Value Added steps and waste areas, Konica Minolta was able to reduce overall cycle time by 1/3 to produce output from initial intake. In the process, volumes have increased over 30% due to improved efficiencies, and an entire new revenue stream was opened for this graphic communications company, which included email, text, and purl annuity streams. Let Konica Minolta partner with you to perform a LEAN assessment and build a solid foundation for growth of volumes and services. 60 September 13, 2015 | GRAPH EXPO Official Show Daily | PrintingNews.com
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