Finishing - Material Handling

BY CHRIS BAUER Although it may not be as flashy as a star-filled TV commercial during the last episode of "Survivor" or halftime of the Super Bowl, many companies are finding refuge from high advertising costs in a weakened economy by going a more traditional and cost-effective route—newspaper inserts. In a recent Wall Street Journal article, Livonia, MI-based Valassis Communications, a leading printer of coupons and newspaper inserts, reported it is reaping financial benefits from the slowing economy. As advertisers look for ways to lure customers into their stores with sales and other ways to save, Valassis is providing much of the printing of

BY ERIK CAGLE Imagine a superstore that sold all makes and models of commercial printing equipment—from prepress to press and finishing gadgets. Obviously, this store would be rather large, with freight trains taking the place of shopping carts, making it a tad impractical. But that would ruin our story line. Anyway, today is your lucky day. The store is having a CMYK-light special on finishing equipment, and there are collating systems galore to be had at the right price. You take the aisle 1,700 trolley and get off in front of a procession of collating systems looking very nice in their display boxes. Cost

LOMIRA, WI—Ferag Americas has installed its latest design in gathering/stitching/trimming systems in Quad/Graphics' plant here, marking the third such installation for Quad. The new system includes six log-fed feeders, which transport signatures to a rotary gathering drum, then to a shear cut trimmer. The high-speed Ferag gatherer/stitcher/trimmer was introduced to the North American market several years ago, with the installation of two 10-pocket units in Quad/Graphics facilities. Since then, Quad and Ferag have worked together to customize the system to meet Quad's needs. As a result, the existing units, as well as the new installation, will make it possible to change format sizes in a

BY CHERYL A. ADAMS As the "black hole" of the printing process, where no value is added to a product—only costs—and profits simply disappear, the automation of materials handling is the final frontier for reducing operating costs and increasing productivity. Several jetsetting printers are already light years ahead in battling the war over back-end inefficiency, where materials are handled excessively, being picked up and moved from here to there. Companies like R.R. Donnelley, World Color and Banta have invested in legions of robotics—armed with hydraulics, pneumatics, laser-guidance systems, sensors and scanners—to save time, space, manpower and money. However, many printers are hesitant to

CHALFONT, PA—At its recent open house, FMC Corp. demonstrated that automatic-guided vehicles (AGVs) are now being designed with the printing industry in mind. Technological advancements and streamlined, flexible designs are making AGVs more practical and more affordable for printing and publishing operations. Major newspapers such as the New York Times, Washington Post and Miami Herald have been pioneers in the use of AGVs for several years. Due to the nature and size of their business, back-end automation is a necessity rather than luxury. However, that is not usually the case in the printing industry, where businesses typically aren't the size of small cities and