Kolbus – The media convergence specialists
Kai Buntemeyer, Kolbus GmbH Chief Executive:
"For Kolbus, it was always a given that a printed product had no justification to be excessively expensive just because it was "digital" or "on demand". Therefore, we always stood by with solutions that put efficiency first. It never came to our mind that consumers would accept shoddy workmanship for the privilege of joining the digital age. Therefore, we never offered solutions that would have short-changed our customers on quality.
With knowledge gained through our painstaking and unbiased analysis and patience that 110 years in the binding industry taught us, we have become a supplier of choice for some of the most visionary and strongest participants in the modern media and printing industries.
A fine example is the photo book business. With no human intervention between the mobile phone camera and the finished book, it represents media convergence par excellence. Flawless organisation from sales through to the production floor is essential for a profitable operation in this fast-growing field. In this environment, the bindery has to go unnoticed. And the binding machine supplier has to understand this and, at the same time, accept that total cost of ownership cannot be anything but highly competitive."
Kolbus develop zero makeready
Robert Flather, Kolbus UK Managing Director:
"With digital presses requiring zero make-ready the bindery must obviously follow suit to maintain a constant workflow. Kolbus manufacturing techniques have concentrated on this end, without compromising profitability or quality.
As you can see it is now possible to produce a hard back book in runs of a single copy. The Kolbus binder, casemaker and casing in line can produce a single hardback book, matching the press output and with zero makeready required.
Put simply, so long as the binder is communicating upstream through the production process it can automatically adjust to create the desired product. This is an area of development that Kolbus have been working on for some considerable time and has resulted in a flexible set of finishing solutions now being offered. The Digimedia show in Dusseldorf from 7th – 9th April will provide a forum for Kolbus to demonstrate the very latest of these solutions."
Case study – The CEWE Photobook
CeWe Color is Europe's largest photo finisher with headquarters in Oldenberg, Germany, and employing 3,000 staff at 19 further production locations throughout Europe. They now successfully market the CEWE Photo Book offering customers various forms of processing their image data, from photo booklets and brochures to high end hardcover products.
Demand for the CeWe photobook products increased so rapidly that they needed to incorporate fully automatic manufacture of hardcover photobooks. Using standardised formats with predetermined numbers of pages they provide customers with a software programme with easy to use form and design variations. These can be used by customers with no previous design experience who then order the finished product through CeWe sales partners.
For their launch into hardcover book production CeWe chose to install a Kolbus BF 512 book production line with CoPilot operator guidance for automatic adjustments via one touchscreen monitor. Products are trimmed on a Kolbus HD 130 three knife trimmer and a Kolbus DA 260 casemaker plays a major role in the success of single copy photobook production.
Photobook orders are bundled into batches to optimise production. Hardcover products are bundled according to format and length but a typically they would still average 50 – 100 adjustments per day, achieved with absolutely no waste even with single products being produced. Format changes on the BF 512 can be achieved in around two minutes, format changes on the DA 260 casemaker take only five minutes.