What if you could drive press uptime from 25 percent to 50 percent by changing the plate system you are using, and improve your quality to boot? Can it really be that simple?
At Colognia Press, a Czech printing house based in the heart of Bohemia along the banks of the Elbe River, the answer would be a resounding “Yes!”
A Plate Making Change
Images and data courtesy of Asahi Photoproducts
For many years, Colognia Press has been producing a variety of high-quality label and packaging products including self-adhesive labels, flexible packaging, shrink sleeves, tube laminates, tickets and a host of other products found in stores and shops all over the world. The company prides itself on staying current with the latest in technology to deliver the utmost in quality products and customer service.
But to deliver the utmost in quality products and customer service, Colognia realized there was a need to improve its Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE).
“With the flexo plates we were using, we had excessive stop times to clean or replace [them],” says Bohdan Holona, manager of Desktop Publishing, an in-house design studio at Colognia. “For long-run jobs, this meant half of the time printing the product was downtime. Even for shorter runs, we were not happy with the color consistency from the beginning to the end of the job. Changing or cleaning the plates can often negatively affect the quality of the product.”
Colognia changed from its existing solvent-based system to a water-washable plate making system and reported significant improvements.
“Our primary goal in changing our flexo plate system was to improve press availability,” Bohdan explains. He adds, “Very important for us as well is that all the results can be measured in real time. We do not want to work with assumptions; 100 percent accurate data is critical.”
Colognia press uses a tool from the company Plantyst. The solution, which was developed in direct cooperation with Colognia, is currently used in many other companies across the manufacturing spectrum. Plantyst allows anyone in a company to see any machine’s production efficiency in real time. The basis of the solution is automatic data collection in real time, using its own Internet of Things (loT) device, which can be connected to any production machine: from welders being able to record energy usage to printers or die cutters like the ones at Colognia. Data can be further augmented with additional information about the production operation (realized jobs, shifts, downtimes and annotations).
The data is then adapted and configured into graphs readily available and understandable for everyday usage (for both management and shop floor-level staff). Data and graphs can be accessed by any computing device, including smartphones, and is made available through a secured cloud service. Shop floor management then has accurate real-time data and can quickly and easily communicate on a daily basis with people in the production process.
Seeing Improvements with Water-Wash Plates
“[Figure 1] reflects a typical flexo run with our previous system, with press stops about every 2-km. [about 6,562-ft.] to clean or replace plates,” Bohdan explains. “This was unacceptable for us. Plus, we were very unhappy with the quality from the beginning to the end of the run. It simply was not consistent and resulted in further press stops to make adjustments.”
Once Colognia implemented the new plates and plate processor, the company says it experienced a dramatic change, both in uptime and quality. Bohdan says, “Our press uptime was 20 percent to 25 percent with our previous plates. Now we are seeing uptimes of 50 percent or more on most days. Plus, there is a noticeable improvement not only in quality, but in color gamut achieved as well. Not to mention, we were also able to hold very small print type throughout the run.” Figure 2 shows the same job as in Figure 1, after Colognia changed to the new plates. Without the need for periodical stops for plate cleaning, Colognia jobs run significantly faster.
“Now,” Bohdan says, “we can do almost any job, totaling scores of kilometers, without stopping. We even ran a 22-hour job with one set of plates, no stops and with very consistent quality from beginning to end.”
In terms of the benefit of being able to hold very small type, Bohdan cites one job from a very large customer that consists of small labels with a lot of text in tiny Asian script, only about 1-mm. (about 0.04-in.) in height. “Now with the new plates, this text is very legible,” he says. “This was something we could not do before, and this important customer is very, very happy. That’s good news for both of us.”
An Accelerated System
In terms of plate production processing speed, Bohdan reports that with Colognia’s previous system, new plates often took too much time to produce.
“Sometimes, it’s necessary to make some last-minute changes. Often when a customer would visit the plant for a press check and changes needed to be made, we wouldn’t have enough time. Before, it could take us up to four hours or more to make the changes.
“Now if changes need to be made,” he continues, “we can be up and running with new plates within two hours. This is a huge advantage: a customer is willing to wait for a short while with a cup of coffee in our lounge, but less likely to want to hang around all day, or even worse, be forced to make a return trip the next day. You can imagine how happy our accelerated process makes everybody. It saves significant time and money, and gets product to market much faster.”
And not only are the customers happier, but so are the press operators. “Their lives have been greatly improved,” Bohdan states. “There is much less stress. And they are even happier because the plates are compatible with any variety of substrate we use. It just takes small tests in the beginning to be able to achieve high-resolution output with plastics, paper, shrink sleeves, tube laminates, textured substrates and other materials we use. So, both plate making and makeready are much faster now than we have ever seen before. And we have shorter setup times between jobs—just a few minutes as opposed to an hour or more previously.”
Small Change, Big Return
Colognia is an example of how a reasonably small change in production process may have a significant effect on efficiency, throughput, waste and cost reduction, and of course, profitability. It demonstrates the importance of continually evaluating business and production processes to look for ways to improve.
And the company’s use of a real-time data capturing solution is also a critical element of its success. This gives everyone, from the press operator to the president, visibility into data that facilitates fact-based decision making. No more waiting until the job—or the month—is complete in order to make changes that can dramatically improve performance. Decisions can be taken quickly, and the entire business can be managed more effectively—from OEE to employee performance, to profitability by customer and more. In today’s fast-paced and highly competitive marketplace, this is a must.
About the Author: Dieter Niederstadt has been working for Asahi Photoproducts (Europe) since 2013, and is currently a technical marketing manager with 30 years of experience in the printing industry. He received a degree in graphic media study in 1992 from Watford College, completed a M.Phil./Ph.D. in relation to screening technologies applied to flexographic printing at the University of Hertfordshire in 1999, and previously worked at BASF Printing Systems in Germany in the department of applied flexo plate technologies—of which 1.5 years was spent working in South America as a regional technical manager for photopolymer plates.
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