With a weekly production of around one million softcover copies, the total circulation at Münchner Industriebuchbinderei Urban Meister GmbH – which has a workforce of 90 employees working in three shifts – remains relatively stable. However, the total amount comprises more and more varieties with correspondingly low single runs.

MIB Managing Director Christian Meister (center): “We have evaluated our new line intensively and carried out several tests.” Right: MIB Production Manager Richard Barth, left: Frank Häberle, Sales Representative Muller Martini Germany.

This is true of the mail order catalogs, publicity material, brochures and even telephone books MIB produces primarily for customers in southern Germany and neighboring countries. According to MIB Managing Director Christian Meister, “despite electronic competition, total circulation remains stable – albeit with noticeably increased variety.”

Frequent Changeovers
Even though a mail order catalog can achieve a circulation of 3.5 million at MIB, on average the jobs consist of around 100,000 copies and are sometimes made up of even less than 30,000 copies. This means even more changeovers are required, making high levels of automation and reliability increasingly important, particularly when it comes to the gathering machine. “Once you crack the gathering machine and infeed process, you've cracked the entire perfect binder line,” says Production Manager Richard Barth.

The new 3697 gathering machine from Muller Martini was brought into operation together with a Corona C15 S perfect binder as a replacement for one of two modular binder lines. This high-performance machine comes equipped with stream feeders, two card gluers and 28 stations, and has increased MIB's production by more than 20%. Christian Meister explains: “That matches our calculation basis as well as our benchmark. We arrived at this figure by conducting tests to ascertain performance values for typical products.”

The ZTM 3697, for which Muller Martini developed the world's first concave transport channel, was honored with the German printing industry's Innovation Award.

Longitudinal Feeding, Concave Channel, ASIR 3
This is all made possible by three innovations featured in the ZTM 3697, which enables a wide range of different signatures to be processed within the standard feeder (pull-out sections, for example) and which was honored with the German printing industry's Innovation Award.

ØThe first of these innovations is the longitudinal feeding that lends products greater stability. Richard Barth notes that “at higher speeds, the longitudinal feeding offers huge benefits, particularly with thin signatures such as inserts. This is because the most complex signature component always determines the production speed for the entire line.”

Ø Second is Muller Martini's concave transport channel, the world's first to be installed in a gathering machine. This bends the signatures slightly, giving them a stable shape for reliable transportation. This feature has also played a considerable role in speeding up start-up times in contrast to conventional gathering machines.

ØThe third innovation is the ASIR 3 automatic signature image recognition for optimum security in signature composition. “This is a good thing,” says Christian Meister. “Particularly the barcode recognition system. We are constantly encouraging our customers to print a barcode and are pleased to see that increasing numbers of printing houses are following our advice.”

“That's Twice as Quick”
The fact that the feeders can easily be exchanged without a crane, using a small trolley instead, and that the entire line can be controlled via a central commander (“thanks to the excellent overview we no longer have to run along the entire line whenever there's a minor problem”) also contributes to the increased productivity figures, according to Richard Barth. Christian Meister believes that losing the crane brings with it two additional benefits: “We save on investment costs and no longer run the risk of damaging something when we are changing the feeder.”