Finishing 4.0 At Its Best

Xerox GmbH in Norderstedt near Hamburg produces its numerous ultra-short runs using two Vareo/InfiniTrim inline duos. Muller Martini has honored the German book-on-demand pioneer with the Finishing 4.0 Award for its highly automated production.

More than half of the total volume of books produced by Xerox GmbH has a print run of less than ten copies per title. Seventy percent of those are runs of one or two copies. “You’re a prime example of a company that produces its products in line with Muller Martini’s Finishing 4.0 philosophy,” said Bernd Sauter, Managing Director of Muller Martini Germany, as he presented the Finishing 4.0 Award to Rolf Bräuer. “The award will be put in pride of place at our company,” said the visibly proud Xerox Managing Director.

When Xerox GmbH, which operates exclusively for the neighboring company BoD™, switched from single-sheet production to digital inkjet web printing in 2014, it represented a quantum leap in its production process. As Rolf Bräuer explains, that has resulted in a radical change to the Service Level Agreement (SLA). “Previously we had no transparency in terms of meeting targets. But now we’re able to make the monitoring options transparent for customers and detail the scope of service and response time to orders. We are now in an entirely digital world.”

The ability of Xerox GmbH to produce in compliance with its SLA is due not only to its total of 33 digital printing machines (including three high-performance Xerox Impika inkjet printing machines) and the Hunkeler book block solution but also to its four Muller Martini print finishing systems. “The two Vareo perfect binders and the two InfiniTrim three-knife trimmers give us all the information that we need. As a result, we have full transparency compared to the previous production process, which required a lot of manual effort. That has made production much more stable for us.”

Clear data about the production workflow is one thing – more efficient production of some 3.4 million softcover products annually is another. Thanks to the two Muller Martini inline duos, which integrate the Connex data and process management system with Xerox GmbH’s own internal management information system via a JMF interface, the company has doubled its perfect binding productivity. The productivity of the trimming process – a single operator monitors both InfiniTrim machines – has increased by a factor of three.

The optimal interaction of the Muller Martini systems, “which enables full automation of the entire production chain” (Rolf Bräuer), is important for three reasons related to production technology. First, no matter how thick or thin they are, the various books do not need to be pre-sorted. Second, the formats vary from product to product. And third, Xerox GmbH uses no less than ten different paper grades.

Press Release: Muller Martini