Innovate Magazine - Spring 2008 - (Page 31)

Wisconsin and the world’s leading manufacturer of recreational marine propulsion engines. In the high-performance world of outboard engines and marine power products, you wouldn’t think bookbinding would make waves. But with a rising tide of decreasing run-lengths for service literature increasingly produced just-in-time, Mercury Marine’s decision to install the Bourg near-line binder proved a smart decision that’s looking better than ever. Mercury and its 6,200 employees worldwide provide engines, boats, services, and parts for recreational, commercial, and government marine applications under the Mercury, Mariner, MerCruiser, and many other brands. The company’s Printing and Mailing Solutions Department, with Manager Michael Schrader at the helm, employs 20 people and includes graphic design, printing, binding, and fulﬁllment services. The department lays down 90 million printing impressions per year and perfect binds about 80,000 books per year on the BB3002—mostly service manuals for dealers and customers, as well as some sales and marketing materials and internal company documents. In his 23 years with the in-plant shop, Schrader has seen a major shift toward shorter run lengths for all projects. At the same time, the size of owners’ manuals and parts and service manuals kept expanding. With products dating back several decades, Mercury needs to stock several thousand manuals, each with different part numbers. Balancing the need to fulﬁll customer requests in a timely fashion while limiting warehouse space poses a signiﬁcant challenge, Schrader explains. “One of our books comes packaged with each of the thousands of products we sell, and 40 percent of our sales come from outside the U.S. Plus, there’s a healthy resale market—if you buy your neighbor’s Mercury outboard, for example, chances are you’ll call us to get a service manual. So we have to be ready to meet worldwide demand for sales and for customer service requests.” Adds Schrader, “To save warehouse space and prevent having to store several hundred thousand dollars worth of manuals, our goal is to keep in stock as few copies of each as possible and to simplify the process of replenishing them.” The Search for the Perfect Binder To print literature, Mercury’s Printing and Mailing Solutions Department relied on a Xerox DocuTech 6135, a Xerox DocuTech 6180, and a Xerox DocuColor 3535, so that aspect was covered. But the signatures had to be bound, and that proved a problem. Despite using the same cover on all its manuals, the group’s previous perfect binder took 20 to 25 minutes to set up, and it could only bind books less than two inches thick. “Some of our manuals were over 2¼ inches,” Schrader explains. “To compensate, we either had to split them into 2 books or ﬁnd someone else to bind them for us, and neither alternative was acceptable. When I started looking for a new binder, I wanted a short setup time that would allow us to store fewer manuals while maintaining our fulﬁllment responsiveness and the ability to bind books over 2¼ inches coming in from multiple print streams.” Schrader’s investigation led him to purchase and install the ﬁrst BB3002 perfect binder in North America. The totally automated, near-line machine allows a single operator to set up even a complex perfect bind, and within one minute to start producing even different-sized books one right after another. The BB3002 features an icon-driven operating system displayed on an 11-inch color touchscreen. This operator-friendly interface allows milling, in-line side gluing, scoring, and suction cover-feeding to be easily selected from a list of menu options and set digitally. “The automatic operation makes setup a snap,” says Schrader, “and as long as you understand the concepts of perfect binding, it is quite easy to run.” Plus, with the ability to bind 600 books up to 2.36 inches thick per hour, it easily satisﬁed Schrader’s second requirement. “Since we’ve had the BB3002, we produce about 2 weeks worth of manuals at a time as we need them. Eventually, we’ll produce customer orders on demand, as they come in,” he says, adding the shop traded its DocuColor 3535 for a Xerox DocuColor 6060 last year and swapped the 6135 for another 6180 in January. Now, with printing and binding perfectly positioned for the future, Schrader and Mercury’s Printing and Mailing Solutions Department can enjoy smoother sailing as production cycles tighten and run lengths decrease. For more information, visit www.cpbourg.com. Innovate Spring 08 31 http://www.cpbourg.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Innovate Magazine - Spring 2008

Innovate - Spring 2008 Table of Contents 10 Tips for Successful Open Houses The TransPromo Path Escape the Complexity Putting a Price on Value A Welcome Boost to Hospitality Team Approach Earns Accolades Bound Together New Highs in Image Quality Transforming the Business of Processing Photos Predictive Maintenance Making the Right Choice Diving into Digital Book Production Doing More With Less Distributed Document Creation

Innovate Magazine - Spring 2008

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