“Welbound’s Diploma is a workhorse,” says Anil Joshi

"The last two years, we invested more in management consultants and financial experts and  putting systems in place  rather than in investing in any equipment,” says Joshi.

The once buoyant print market of Pune, servicing India's largest mechanical engineering industries, witnessed slowdown during the last two years. Capacities chased the declining demands and brought prices down to all time low levels. The family run K Joshi & Co has seen much better times; but in such times of price wars, they decided to stay focused in improving their profitability.

“Having a good team makes a lot of difference; and then comes equipment and best practices. We put in place an efficient cash flow management system that brought down interest costs, which is probably one of the biggest cost heads in any printer's business. Our constant search for providing a different experience to the customer, over the years, has led to good customer loyalty. We provide not just print; but solutions related to the customer's marketing needs," said Joshi.

“One of the exceptions to the no capital expenditure policy of the past two years was an investment in Welbound's Diploma folder. It was in one of the open houses organised by Welbound, that we set our eyes on the Diploma folder. I was advised by many experts to go in for the machines from Germany. But knowing what Welbound has done in the book binding industry and after visiting their plant in Thiruvananthapuram, we decided to invest in a folder."

The Diploma at K Joshi is loaded with a Robatech in line gluing system and Welbound's pressing, stacking and counting unit.

"Owning a brand new machine, which is reliable and robust has its definite advantages. Diploma is a workhorse, delivering accurate folds with creasing - perforation where needed and also pressing and stacking the signatures for further processing. The pressing stacking unit is of great help in our process as that eliminates the need to nip the spine or press the book block later. And it makes it easy to collect the signatures from folding machine as well. Decisions like these make a print operation efficient,” said Joshi. 

"The future of print is still good; we may see pressures on runs, schedules, price and so on. However that's a general industry phenomenon and is not isolated to print. Smart investments, management policies, best practices and customer relationships are few of the key Dos that will separate the men from the boys," concluded Anil Joshi.