Options Multicolor: Augmenting efficiency, adding capacity
The Heidelberg SM74 is the ideal kit for Options Multicolor because of its stress on quick makereadies and changeover speeds. The commercial print firm hopes to triple its production capacity and slash makeready times.
25 May 2016 | 3876 Views | By Rushikesh Aravkar
Options employs 28 people, and produces promotional material, such as brochures, catalogues, danglers, leaflets, coupons and books. The company runs two 12-hour shifts per day and provides commercial printing services to its corporate clients pan-India.
The new four-colour press was installed in March 2016 at the company’s Saifabad site. It fills in for the production gap formed when Options sold its five-colour Heidelberg MOV press February 2016.
Shovan Kumar Mazumdar of Options says, “We wanted to upgrade our existing infrastructure in order to bolster our productivity.”
The new Heidelberg will run at the speed of 15,000 sheets per hour, which is three times the speed with which it ran the older machine. In addition, it will also trim makeready times from 20 to 30 minutes to between three and five minutes depending on the complexity of the job, he said.
Options has also invested in a new Polar 115 cutting machine and is planning to buy an automatic die-cutting machine, as he sees a few packaging jobs coming its way few months down the line.
The print firm consumes 200 tonnes of paper per month, of which 90% is coated paper. The plate requirement is outsourced.
In 2015, Options installed Kodak Nexpress 3600 digital press in order to streamline its coupon production and cater to short-run bulk order jobs.
Mazumdar explains, “For the high-volume jobs in which the order quantity runs into lakhs of copies, but the number of SKUs is higher; the run per SKU is short. In order to cater to these jobs, we use Kodak Nexpress. It has also streamlined our coupon production, by enabling two-sided printing plus serialisation, barcodes and all variety of artworks in one go.”
Established in 2002, the 5,600 sq/ft plant is set up at Saifabad’s Samrat Complex and employs 28 people.