Miamisburg, Ohio – While exceptional speed and acceleration is one way to increase digital finishing table productivity, perhaps the more impactful way is to reduce downtime due to manual feeding and stacking. It not only reduces idle time; wherever you have manual material handling, you also have damage and waste, and the level of rework can be high. Esko (booth 938) will explain how it is at the forefront of digital finishing automation during SGIA Expo 2018.

On October 20, at 10:30am in SGIA Expo room N119, Esko Director of Product Development, Frank Adegeest, will present Reduce Waste with Shop Floor Management. All workflows – and all steps within the process – create waste. Waste reduces production, create delays and rework, increases rejects and equipment idle time, and compounds the amount of time and effort required to complete a job. At the end of the day, waste is really what you don’t want to pay for. This underscores the importance of shop floor management, workflow automation and supply chain management, all which have a major impact on the bottom line.

“In digital finishing there is an alarming amount of waste. We see it all the time when we work with customers. Our role at Esko is more than just providing the leading hardware and software solutions,” explains Adegeest. “We work with our customers to identify all areas of waste and to improve their operational efficiencies, leading to industrial-level productivity.

“In so many cases I see disconnected systems, disconnected departments, and poor quality of data causing rejects and rework. We ensure that with the right tools and processes in place, and the right mindset, that by simply having a ‘right first time’ approach to accepting orders before they start the process can have a huge impact on lead times and production – in some cases by up to 75%. At SGIA, I will share best practices and demonstrate how anyone can apply these at every step of the way for a door-to-door value stream.”
Highly productive, automated finishing: Esko is ready to discuss at SGIA

The Esko Kongsberg Automate range of impressive innovations that can boost the performance of digital finishing operations to industrial levels include:

• Robotic material handling for non-stop finishing production
• Feeder and stacker with underside camera for automated loading of materials
• Multi-zone operation to keep finishing tables running continuously

Complete unattended Kongsberg table operation with robotics

The Robotic Material Handler delivers efficiency, the highest standards in material handling and innovation that sets Esko customers ahead of their competitors. Working with zoned areas, it is a high-capacity system perfectly matched to the Kongsberg table and working with stacks of material to offer complete unattended operation, increasing productivity while reducing operator time. The Robotic Material Handler works with a wide range of materials thanks to the unique gripper that can handle sheets 3 sheets per minute, up to 33 pounds in weight. It eliminates costly errors by ensuring that there is consistent sheet placement every time, with zero manual handling. The simple operation of the Robotic Material Handler means existing teams can be easily trained to set up jobs for unattended shifts, leaving them more time to focus on the high value, low volume tasks and to expand resources to deliver enhanced customer service.

Increase productivity with pallet-to-pallet productivity

The Kongsberg Feeder and Stacker solution is the most advanced automated and modular board-handling solution. It accelerates short run production by eliminating manual handling bottlenecks and reducing material – and printed graphics – damage and waste without additional labor costs. The Kongsberg table quickly registers, cuts, and delivers the material to the pallet with perfect stack alignment to ensure consistent production. It’s an easy to use pallet-to-pallet solution that is the perfect way to increase productivity. There are no delays loading and unloading boards from the table, so the table is utilized nearly 100%. An optional roll feeding unit and extension tables are also available.

The unique Underside Camera eliminates the manual processes of determining if a board has been accurately placed, print side down, on the Kongsberg table by looking at the registration marks. It scans the bottom of the sheet in a single pass and automatically locates the registration marks, barcodes and the corner of the sheet – saving the operator between 20-30 minutes per set up.

Visitors are invited to meet with the Esko team and reserve a demo of the Kongsberg C64 and Kongsberg X24 tables during SGIA Expo. Scheduled appointments can be made at http://go.esko.com/sgia18.

For further information please, visit www.esko.com.