Melville, N.Y. – Spencermetrics® is pleased to announce that Merlin Printing Inc. has recently celebrated one year using CONNECT® installed and operational on their two legacy 1990’s Heidelberg web-offset printing presses. During the spring of 2019, Merlin deployed CONNECT with AUTOMATERTM, a system that addressed their immediate need for automating data collection and analytics from their production machines.

Merlin’s output demand was growing, and so was management’s need for an easy, reliable solution to collect machine activity and shop floor data. Their manual data collection methods had become incredibly inefficient and outdated. Merlin began searching for a tool to give them access to accurate job cost data and analytics in order to better understand and control their make-ready waste and the true cost of production for their numerous job versioning requirements. With a majority of production volume produced from the two printing presses, they needed to find a solution that would eliminate the labor intensive and inaccurate manual methods and to automate data gathering from these legacy printing press that cannot communicate digitally.

CONNECT automated and digitized Merlin’s production data collection augmented with real-time shop floor monitoring, and in-depth analytics. Operators now enjoy the convenience and the breakthrough ease-of-use of the CONNECT shop floor data collection module; while management appreciates the increased visibility that allows for press and operator performance tracking, and detailed analyses of real-time metrics.

“The system provides us with a simple way to collect and analyze data, as well as to continuously improve print shop operations,” says Charles Lewis, Merlin’s VP of Production Operations. With CONNECT, Merlin now compares repeat jobs, understands the different costs of each version, tracks labor efficiency and waste week-to-week, understands the reasons for variations, and gets more production output in fewer hours.

Within the first year of deploying and using CONNECT and making small yet lasting improvements, Merlin has successfully increased actual Printing time and Productivity, reduced Make-Ready (Setup) Time and associated Waste. The cost savings in Labor Time and Media Waste reduction have delivered an ROI that exceeded their expectations.

Detailed results of Merlin’s success is available on: https://www.spencermetrics.com/resources/case-studies. 

“We were impressed with the AUTOMATER technology…they not only promised but delivered fast and reliably. CONNECT is easy to use and is already providing more value than we expected. AUTOMATER really brings our legacy big iron into the new age of production tracking. With real-time visibility we can focus on improving our and our clients’ costs,” says Steven Vid, President at Merlin Printing.

To learn how CONNECT and AUTOMATER can deliver remote production monitoring from any device. Register for our latest Live Webinar or Schedule an online demo.