Dec 20, 2006 -- Forget Chaucer. The Canterbury Press in Rome, New York is writing its own success story about conquering national print markets, while presenting new opportunities for its current clients. The hero of this evolving saga is a new eight-color ROLAND 700 perfector that is being installed at Canterbury this month. Canterbury takes its status as an employee-owned company seriously. So selection and evaluation of a major new production system was very much a collective effort. Evaluating the Essentials “A review committee was established to evaluate the press purchase,” says Dennis Schonewetter, Canterbury’s President. “It was made up of a small group of employee-owners, which included production personnel that assisted upper management throughout the entire selection process.” MAN Roland has been equipping Canterbury’s pressroom for years. But that didn’t mean that the company’s next press would automatically be wearing the ROLAND brand. “Canterbury Press has had a solid history of good operational experience with MAN Roland,” Schonewetter notes. “Our natural progression was to remain with our current press provider and compare the technology and product features of MAN Roland eight-color perfector against the competition. After an extensive cost and benefit evaluation, Canterbury management chose the MAN ROLAND 700 press.” Canterbury Press offers a range of capabilities to provide its clients with the convenience of using a single-source print communications provider. Design assistance, finishing, fulfillment, material management and storage, and database management are among its integrated services. Canterbury’s pressroom currently anchors all the action with one-to-six color print capabilities, but with the addition of the ROLAND 700 that number expands to eight. “We currently produce a job-shop combination of orders that are made up of periodical and commercial printing projects,” Schonewetter says. “Our new eight-color perfecting press will enable us to increase our production throughput by using only one print pass compared to two passes on our older press.” The resulting time and materials savings will translate into more satisfied customers at Canterbury. “4/4 perfecting provides us with a more efficient production opportunity, and we need to take advantage of that to become more price competitive in the markets we now serve,” explains Schonewetter. Expanding Markets, Lowering Costs Dale E. Rashford, VP Sales & Marketing sees the press as a catalyst that can spark new 4/4 perfecting business: "Our main objective will be to use our new print technology to expand our market reach into mid-level quantity opportunities in the publication arena where we can produce larger runs, faster and more economically." Canterbury was an early adopter of lean manufacturing practices to cut costs and speed production. The ROLAND 700 will help the company’s employee-owners notch that advantage up further to make production even more efficient and timely. One innovation that will drive the improved performance is MAN Roland’s PressManager option, which works with the press’ printnet control and automation system. It allows Canterbury press operators to makeready the next job while the current project prints. Canterbury has already estimated how much PressManager and the press’ other timesaving features will boost productivity. “Based on the automated technology of the new press, makeready times will decrease by 67%,” Schonewetter says. The upstate New York facility is adding an inline sheeter to its latest press. The device offers several benefits, such as allowing the ROLAND 700 to utilize less expensive web roll paper. Canterbury’s Rashford names some other expected gains: “We anticipate lower paper waste and gaining the ability to fit jobs more precisely to the sheet for improved production and quality purposes. The inline sheeter is another press product feature that will improve our competitiveness.” With a perfecting speed of 12,000 sph and a straight through rate of 16,000 sph, the ROLAND 700 provides a new range of high volume printing capabilities at Canterbury. “We cater to a variety of different markets and offer several different printed applications in each one of those segments to meet our customers’ demands,” Schonewetter says. “Our new application focus with the ROLAND 700 will be centered on developing higher quantity print opportunities in the existing markets we currently now serve to help grow our sales.”