With more than 1200 individual crews qualifying over the past 12 years, the Pacesetter Club continues to highlight the competitive advantage of Goss print finishing technology in the hands of skilled operators.

Crews from more than 45 printing facilities throughout the U.S., Canada and Latin America have now qualified for the Pacesetter Club by achieving near-maximum net output with Goss Pacesetter saddlestitchers and Universalbinder adhesive binding systems over an eight- to twelve-hour shift. An individual crew can only be recognized once per year.

"We developed the Club to recognize and provide an incentive for high net productivity," explains Toby Clarke, vice president of print finishing for Goss International. "As the capacity of our Pacesetter and Universalbinder systems has climbed steadily to as high as 25,000 books per hour, the qualifying standards have also increased, and crews have kept pace by netting close to 100 percent of that maximum capacity."

A bindery crew at Brown Printing in East Greenville, Pennsylvania recently qualified for the Pacesetter Club by finishing 164,496 magazines in eight hours on a Pacesetter 2200 saddlestitcher. "The new Pacesetter technology has completely changed the stitching environment as we've known it, and dramatically increased our productivity," according to Buddy Miller, saddlestitcher manager at the Brown facility. "Qualifying for the Pacesetter Club was our goal from day one, and we now have the people and the technology in place to hit this level of productivity and quality on a regular basis."

American Press in Gordonsville, Virginia has had several crews qualify for the Pacesetter Club in past years with its Pacesetter 1000 stitcher. This year, crews on all three shifts did the same with a new Pacesetter 2200 system, averaging as high as 20,875 books per hour.

Quad/Graphics has had more than a dozen crews from various facilities qualify in 2009, including a crew at its Saratoga, New York facility that finished 289,400 books in a 12-hour shift with a Pacesetter 2500 stitcher.

"Higher productivity in the finishing sector is a key to increasing the value of print," explains Clarke. "The Pacesetter Club highlights our focus on advanced finishing systems and on the expertise and teamwork necessary to turn that high-speed technology into high-net technology."

Qualifying thresholds for the Pacesetter Club reflect the importance of aligning mechanical, operational and workflow elements to achieve maximum productivity. Crews operating the latest shaftless Goss Pacesetter 2500 and 2200 saddlestitchers must average 20,300 and 23,000 books per hour respectively over the course of an entire shift. Qualifying targets for Universalbinder systems range from 10,000 to 16,000 books per hour, depending on the configuration. Minimum targets for Pacesetter 855, 870, 1000 and 1100 models range from 14,750 to 18,500 books per hour.

"The top speeds for the older models are obviously lower, but it is noteworthy that operators are still netting 90 to 95 percent of full capacity on Goss systems that are 10 or 15 years old," according to Clarke. "Regardless of the particular system, hitting these targets requires a combination of high-performance finishing technology and highly skilled operators."