Pharming A.S. (Pharming) is one of the leading packaging manufacturers in the Czech Republic. As the company name suggests, Pharming has a long and successful history as a production partner in the pharmaceutical industry. Today, the company has also successfully positioned itself as a full-service partner for the food and electrical engineering industries. To be ranked as the No.1 manufacturer in the Czech Republic in its chosen industries and to safeguard production at the highest level in the future, the company had to modernize the equipment in its machine park.

New Dymatrix outstrips previous productivity
After many years working with die-cutters from other manufacturers, Pharming decided to invest in technology from Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG (Heidelberg). The company's recent investment in the Dymatrix die-cutter, which was installed at the Varnsdorf plant, proved to be a ground-breaking decision. "When selecting the new die-cutter, which was to replace one of our five existing die-cutters provided by a Swiss manufacturer, we scrutinized quotes from a wide range of manufacturers as part of our modernization project, including several from the Far East. We were pleasantly surprised by the robustness of the Dymatrix, which boasted high precision cutting and a long service life," explains Pharming Director Václav Klom'nek. "The installation went ahead without any hitches and the system is currently working to full capacity just as we had hoped."

Josef Knobloch, Head of Production and Sales at Pharming, adds: "When viewed against the Dymatrix from Heidelberg, it is clear that our other die-cutters are from an earlier generation. It takes much longer to set up the other machines, particularly for repeat jobs. While it can take up to 3 hours to set up the older machines, the Dymatrix needs no more than an hour for the entire setup process."
 
To meet market requirements and the trend towards shorter runs, Heidelberg is continuing to invest in new technology to minimize makeready times. The Dymatrix minimizes makeready times by saving job data, i.e. the formats, type and properties of materials, so that it can be accessed later for repeat jobs. The machine is then set up automatically for a new job, thus minimizing the amount of manual input required.

Integrated Heidelberg portfolio impresses right along the line
The owners were so impressed by the Heidelberg packaging printing portfolio and its benefits that they did not stop at a single investment. In 2009, a new Speedmaster CD 102 sheetfed offset press was also installed at the company's production facility in Zahrady near Rumburk.   In this case, too, the company decided to take a new direction after many years working with competitor products. The operations manager chose the new sheetfed offset press after comparing the products of a number of German and Japanese manufacturers. "We don't really cater to the commercial printing market. Instead, our production is geared towards very specific requirements. As such, our press equipment must match these particular demands. As a rule, we do not process jobs running into millions of copies. The vast majority of our jobs usually involve between 20,000 and 50,000 individual packagings."

The demands placed on shorter makeready times are a key issue in the pressroom, because orders with a delivery deadline of 2 or 3 days are no longer the exception. Against this backdrop, the Speedmaster CD 102 won out against the other makes of press and best met the requirement for fast makeready times.

Integrated production is the key to success
The machine park investment was not the only area in which the company chose Heidelberg as its partner. Integrated production with the Prinect workflow also set another benchmark for the future. Klom'nek emphasizes: "The Prinect workflow and control system also played a very important part in our decision to opt for Heidelberg as a partner. The Prinect Pressroom Manager and Prinect Axis Control modules, which we use for the CD 102 press, monitor all the operations during job processing."

The open system architecture of Prinect means that both the on-site shift manager and staff at the company headquarters in Prague have access to all the press status and production data. What's more, Prinect creates a detailed report of the production run, which is particularly important for customers in the pharmaceutical industry to ensure complete documentation.