Russian printing house PPK began updating its heatset commercial presses from manroland web systems in early 2013. By retrofitting the control of a ROTOMAN and a LITHOMAN, the company hopes to set itself and its customers apart from the competition with an optimal cost per copy.

Pervy Polygraphichesky Kombinat (PPK) in Krasnogorsk near Moscow is one of the largest printing houses in Russia, producing over 500 million printed products yearly. The company specializes in the high-quality production of magazines such as Men’s Health or regional Cosmopolitan editions, catalogs, and newspapers in large and medium-sized print runs. Kirill V. Gulyaev, General Director of PPK, considers his company a full-blooded service provider that supplies quality in all aspects: “We strive towards the most efficient production possible to increase profits for our customers. We take full responsibility for the production and on-time delivery of printed products.” To retain this high standard, the business focuses on monitoring and investments, and manroland web systems has been a long-time partner of PPK in the process. The company already acted as general technical contractor for PPK, from prepress to finishing, when PPK opened the doors of its printing center in 2005.

New dimension in product efficiency

The goal of the retrofit was an improved cost per copy, achieved through reduced waste and more efficient processes. The options for interaction between the former management information system and the presses had been exhausted. manroland web systems therefore presented a new concept at drupa 2012 and PPK visited the COLORMAN at the ultra-modern print center in Barleben, Germany. The result: two ROTOMAN from 2005/2008 and two LITHOMAN from 2007/2008 were to be retrofitted. In addition, the company also uses UNISET series presses. More specifically, the retrofit included an ODBC interface with a PECOM update for the control console, production planning with a modernized PPM station (PECOM Production Manager), and shopfloor data collection with DataCollect. Employees also underwent training.

DataCollect: the perfect solution

The ODBC data interface provides MIS systems with press-relevant data. With the DataCollect tool, operators can add specifically prepared data. “All the systems are linked and perfectly coordinated, even third-party systems”, explains Manuel Kosok, Head of Project Engineering & Product Management Automation at manroland web systems. During production, printnet Monitor saves all relevant technical data, from material consumption, to makeready times, printing times, and interruptions, all the way to press speed and the status of produced copies. The data, generated automatically, is supplemented manually via the control console using the DataCollect shopfloor data collection tool. Staff members can explain the events in more detail. The outcome is a process in which every production step is transparent, from prepress to finishing. The tool also saves empirical values, which the system optimizes each time. As a result, production continually becomes more efficient.