Stitch in Time

As a full-service book manufacturer, Nashville's Vaughan Printing specializes in the production of short- to medium-run softcover books and journals, as well as high-end hardcover volumes. In business for more than 60 years, Vaughan employs 67 people in its 45,000-sq.ft. plant, where it also produces short-run magazine work for some of the area's largest businesses.

When owner Charles Vaughan went shopping to replace a 15-year-old saddlestitcher, he was looking for a system that was flexible, reliable and versatile enough to meet customers' changing needs. He also wanted something that could nearly double production, aiming for a range of 7,000 to 13,000 completed books per hour.

Vaughan filled his order with Heidelberg's automated, network-compatible Stitchmaster ST 400. As a result, the company has been able to roll two shifts into one, trading multiple operators for a single operator, freeing key personnel for cross-training elsewhere in the plant, and reducing makeready by at least 50%.

"The Stitchmaster ST 400 is far more advanced and more reliable than anything we've worked on before," Vaughan says. "Since Heidelberg completed the installation of the new saddlestitcher, we've increased our productivity 100% and decreased our operating cost by nearly 50%." To accommodate the long- and short-run needs of customers, "we needed to line up multiple projects," he says. "The ST 400 gives us the ability to run 200,000-piece jobs while our operators are setting up for other long runs."

Vaughan's Stitchmaster is a six-pocket, fully automatic model with stacker, bundler and mobile cover feeders that let operators run jobs out of one or two pockets, while setting up subsequent jobs on two or three others. Vaughan operates the stitcher in conjunction with a Stahlfolder. With its job memory capabilities and ability to store old job makereadies, the JDF-compatible Stitchmaster also lets users interrupt long jobs in progress, to run shorter, quick-turn jobs with a minimum of time and effort. According to Vaughan, his company now is able to produce 100,000 copies of a 6×9″, 32-page book in less than a day because the ST 400 "remembers" job settings and is up and running within minutes.

Handling products up to 12 5/8×19 7/8″, the ST 400 uses computer-controlled, independent servo drives. Its basic functions are controlled via touch-screen panel or keyboard—as well as the JDF or CIP data inputs. These are among the features that helped the Stitchmaster win a GATF InterTech Award last year.

The Vaughan team also was impressed with how quiet the machine is, compared to other stitchers. Its noise-reduction features, which Heidelberg says far exceed OSHA requirements in the U.S., make Vaughan's work environment more comfortable and more efficient.

In addition, thanks to a machine innovation that halts the job in progress if an error occurs, the company says it has significantly reduced paper waste, as well.

With the addition of the Stitchmaster, Vaughan says, business has grown to the point where the company is able to compete effectively against larger shops in the area—opening opportunities in Nashville's thriving music and religious publishing sector.