One-Stop Print 'Shop'

You name it, Schiele Group probably prints it: web, sheetfed and now color digital. Prepress services? Check. How about green printing? Yep. With three facilities in suburban Chicago, the firm's 190 employees handle a diverse range of services, making Schiele (pronounced Sheeley) among the most comprehensive, single-source suppliers of graphic arts in the area. Printing some 1 billion sheetfed and web pieces annually, including point-of-purchase materials, sales/marketing collateral and direct mail, Schiele has experienced around 20% annual growth for the past few years.

And Schiele Group is wrapping up another successful year—its 59th—that included more than $6 million in capital equipment investments in 2007, including two new 6-color 40´´ Mitsubishi sheetfed presses, a Xerox iGen 3 110 digital production press and a remanufactured Harris M90 half web. The $45-million firm also received FSC Chain of Custody certification just last month.

In addition to helping to save the Earth, new savings are coming in the form of less time (and less start-up waste), thanks to the pair of 16,000-sph Mitsubishis: a Diamond 3000LS, with SimulChanger fully automated plate loader, installed in April and a second, semi-automated version installed in September. Both have tower coaters and replace two 1990s vintage Rolands. Schiele purchased the MLP presses as part of a reorganization designed to consolidate three previous manufacturing sites into two locations.

“We believe that, with their increased running speeds of 16,000 sheets per hour and the advanced technology, the two Mitsubishi presses will handle all the work of the other presses combined,” says John Schiele, an RIT School of printing alumnus and second-generation company CEO. “It is more of an expansion of equipment capabilities than a replacement.”

He adds that the Diamond 3000LS with SimulChanger probably is “the best press I've ever bought. We've experienced tremendous uptime. Being able to change six plates in just over a minute in this day and age, especially with the domestic and overseas competition, is making all the difference in the world. We can produce two or three more jobs a day with fewer waste sheets.”

Schiele has installed Air Motion Systems Peak IR dryers on both MLP presses and says he's considering the addition of an AMS UV curing system next year.

The firm's sheetfed division, called Schiele Graphics, installed the iGen3 nine months ago, around the same time as the first MLP. It selected the Xerox model with an oversized paper option (14.33×22.5´´), purchased through Fujifilm Graphic Systems. “In May, we put on about 240,000 clicks on it and are up to about 300,000 now. We want to hit 1 million a month as soon as we can,” says Schiele.

The firm has migrated jobs from its DocuTech and a 5-color Adast DI press. “The quality of the iGen has come up so much that we felt [it] could do the work of our previous equipment,” Schiele notes. “If I had to rely on 'build it and they will come,' that would be very difficult. Now we want to get into variable printing. We bought XMPie [software] in May and we want to really get into the one-to-one marketing, customizing our clients' products so they get greater response rates with their mail. We know that's the direction of the market.”

But going digital has been more difficult than Schiele and his staff originally thought, despite one-to-one training from Xerox and XMPie. He hopes a holiday marketing initiative, offering free personalized greeting cards, will help educate customers and prospects about variable-data printing; as of press time, response looked promising among the 4,600 recipients. Two Schiele salesmen have raved about training they've received from Digital Innovations Group (DIG), a marketing firm founded five years ago by former Xeroxer Kate Dunn. To further expedite sales, the printer hired a tech/data specialist to go on sales calls and is in the process of bringing in two specialized reps to sell digital only.

The company also chose the iGen because of its ability to handle volume. The new building even has a spot ready for a second device. “The iGen was a natural progression for us,” says Chris Fernandez, plant manager. “We have a pretty diverse equipment list, from five half web presses to six 40´´ sheetfed presses, a couple of duplicators, a four-up direct imaging press. It was just the nature of the business, because we were so conventional, to get into the digital market and offer the one-to-one capability.

The iGen3 and new Mitsubishis are housed at a 60,000-sq.ft. facility in Elk Grove Village, IL, near O'Hare Airport and only blocks from Schiele's web-offset operation. The site was the headquarters of Consolidated Press, Inc. (CPI), acquired about a year ago by Quantum Color Graphics in nearby Morton Grove. It was ready to move into, and Schiele has consolidated its two sheetfed companies under one roof: Schiele Graphics, with 54 union employees, is the largest union sheetfed printer in Chicago, according to GCIU; and Johnson Printers, a small-format firm acquired two years ago. John Schiele says the production floor and office breakout is perfect at the plant, which he leases from former CPI co-owner Jay Campise.

The new facility's other presses include a 5-color Speedmaster and two 2-color SM 74s. It also operates a new Screen PlateRite 8600 eight-page thermal CTP device that outputs 22 plates per hour. “We needed a new platesetter to keep up with our fully automated presses,” says Schiele, who notes that makereadies are now “two to three times faster.”

The half-web division produces catalogs and millions of direct mail forms. Lines include the refurbished Harris M90, a refurbed 6-color M110 half web, two 6- and 8-unit Didde VIPs, and three Sanden 1250 variable-insert, continuous forms presses (5-, 6- and 8-color) with inter-station UV, used for the direct mail work.

Schiele is a long-time user of Fuji consumables, plates and proofing devices, completing its computer-to-plate transition about four years ago. For contract proofing, the firm runs two Fujifilm FinalProofs.

ONLINE: www.mlpusa.com, xerox.com, fujifilmgs.com, airmotionsystems.com, adast.com and sandenusa.com