Never Say No

It began with fan belt sleeves.

Fred Arnold was meeting with a purchasing agent at Goodyear Tire and Rubber's Lincoln, Nebraksa plant. The agent, whose desk was strewn with fan belt sleeves, threw one at Arnold, then a partner at Fairbury Printing in Fairbury, Nebraska. "I need to print part numbers and bar codes on all these sleeves," he said. "If you can do that you'll have all my business."

Arnold, a friendly bear of a man who lacks the gene that enables him to say, 'no,' looked at the sleeves and said, "You bet. We can do this."

Then he raced back to Fairbury to figure out how to print sleeves with endlessly changing part numbers and bar codes using an offset press. He met with his production team saying, "I have no idea what the guy at Goodyear is talking about. But we have to figure this out."

Arnold and his colleagues found a way that would work and he took samples back to Goodyear, where he found that the purchasing agent didn't really mean Fairbury would get all of the fan belt sleeve business. He meant all of Goodyear's business out of the Lincoln operation—as in 10 states, Canada, Mexico and Venezuela. Suddenly, Fairbury Printing was putting out 26 million units per year on a used Multigraphics press in a building with less than 1,000 square feet of production space.

Which proves the value of never saying no.

The digital transition

As business grew, the company changed its name to McBattas Packaging and Printing and in 2000 moved to its present 30,000 square foot facility. Additional presses arrived, and for some time the Goodyear work was done entirely on a variety of offset presses and accounted for the majority of the company's business. Although business softened significantly with the economic downturn in 2008, Arnold and his plant manager believed there was a broad market for printing variable content and doing short runs for many types of folding paperboard packaging—and that a digital press would be essential.

A year-long search for the right machine led them to Webster, NY where they saw the Xerox iGen. The machine's 14.33˝x26˝ sheet size was appealing, but the difficulty was that folding cartons required up to 24-point paperboard, a significant barrier for digital presses (thicker stocks are a requirement for their strength and rigidity to hold and protect the contents of a carton). Although this weight was beyond spec for the iGen 4, one Xerox engineer thought he could make it work. The resulting machine was, at the time, the only one of its kind. And as it turned out, it wound up being an early version of what would become the iGen 4 Diamond Edition with thick-stock capability.

Today, McBattas runs two iGen digital presses used primarily for folding cartons and similar needs of many household-name consumer product companies. Xerox FreeFlow software handles the digital production workflow. Customers and applications include medical suppliers, health foods, counter displays, cosmetics, and nutraceuticals. Customers turn to McBattas for shorter runs, typically 5,000 to 15,000 pieces. Brand owners appreciate the economics of shorter runs done several times per year versus longer runs that are done once and then inventoried. Goodyear, for example, may make changes to its fan belt sleeves four or five times a year. Using digital printing they can order only what they need with no waste.

"We're pretty competitive pricewise up to 125,000 pieces," says Arnold, now sole owner and president of McBattas. "After that, jobs are more suited for offset. We do have some offset presses for long runs, but as a print provider we have gone virtually 100 percent digital. Where we really excel is those short-run orders."

Prototypes… and responsiveness

Those orders include well-known brands from all over the United States. Some wind up on store shelves, while others are examples of what new package designs could look and work like. For example, a branding firm or ad agency might need cartons to use when pitching a new packaging concept to a client. Or brand owners and high-volume converters need prototypes of a new carton design for approval or testing purposes. While some jobs arrive completely designed and ready for production, other customers turn to McBattas for complete design support, a service Arnold doesn't charge for.

"People typically want something right away, and we can usually provide a sample in about 24 hours that looks the same as the finished product and can then go right into production. The iGens, a Heidelberg rotary diecutter, and a Kongsberg digital cutter make it very easy to turn out samples for review and approval."

Die-less digital die cutters like the Kongsberg are becoming "must-have" devices for converters using digital presses. Taking its scoring and trimming orders from CAD files, a digital cutter eliminates the cost associated with buying mechanical dies and helps keep production moving.

The whole world is on backorder

McBattas's fast-turnaround capability is a clear differentiator. Arnold relates how a concrete company called the day before Thanksgiving, seeking a box that looked like a concrete block which would be filled with candy as a gift to customers. McBattas was closed over the long weekend, yet still had a sample in the customer's hands the following Tuesday. Production began the following day. "We excel at last-minute jobs," grins Arnold.

Short runs and special projects are clearly a niche, and a profitable one. One recent fast-turn project required printing, fulfillment, shrink wrapping, and shipping of a specially designed box containing customized packages of candy and popcorn kernels. "The whole world is always on backorder," remarks Arnold.

As if on cue, the day he was interviewed for this story, Arnold received an urgent email from a customer who had misplaced 1,000 boxes. "So they will have those boxes tomorrow," affirms Arnold. "You have to do this for your customers, otherwise you run the risk of them becoming someone else's customers."

Leveraging the digital advantage

So far, the longest digital folding carton run at McBattas has been 50,000 sheets, or 250,000 cartons printed 4-up. For many folding carton converters, such a run length would happen on an offset press, but Arnold sees a bigger picture of savings and overall productivity with a digital press, including the elimination of plates and makeready waste.

"Before we had digital presses, we might run 1,500 boxes on an offset press," Arnold explains. "But we could go through 500 sheets just to get the colors set. With digital, the first one out is usually good. What you lose in speed and sheet size you make up for by eliminating costs for ink, plates, and so on. And you can be up and running an hour or more sooner."

Arnold also likes another aspect of digital productivity, unattended operation. "When we used offset presses, we could complete three or four jobs on an eight hour shift, with downtime between each job. With digital, the jobs are in a queue and as soon as one is done the next one starts. They may be shorter jobs, but we produce more of them."

McBattas also maintains productivity by keeping the presses running nearly constantly. "We pick up two hours of production time per day per machine—over lunch and breaks—because the machines don't need to be monitored," says Arnold. "That's 20 additional hours a week. And we can even run for an hour or so after we go home at night. All you have to do is keep the drawers full."

An accidental empire

To some extent, much of what McBattas is today happened seemingly by accident, relates Arnold. One customer led to another, especially in the automotive industry, where referrals are often the best form of marketing. Now though, McBattas is actively promoting itself to fuel future growth. To that end, Xerox has helped Arnold create a business development program.

As the company looks to grow, Arnold and his management team work to ensure the company's 25 employees understand the company's way of doing business, building a culture of doing everything possible for the customer.

"We put notes in their pay envelopes that reiterate the way we think about the business and our customers," Arnold says. "We let people know when they do a good job. Letting them know we appreciate what they do is part of building a strong team."

"With digital technology and all that goes with it, we've built our organization to be responsive. The bottom line for all we do is to service all our customers' needs." pP

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