Consistent Across the Board

Gravure is alive and well—that's how Charles Mace, vice president of sales and marketing, beverage packaging, at Zumbiel Packaging (www.zumbiel.com) puts it. And, that comes from someone who admittedly has figured gravure to fade away. "Even we have predicted the demise of gravure over the years," he says. "But it's still a preferred method for beverage packaging, and that's the good news for gravure."For Zumbiel, gravure printing continues to be a very viable option for its customers. With this process being used extensively in the beverage packaging industry, having the capability to print with the repeatability gravure offers is critical. But, Zumbiel has been able to do something else with gravure that not many printers have managed—using gravure to print short-run jobs.

Four generations

Zumbiel Packaging (Cincinnati, OH) has been around in one form or another since 1843. Its business was primarily dry goods at its inception, but eventually transitioned to making boxes for the dry goods. It has been in the Zumbiel family since 1876. Today, cousins Tom Zumbiel Jr., Mike Zumbiel, Ed Zumbiel, and Joe Norton join Tom Zumbiel Sr., and Bob Zumbiel in operating the business.

A folding carton printer, the company comprises two divisions: beverage (including beer, soft drinks, energy drinks, and teas) and consumer products (with small boxes, nutraceuticals, and pharmaceuticals). Its 11 (three gravure) presses are located in two facilities. The widest gravure press the company owns is 48˝. Two of the presses are Champlaigne-manufactured, and the third is a Zerand press. Zumbiel can print up to 8 colors on webs up to 67˝ wide or sheets up to 55˝ (on its litho press).

The printer recently moved into a new 320,000-sq. ft. facility for its beverage business. It finished moving all its equipment to the new facility in June 2007. Expanding into such a facility also demonstrates the health of the company. "This is exciting. In an industry where people are consolidating and shutting down, we built a brand new facility," says Mace. The new facility has a modern workflow, according to Tom Zumbiel, marketing director, Beverage Division, with receiving at one end, manufacturing in the middle, and shipping at the other end. "It's exactly like logic would tell you," indicates Zumbiel. "We're not inhibited by legacies."

Gravure and Lean

Whether printing flexo or gravure, short makeready and fast turnaround are critical, according to Mace, for Zumbiel to stay in business. "Short runs have been one of our big pushes," he says. What's notable is that Zumbiel is able to incorporate short runs on its gravure presses. A driver for this is Zumbiel's lean operation.

One hangup for gravure has been the time it takes to get one cylinder out, the next one in, and to start the process over again. At Zumbiel, the changeover challenge was taken on first when it began implementing lean initiatives.

"We put the entire press room through some lean initiatives as far as reducing copy change time," says Gary Roberts, beverage plant manager. "The whole plant is 5S. And, we're in the process of going through some additional lean training as far as a refresher for some of the folks on the floor."

"A lot of lean initiatives have been enacted here," adds Mace. "We started on gravure, videotaping makeready processes, everything that was done." By doing so, Zumbiel mastered quick changeover for gravure cylinders.

Roberts adds, "Using some of the basic lean philosophies, we were able to reduce copy change time significantly on our machines without spending an exorbitant amount of money."

The results have been positive. "When we did our quick copy change initiative on our gravure presses, we took copy change times down almost 50 percent," says Roberts. "After time, it balanced out at about 35 percent reduction in copy change time." That number doesn't include makeready on the diecutter. "That's just changing from copy to copy in the same die shape and configuration. We're down to less than an hour for a six color with varnish with copy change on our gravure presses."

These lean practices have allowed Zumbiel to use gravure to print shorter run jobs. In addition, the location of the press when it was installed forced Zumbiel to print shorter runs with it. "Traditionally, the very very short runs, in the neighborhood of 10-15,000 impressions, are done in flexo," explains Mace. "Most people think gravure is a half million impression business, and some of it is, but it doesn't have to be. We run pretty regularly 50-100,000 impression runs on gravure. When that press was installed, it was in a flexo operation, where all we knew was short tuns. It was installed in an operation that had a flexo fast turnaround mindset. I really think that helped form a basis."

Circumstances surrounding various machines' capabilities also led the company to use gravure for the shorter runs. "Most of the items we run gravure are large format cartons—37˝ or longer," adds Roberts. "Our gravure press has the largest platen cutter in our organization (a 40˝ feed-up). So, naturally all those large format cartons migrate to that machine because of the cutter that's on it."

Capacity and consistency

Yet another reason Zumbiel runs gravure for short runs is that the machine is available. It's a question of capacity. "Most of the things we're printing in gravure [we do] for capacity reasons," says Mace. "If you were to pull in here and ask how are you going to print this, you wouldn't go to gravure for the quality purposes. But, we have a gravure press that does a good job and we can do smaller runs on it."

According to Zumbiel, consistency is also a major factor for running gravure on various jobs. "As gravure goes, its big thing is consistency, and we have that," he says. "Because of where we live, and because we're not the integrated guys, and because we're forced into the short-run world—the relatively short-run world—we've learned how to make quick gravure changeovers.

Send the reaper home

Mace is quick to note that although gravure has a lot to offer, flexo is still nipping at its heels. "Flexo has made major strides with the servo presses [in terms of] print quality," he says. "With anilox improvements, plate technology, and the presses themselves, they are pushing the envelope and getting much better." He also says that web litho is encroaching on gravure's space. "Web litho used to be hamstrung by the cassette sizes, but now there are variable sleeve offset presses coming out."

Gravure press manufacturers haven't sat idly by. "[Manufacturers] realized that copy change solutions to gravure are going to be the bread and butter in the future, and I think a lot of manufacturers are going to quick change technology, sleeves, cylinders, and quick in-and-out cart designs for quick changeovers on gravure," adds Roberts.

Ultimately, Zumbiel Packaging proves that gravure remains a viable printing process today even with the push toward shorter runs. Gravure definitely has its place in today's package-printing market. pP