Manufacturing Excellence – the Seprinto & Partners Way

As part of a series of webinars from the World Banknote Summit, Jacques Lang presented for Seprinto & Partners (S&P) three examples of how they have helped banknote printers optimise their production, reducing their consumables and waste.

New printing plate technology

The first example was an elastomer printing plate, called LaserLine Secure, created for four banknote printing process – litho, intaglio (direct and indirectly printed), letterpress and varnishing. These plates operate up to 120°C, are water resistant and have a long lifespan. They print up to 10,160 dots per inch (dpi), creating fine lines and text, solids, and halftones on the same plates.

An example was presented based on the savings possible from a 2 million sheet intaglio print run based on a traditional plate lasting for 150,000 impressions and a LaserLine Secure plate lasting for 1.3 million impressions. Fewer plates, fewer changeovers and fewer sheets extracted for quality inspection were estimated to save €13,100 for one shablon.

The plates are cut by laser and S&P suggested that the greater control that this gave would allow ink savings of 5-10%. A patented system on the plates allows an immediate and constant control over roller pressure that would also generate less waste providing further savings.

New online NotaScreen inspection system

S&P was asked to find a way to put a real time inspection system on to a NotaScreen for the fast detection of process drift in order to reduce waste. The existing machine could not be modified, and the printer wanted to reduce waste by 50%.

With limited space, the solution had to provide 100% inspection for print quality and position control, requiring the solution to handle sheet stability and to filter out existing print images. The solution used IR light at a 150 dpi, with an option for 300 dpi.

The previous approach manually inspected two sheets at a time, resulting in a 0.5% defect rate in the annual production. The new solution achieves 0.18%. The system identifies faults linked to specific identifiable sheets.

Production optimisation

Although techniques such as 5S, SMED and preventative machine maintenance are familiar to manufacturers, S&P can help print works introduce or optimise these.

In the webinar the focus was on implementing a system to evaluate the skills of staff and to create a matrix to understand the skill levels and progression of the printers. This involves categorising the skills and knowledge required for each print process across six grades from one, beginner, to six, ‘master printer’. This allows an objective assessment linked to a progressive training programme and a roadmap for staff to plan their own future skills and experience.