When tooling organization and storage became a challenge for leading corrugated packaging supplier Cumberland Container in Tennessee, the company turned to FLEXO SOLUTIONS for help. The BOBST preferred partner is a specialist in the design and manufacture of high-quality storage systems for flexo plates and cutting dies for the corrugated industry.
Cumberland Container has been producing corrugated packaging from its plant in Monterey, TN for over 50 years. With facilities covering more than 260,000 sq. ft, it provides a multitude of box solutions, point-of-sale displays, prototypes and other corrugated products for customers in Tennessee, Southern and Middle Kentucky, Northern Georgia and Northern Alabama.
Since first starting out with just five staff in 1969, Cumberland Container today employs over 95 people and posts an annual production of 258 Million Square Feet. Committed to providing excellence in packaging, the company is known for its great customer service and fast delivery of orders. Its diverse range of high-quality equipment includes an FFG 618 flexo-folder-gluer and an EXPERTFOLD 350 folder-gluer from BOBST.
“As business grew over the years, we naturally encountered the type of challenges that come with rapid expansion. One of these was finding space for the large number of flexo printing plates that was accumulating in our print department,” said Operation Manager Andrew Miller who has been with the company for over 16 years. “We tried creating a solution in house, but when the FLEXO SOLUTIONS storage system was presented to us, we cut a PO fast!”
Keeping plates safe and accessible
Suitable and sufficient storage is essential to protect flexo plates from any damage that can cause defects and affect print quality. Often storage needs are overlooked when production plants are designed, leaving tooling to fight for space amongst machinery, accessories and consumables. As faster set-ups and changeovers have become the order of the day, it is essential that plates can be located rapidly when called up for a job and equally be returned safely after they have been cleaned.
With space at a premium, Cumberland Container needed to find the right type of tooling storage from a provider that would work with the current facility real-estate and help optimize production workflow.
FLEXO SOLUTIONS works closely with each customer to design a system that fits their exact requirements, maximizes the use of available space, keeps plates safe and allows for easy access. Once a new storage system is in place, the customer will soon benefit and experience a reduction in wasted time when handling plates and setting up jobs, along with longer plate life and consistent print quality – all improvements that will contribute to increased productivity.
“Healthy printing plates are essential for the quality of the final prints. Our system helps avoid damage to plates that usually happens when stored in boxes,” said Sales Director of FLEXO SOLUTIONS, Samar R. Zakaria “The system improves efficiencies on many levels. For instance, it uses reference labels that allow the customer to easily locate each plate, so they can check and update the status of the plates before set-up.”
All of these advantages quickly became apparent for the team at Cumberland Container once the multi-level system was installed. Taking up just 200 square feet, it can store up to 2808 plates on its modular numbered racks.
“The FLEXO SOLUTIONS system has dramatically helped our storage with a much smaller footprint and collecting and returning plates has become so much faster. It really has ironed out one of the bottlenecks in production and given us a smoother workflow,” said Mr. Miller, before concluding, “We continue to rely on BOBST and its partners when it comes to maintaining and needing solutions for our everyday production needs, and I can wholeheartedly recommend FLEXO SOLUTIONS for anyone who needs to improve their storage.”
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