A flexible member of the family

“We have to listen to our customers, to understand…it is you who are using the press.”

So said Paul Pirkle, MAN Roland’s Vice President of Commercial Web Sales, as he discussed their new Euroman press at an event in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. The Euroman has just had its North American premiere—the first installation is at Hi-Liter/Inland Graphics in Burlington, Wisconsin—and MAN Roland, together with Hi-Liter, MEGTEC, and QuadTech, hosted an event to celebrate and to educate press and purchasers about the Euroman and its features. Representatives from MEGTEC—showcasing their dryer—and QuadTech—showcasing their colour and registration-checking devices—were also on hand for the demonstration and festivities.

The Euroman was a press designed—as Pirkle’s comment indicates—with extensive feedback from customers about what they want from their web presses. Customers were expressing the need for a press that would accomodate shorter run lengths, limited space for expansion (especially as compared to 8-unit presses), and flexibility (in order to run a wide variety of projects on a single press). They also wanted simple operation, gains in makeready time, and an economically competitive product. As MAN Roland North America CEO Vince Lapinski said, and others echoed, too many printers were not using the full capacity of faster-running presses, such as the Lithoman, and were thus not getting the maximum competitive advantage from their press purchase.

The Euroman engineers took cues from the Roland Uniset, and also brought in elements from the Rotoman and Lithoman. The Euroman is about 20% cheaper than the Lithoman, according to Lapinski, and run speeds are correspondingly reduced, though the Euroman still clocks a respectible 35,000 rph. Georg Riescher, MAN Roland Worldwide Executive Vice President for Newspaper Production Systems, was also on hand for the festivities, and he emphasized the comprehensive packages and options—everything from Energy Reduction to Maintenance Plus to the Make Ready Package. Each package was described in detail by Euroman Project Manager Oliver Bleisch—check out http://www.manroland.com/PROD/prod1_01_04.htm for more details.

Coincidentally (or so they tell me), the word of the day was “flexibility”. Lapinski and Riescher spoke of being flexible to meet customer demands, and Hi-Liter’s Tom Sikora and Craig C. Faust repeatedly emphasized the gains in format flexibility that HiLiter made with the Euroman purchase. After they had made the purchase, but before the installation, Hi-Liter was already selling jobs for the Euroman, so they were able to run it at full capacity from the moment the installation was completed. The Euroman has also been an agent for growth for Hi-Liter—a company that has gone from 86 employees and $15 million in sales in 2004 to over $37 million in sales and 230 employees currently.

Through judicious aquisitions on the part of CEO Faust, Hi-Liter has grown from its roots as a printer of coldset web-produced directories to a full-service web, sheetfed, and digital operation, with mailing and fulfillment capabilities in-house. The Euroman’s flexibility enabled VP Sales & Marketing Sikora to sell complete coverage to each of their clients. If they were already doing a directory, he could now suggest that they also do flyers and digests. The Euroman regularly runs formats from slim-jims to digests to catalogs, just to name a few. Sikora repeatedly dubbed himself “production’s worst nightmare”, because of his constant demands for new products and innovations, but if the scene at the factory in Burlington was any indication, production was more than up for the challenge. The pressmen I talked to spoke of under-six-minute plate changes and startup times under ten minutes—it was clear that they enjoyed working with the press.

The Euroman’s position in the middle—both in terms of run length and web size—of MAN Roland’s offerings makes it an excellent choice for the medium-sized printer looking for the ability to diversify offerings without having to purchase several different pieces of equipment. When coupled with offerings from MEGTEC and QuadTech, as well as the comprehensive packages available for those wishing to customize further, the Euroman could very well be the Everyman of the printing world.