FINNISH printer chooses DCOS´s closed-loop automation technology
KINNA, June 1th, 2017 – The success for DCOS Print Inspection Systems continues as Finnish Media
Group Kaakon Viestintä Oy awarded DCOS the order for a Closed-loop Density, Register and cut-off
system for its KBA A510 press.
Kaakon Viestintä employs 800 people and is the leading newspaper group in the southeast region of
Finland. Over the last years Kaakon Viestintä has restructured and merged its three production sites
into one main print production facility in Kouvola, 1,5 hour east of Helsinki.
The KBA A510 press dates to 1991 and has served its owner well over the years. With seven daily
newspapers supplemented by twenty-one weeklies and bi-weeklies, Kaakon Viestintä produces
about 1.000.000 copies per week.
With the increasing amount of titles to print, Kaakon Viestintä found it necessary to investigate their
options for increasing productivity and lower production costs in order to strengthen their market
position.
Matti Härmä, Production Manager at Kaakon Viestintä explains why DCOS was the selected partner
for this project; “It has been a quite long process for us to evaluate the different options on the
market and our project team have put a lot of effort into this. We visited three DCOS installations, all
of them on fairly old presses, all different press types. Besides inspection system we also saw a
complete Honeywell retrofit and a partial Honeywell retrofit. It was simply very impressive based on
our needs.“
The DCOS camera technology which will be installed on the press includes, ten CRC4 density and
color register cameras, and eighteen PTC4 cut-off cameras. The Honeywell control system will be
partly retrofitted and all quality functions will be taken over and be controlled by DCOS, including the
spray dampening system.
“As in any investment these days the ROI is a key factor that requires in depth analysis. The reference
sites we visited were very helpful with results and feedback. They were also very convincing in their
experience and satisfaction of being a DCOS customer. This gave us confidence that we found a
company for a long-term cooperation and that put the customer’s interests and needs in focus.”, says
Lasse Palminen, Chief Information Officer at Kaakon Viestintä.
The installation started mid-March and the system was fully commissioned and in production in May
and already serves it purpose well. After 3 weeks in operation the average start-up waste has been
reduced to 50% of the original waste and itis expected to continue to decrease in the next months.
“Kaakon Viestintä has gone through some changes over the last year, merging three print shops into
one centralized facility. We are very proud to be part of their future and success. This project perfectly
symbolizes our capabilities of providing complete automation solutions for printing presses,
combining Retrofit with Productivity upgrades”, says Mattias Andersson, CEO at DCOS Sweden AB.
