In end-February on our way back to Vienna from the Hunkeler Innovationdays in Lucerne, Switzerland, Michael Seidl and I visited Bobst’s two factories in Lausanne that manufacture the company’s die-cutters and folder gluers. Prilly, the older location in the middle of city houses the huge machining centers that produce Bobst components including the heavy components for the die-cutters. Prilly is home to the Bobst training school as well, which with its size and scope offers a fully-fledged accredited and hands-on engineering course. The components manufactured at Prilly are then supplied to the newer Mex factory on the outskirts of Lausanne, which assembles the machines and also contains the customer testing and demonstration centre. (Note – The Bobst Prilly site was sold in 2010 and demolished in 2012.)
The Bobst Competence Center in Mex (Recent photograph Bobst)The scale of the Bobst components and the consequently large size of the machining centers surprised us. Although larger components are manufactured in other industries, these were the largest finished parts and automated machining centers that we have seen. Similarly, in the Bobst assembly and demonstration centre at the Mex site that was established in 1977, we saw the assembly and demonstration of a range of machines including folder gluers, Foilmaster autoplaten hot foil stamping machines, SPanthera and SPrintera diecutters and blankers for paperboard cartons, and the much bigger Mastercut diecutters for corrugated boxes. The Mex demo centre was being prepared for the Competence days open house in March.
On the day of our visit, a European customer’s production team was testing the StarFold 100,000 boxes an hour folder-gluer on an actual product before taking delivery. Bobst’s folding carton research and development department has listened to converters who say that the embossing of Braille is most cost efficient on the folder-gluer. This has led to the company’s development of its its Accubraille option for high added-value boxes.
We briefly discussed with Nigel Tracey, Marketing Director Folder-Gluers, and a frequent visitor to India, some of the branding and naming issues in the die-cutting and folder gluer line. While the company is rapidly developing new products for its fifteen manufacturing sites around the world it is also engaged in a systematic rebranding exercise.
