Packaging South Asia met Manish Mohindra, AVP – North, Domino Printech India, at the company’s stand in PackPlus, which was held from 3-6 August 2017 at Pragati Maidan, New Delhi. During the discussion, Mohindra gave a brief overview of Domino Printech’s continuous inkjet technology (CIJ) suite—the Ax Series. The new machine has been designed with R&D support from Japanese MNC, Brother Group, and it meets the growing needs of the industry for higher uptime, lesser human intervention, consistent code quality, and environmental compliance.
With regard to uptime, although Domino Printech has successfully crossed 99% uptime as per the recorded data of users of its equipment, the demand from customers for 100% uptime continues. Mohindra informed how Domino Printech has worked constantly to ensure better printhead stability, resulting in reduced ink consumption and more consistent code quality. The company has created a design where the impacts of the environment, such as varying weather conditions, on its CIJ technology is minimum. As far as customer demand for lesser human intervention is concerned, there has been an improvement of around 50%. Earlier, the machines needed to be attended to after every 48 hours but they need intervention only after a 72-hour work cycle.
Mohindra also spoke of remote monitoring, a key aspect of the Ax Series, which makes it possible for the floor manager to monitor the machines right from the ERP workstation. This kind of an operation requires Internet of Things (IoT) integration, which Domino Printech is doing now after gaining Industry 4.0 compliance. In terms of customer demand for increased uptime, the Ax Series has been acclimatized for conditions in India, which automatically works for other countries as well.
In addition to the CIJ solution, Domino Printech presented its thermal transfer overprint system for coding on flexible packaging along with thermal inkjet, which is aimed at the pharmaceutical industry. “The way the industry is moving, wherever volume increases, the customers try to move from our ink-based to permanent laser coding and marking systems. Making things easier for customers, Domino Printech now offers a common user interface across all its products which was not the case earlier. The common interface makes it easier for users to easily migrate to higher versions, for instance, those using ink-based coding machines can easily migrate to laser-based coding variants,” explained Mohindra.
Domino Printech regularly conducts training sessions for its new as well as existing customers who migrate to more advanced systems. They’re provided with training and orientation, which will now become simpler for existing users as Domino Printech now offers a common user interface across all its products.
According to Mohindra, the coding and marking equipment segment has been growing at around 18% and as market leaders, Domino Printech too has been growing at a similar rate. With regard to the impact of GST on his business, Mohindra said that even in the earlier tax regime Domino Printech was transparent about how it handled its taxes. Under the new GST regime, some adjustments would be required although he does not see many problems in that area.
