AB Graphic and Cerm to reveal integration software

Finishing equipment manufacturer AB Graphic and software specialist Cerm have combined their experience and technologies to develop an MIS/ERP integration, which will debut at of Labelexpo Europe 2019.

ABG Digicon digital finisher

During the past three years, ABG has rebuilt its complete machine software and as a result, all computer-driven slitter rewinders that leave its factory now can receive instructions from the printer’s MIS/ERP system and can communicate back information for production and costing.

‘We believe that automation and robotization will continue to crawl into every printshop. We’ve invested heavily to be on the forefront of this trend by offering our customers a zero job set-up time and by reducing the set-up waste considerably on all our equipment,’ said Matt Burton, ABG’s sales director.

ABG chose to partner in this development with Cerm, which has many years of experience with pre-press and press information exchange and was already interfacing to some of the existing ABG machines on a more basic level.

Geert Van Damme, MD of Cerm, explained: ‘The ABG slitter rewinders receive all information about the print frames at the input and about the finished rolls as required output through scanning a barcode on the ABG. The slitting knives will be automatically positioned when jobs are switched. If you have a turret rewinder, the ABG printer will print a batch of identification labels and will close the rolls with these labels automatically after they are cut at the requested length. Cerm will have all these finished rolls in its database for traceability.’

The feedback of the ABG machine will update the Cerm schedule and will allow detailed job costing, as well as waste and speed analysis.

Burton added: ’ABG is the only finishing supplier with this level of integration with an MIS provider and we have invested heavily in software development over the past three years. This integration will save about eight minutes per slitter set-up and about two minutes per batch of rolls coming out of the turret. Our customers will really benefit from our development of this integration.’

The new integration technology will be demonstrated live at ABG and Cerm stands (6A37 and 6A42) at this year’s Labelexpo Europe in Brussels on September 23-27.