"We’ve built up a good relationship with Kern on a number of fronts," says Dean Ashby, customer fulfilment centre manager at Coventry Building Society. "It’s great to be associated with such a well-respected brand; that’s what we were looking for with this partnership – we wanted a relationship with our supplier where we could share opportunities."

This certainly seems to be working well so far. The two companies also have an arrangement whereby Kern’s on-the-road-engineers can use the building society’s dedicated print facility as a base.

"They can sit in our staff room and use our facilities and drink our coffee, and the benefit for us is that we have Kern specialists on site, in case we have any tweaks that need carrying out," says Ashby.

Of course, such an amicable relationship can only be sustained if the machinery behind the relationship is also performing well. Ashby says Kern is certainly delivering on this front, too.

"The Kerns have virtually tripled our capacity," says Ashby, explaining that whereas its six- and 10-year-old Pitney Bowes inserters processed an average of 4,500 pieces of mail each per hour, the Kern 2600s are both run by the building society at 12,000 pieces per hour.

Investing in faster machines, explains Ashby, was part of an overall move by Coventry Building Society to bring all of its print work, including customer statements, mortgage offers and the company’s general day-to-day business mail, in-house. Replacing the two Pitney Bowes inserters with two new Kern 2600s, which joined two high-volume 5160 Océ printers, a Xerox iGen, a Xerox 700i, a Ryobi four-colour press and Watkiss booklet-making lines at the building society’s print facility, completed this four-year upgrade process.

Significant savings
No longer having to outsource work is saving the company a significant amount of money, says Ashby, particularly as – due to economies of scale when outsourcing – it previously had to order more print than it actually required.

Bringing all work in-house, he says, also enables the building society to be sure that it has complete control of all its customers’ data, and the security of knowing that it is being processed in a secure way.

For the Coventry Building Society, then, the Kern 2600s are the highly efficient icing on its in-house print facility cake.

A feature that Ashby feels is particularly key in facilitating the 2600’s efficiency is the star wheel, which feeds envelopes into the machine. Whereas with the Pitney Bowes machines, the envelopes were fed in on a chain mechanism along a track, the Kern 2600’s star wheel can hold up to 12 envelopes at a time, speeding up the whole process, reports Ashby.

Kern adds that the inserter’s latest control system and servo technology is also key to the speed with which the 2600 scans barcodes on letters, collates various pages, adds inserts and then envelopes them.

Also impressive, says Ashby, is the quality of the mail its collates and inserts.

"There’s no doubt that the presentation is better than what we were previously able to produce," he says. "Some mailing machines nick the envelopes slightly and a lot of machines we’ve had in the past, due to the way they’re built, mark the letters as they’re travelling through the machine. The belts can transfer toner onto different parts of letters or slightly mark the text."

Achieving such consistent levels of efficiency and high-quality results comes back, says Ashby, to the good relationship enjoyed by the two companies. Neither machine has suffered from any significant downtime periods, he says; any issues that have arisen can be put down to fine-tuning the machine for optimum performance.

"The Kern technology was quite different to what we were using before," says Ashby, "so any issues that we have had are, in the main, not due to machine errors, but to do with helping our operators set up the machine in the best way."

If a Kern engineer is not already on site when help is needed, its support team are very easily contactable by phone, reports Ashby, and can be are at the centre in two hours at the most.

Expert assistance
In addition to initial extensive training, the manufacturer has also provided training from a ‘lean manufacturing’ expert at no extra cost. This expert provided advice on areas such as running the machine at 12,000 pieces per hour, rather than the 2600’s top speed of 16,000, to ensure consistent performance; and also how to
most efficiently move items around the print facility.

This extra training has also been invaluable in boosting staff morale, says Ashby, who reports that because the team had such a long relationship with its previous inserting manufacturer, some of the six staff working on this side of the production process were, initially, unenthusiastic about changing suppliers.

"But within six weeks, the employees were really pleased with what they’d got," says Ashby. "The build quality of the machines is great and they’re easy to use. In addition to that, people do just generally enjoy being around such superb, modern bits of kit."

But, despite such glowing reports, is there anything about the machine or Kern’s service support that the Coventry Building Society team feels could be improved?

The only thing he would add, says Ashby, would be vertical stackers at the end of the machine – allowing more envelopes to be stacked there, while also enabling the inserter to be run faster and with fewer people working on the track.

He says that the beauty of the Kern 2600, though, is that – being highly modular – it can be upgraded in this way. "There are vertical stacker units that you can add," he reveals, "and we’re just going through the process of purchasing one."

Indeed, it was the possibility of future developments and upgrades that was another key factor – along with the machine’s speed and Kern’s openness to engage in mutually-beneficial joint initiatives – that led to Coventry Building Society choosing Kern over the two other leading inserting manufacturers it also considered.

"Kern just seemed a lot fresher and more modern in its thinking," says Ashby.

So while Ashby is very pleased with the immediate benefits of installing machines that have enabled the print centre to triple its capacity, he is also very happy to be working with a company "that is going to be creative and flexible moving forward into the future.

"That is what we were really after," Ashby concludes.

SPECIFICATIONS

Speed 16,000 mail pieces per hour
Envelope format range C6 to B5
Max sheet capacity 4,000 documents
Paper weight 60-20gsm
Min prime document format 279x210mm
Max prime document format 318x225mm
Optional modules High-speed cutsheet feeder with direct entry; K996 continuous forms input channel; K100 roll feed modules; cross- folding A3 to C5/DL module; SIGR module continuous forms input channel; inkjet printing on the output (CMYK or mono); vertical stacking devices; FSH inline sheet feeder; K90 card-affixing technology; K60L auto tray device
Price From £160,000, subject to configuration
Contact Kern www.kern.co.uk 0845 680 6060