Boosting Productivity with Solutions from Bell and Howell

Improving productivity and lowering cost for many companies is limited by the fact that a single operator cannot keep up with a high-speed inserter. In many environments, a mailer will experience lost productivity from slowing down a system or additional employee costs from having to hire more operators.

The average inserting system does not allow an operator to effectively ‘work the machine’ without having frequent stops from insert and envelope hoppers running out of stock, or having to deal with problems from not being able to load, tag, and sleeve mail trays quickly enough, or time-consuming tasks like scanning job tickets or interfacing with integrity control systems.

Ideally, mailers will thrive in an environment where a single operator can productively run a system at its optimal speed, and Bell and Howell (Booth 2610) has introduced new solutions that increase net production per labor hour while reducing the physical demands on operators.

The Bell and Howell Producer inserters are designed to improve single-operator productivity gains. These systems feature a true in-line process: high-capacity insert and envelope feeders are located on the operator side of the system over the main collation track, and inserts and envelopes travel in the same direction, making them easy to access and load. Envelope feeding and opening is completed in a short, direct delivery path, and an array of productivity enhancements reduce costs, optimize every machine cycle and automate paper handling. The optional semi-automated tray loader dramatically reduces the time it takes to sweep envelopes into mail trays.

All Bell and Howell inserters feature Harmonix software, which enables mailers to maximize the productivity of their operations. Because production times can be gated by application type, material quality, and operation efficiency, many jobs are processed at reduced speed to match the more difficult sets within a job. Harmonix dynamically optimizes the inserter cycle speed based on how the machine is performing, the set size distribution and material capacity. Put simply, the machine will adjust its production speed based on the uniqueness of the application, without operator influence. This results in longer run time, fewer wasted machine cycles, and increased productivity.

Bell and Howell’s Navigator controller acts as a master command center for Bell and Howell systems. Operators are not tied to a display for interacting with a system. Instead they can focus on handling their operational activities such as loading inserts and BREs, sweeping mail and removing spoiled pieces, while communicating with the system using optional voice commands. The audio technology allows operators to receive messages from and issue commands to the system without using a console—allowing more time to keep the system running and lowering cost per piece.

Production workflow is further optimized with the IQ Software Suite, our ADF solution, which among many other functions enables multiple jobs to be loaded on a system and processed without an operator having to stop and scan job tickets before and after each individual job. IQ Software provides unique job and piece-level data, and processes and reconciles in real time.