LifeSprings Media, established in1919, was previously known as Advocate Press before becoming LifeSprings in 1995. The company, located in Franklin Springs, GA, operates both offset and digital printers, including a 40″ Heidelberg press and a newer Canon VarioPrint 6270 Titan press, an upgrade to replace two older toner-based machines.
About 85% of LifeSprings’s work is producing booklets for church clients as well as manuals and technical documentation for heavy machinery. “We saw a big change in our business in the 2007/2008 timeframe,” says Scott Benson, Manager, “including a significant decrease in run lengths which drove more volume to our digital presses, and thus, the upgrades. But we also saw a need to both eliminate bottlenecks in the bindery and ensure we had capacity there for growth.”
Benson notes that, with toner-based printing and in-line finishing, the press has to go down if the finishing unit goes down. Because of that limitation, there was interest in enhancing the bindery to take the finishing offline. “In addition,” he says, “we had older folders, stitchers and perfect binders from a variety of different vendors. This meant finishing a booklet took several steps and several pieces of equipment, with set-up and make-ready waste for each. For the perfect binding we were doing in house, we had to take bound books to the cutter to trim them, an extra step. We wanted to get set up with the bindery equipment we needed to take care of these bottlenecks, but also allow us to grow toward the eventual acquisition of a production inkjet press that will likely ultimately replace our offset press.”