Rossini SpA, world leader in R&D and production of cylinders and sleeves for the printing industry, strengthens its Equipment division and finances new large-scale projects for the current year.
At the end of 2019, the company inaugurated its new plant dedicated to the Equipment division and activated new lines for the production of a special sleeve for roto-offset printing marketed all over the world at its L’Aquila facilities. These are the new investments planned by Rossini SpA for 2020, constituting a clear counter-trend going against the orientations of many of the multinationals operating in Italy. Skills, a coherent network of suppliers and business integration are the cornerstones of an organic and wide-ranging project.
The Italian technical and managerial culture
The decision to invest in Italy finds its reasons in several well-rooted factors, typical of the local economic-manufacturing fabric.
«First of all – underlines Felice Rossini, president of the Rescaldina (MI) based company – in the high level of technical skills in all jobs and roles, from the project manager to the machine operator. This is not only a guarantee of work and product quality, but also allows the development of new technologies and applications according to company needs, whether responding to a demand for extreme customization or to develop a new supply proposal for the market».
And not only that. – «In Italy – continues the entrepreneur – we can count on a network of suppliers of skills and products, in the various price and performance ranges, which is unmatched anywhere else in the world and constitutes an invaluable wealth that needs to be exploited and valorised».
Lastly, Rossini underlines the importance of integrating the skills and functions within the group «to make the most of the different cultural experiences that characterize Rossini and its global presence».
A new sleeve for roto-offset and a project
Rossini focuses strongly on the relaunch of the L’Aquila production site, also thanks to a new product previously manufactured in Rossini Spain and now reintroduced into Italy with ambitious targets for production increase.
Its name is Leonardo and it is a gapless sleeve with superior performance, made with technologically innovative materials, for high-production heatset roto-offset printing of magazines and advertising flyers. It is a sleeve with a much longer life than standard and a great resistance to the lateral cut generated by paper during printing. It ensures the absolute final quality of the work with a perfect print dot, a stable register with no fan-in or fan-out problems, a simple set-up and optimal storage.
The transfer of the lines to the Italian plant was done to take advantage of the great internal skills both in the management of production flows and processes, and in the production of sleeves. This is an operation that falls within a more general rationalization plan, which proposes the delocalization of lower value-added productions to meet the opportunities and challenges posed by the more technologically rewarding fronts. The new production line was born from a project by the Rossini CFT (Cross Functional Team). Unsurprisingly called Leonardo, the project is inspired by production concepts based on maximum efficiency and exploits the contribution of the various areas of business competence in the Spanish, Italian and Equipment factories to better respond to the requests of the European and US market in an Industry 4.0 view of things.
From maintenance to logistics with advanced automation
Rossini Equipment was created to integrate the company’s core business – sleeves and plate holder adapters in the flexo sector, rubberised pressers and Speedwell sleeves in the gravure press, as well as very high performance rubbers for laminators – with systems and machinery for the optimal construction and maintenance of these products, inspired by maximum practicality and effectiveness and with a correct price/performance ratio.
From this initial “added department”, a unit was developed for the management of increasingly complex projects, which also corroborates Rossini SpA’s claim as a solution provider in product logistics and business process management.
This is the case of the latest creation in the Equipment division: the Robotized Storage System. This automatic system is designed to integrate an optimized vertical storage of sleeves, carriers and aniloxes with the company’s management system in an Industry 4.0 logic, but first of all to make space management and equipment search in the press room more efficient. Completely re-engineered according to the indications provided by the first prototypes installed, it incorporates self-diagnosis functions for troubleshooting, as well as visors and laser sensors for the correct positioning of the sleeve trays.
Rossini’s Robotized Storage System has been installed in one of the world’s flexible packaging showcases and today incorporates new functions controlled by PC. Previewed in the technology center of one of the world’s leading flexographic printing machine manufacturers, thanks to its modularity it is easily expandable according to the user’s needs. Other salient features are the solid stacker crane system, operating on sturdy rails and equipped with a Siemens motor-drive system, and its proprietary software that can be customized according to the configuration of the system and the customer’s needs.
