MWN Press: operating uniquely with sophisticated approach

With a tagline ‘the power of print enhanced’, MWN Press took a bold decision to shift out of municipal boundaries of Chennai, with a concept of ‘Green’ building having a single open 11,000 sq ft hall added with numerous working culture philosophies based on ‘Kaizens’ – the well known efficient/trusted methodologies. SK Khurana, editor, Print & Publishing visited this facility recently to understand the ‘Green’ concept behind their initiative. Initially MWN Press was established as a printing facility for a legal journal Madras Weekly Notes, started by NRK Tatachari in the year 1910. And later, they began serving as commercial printer executing various jobs from the market, and NT Ramanujam, son of NRK Tatachari continued the company during the best part of the letterpress days. But MWN Press took a major leap under the stewardship of late NR Srivas, the younger son of NT Ramanujam, who gave a new strength to the company adding new equipments and setting the pace for ‘Quality Culture’ in the organisation. As of today, MWN Press is equipped with a five colour MITSUBISHI Diamond 1000 machine 20”x28”, capable of churning out 15,000 sheets per hour. In postpress segment, they have two knife folding machines, an automatic programmable cutting machine ROBOCUT Guillotine from ITOTEC, Japan; a shrink-wrapping machine which is used to wrap all the products delivered from MWN; and a thermal lamination machine with automatic feeding and automatic cutting. The company’s prepress division is also well equipped with advanced hardware and software to maintain a high standard of quality and service to the customer. However, they outsource CtP operations from a company located within their facility.

Though there are many printers in India operating with state-of-the-art technology, but MWN Press is unique among them in terms of its well managed working style. On September 3, 2011, the company inaugurated their new sophisticated facility at Mangadu on the outskirt of Chennai which was performed by none other than their prestigious client Citibank’s VP (print production and logistics), NK Ramprasad. Entering in the premise of the new facility, spreading over 11,000 sq ft with single floor ‘green building’, one can feel the specific approach seeing everything from equipment to a small tool placements in a systematic manner.

‘Green’ concept: As a responsible businessman towards maintaining ecology in larger perspective NR Kumar has been active supporter of ‘Green’ culture and ensured that their new unit complies all that initiatives. Their working hall is full of natural light coming through piping, allowing sunlight to lighten up the floor with the help of specially designed reflectors, thus using solar power optimally without investing on conventional solar panels. For heat insulation, the roof top has also been coated specifically to absorb heat of sunlight so as to keep the temperature quite low on the shop floor. Air Turbo exhausts the heat without using electricity.

Print excellence awards winning has also been a regular feature for MWN Press. Pix shows winning of Sappi Trading Award 2005.Other features: To avoid normal delays in the wake of lack of coordination between the machine operators and store in-charge, MWN Press has developed unique concept of making the operators responsible for all consumables procurement and keeping close contacts with suppliers even for machine upkeep. He is the person who handles everything and keeps a stock within his arms length. For all venders, operators/users in the press are single contact point. As per Kumar, this concept has worked very well and eventually much higher production is achieved. There are many such innovations, adopted by MWN Press, which can be seen by any one. After a careful study of working in the press, the ‘weaker’ areas have been identified and solutions are worked out efficiently.

Client base: It was interesting to note that their 60 percent business comes from just two clients, and the rest from other clients. Apart printing operations, the substantial revenues come from fabrication jobs, which are largely handled by female staff.

Investment: Having freshly invested a sum over Rs 3 crore in land and building and already written value of Rs 3 crore, MWN Press is all set to invest further to the tune of Rs 7-9 crore in the areas of pre-press, press and finishing.

Future plans: As per Kumar, their plans for the future infact were linked to arrange a much bigger space than the earlier area of just 6,000 sq ft spread to three floors, and as such was the priority. Now, having organised this, the immediate plan would be to install 28”x40”, 6 colour plus coater press from Mitsubishi. The vision of their future was easily noticeable by seeing the ‘ready’ floor for this proposed machine with ‘yellow’ boundary and 4 sets of pipes (for yellow, magenta, cyan and black) fixed in the ceiling towards ink pumping system well in advance.