Multivista: imparting marvellous value to book production

-committed to provide cover-to-cover excellence

Sitting (L to R) R Jayaraman, director marketing; RS Mani, executive chairman; R Shankar, managing director; R Ravi, director operations with new generation team members.Specialized in the art of book production, Multivista Global Limited is committedly imparting marvellous values to every job while producing on an average around 80,000 books a day for the prominent publishers from both India and overseas like UK, Netherlands, Germany, Ghana, etc. How their constantly followed corporate philosophy ‘Opening new vistas and setting new standards and Times change but values remain’ has helped them to grow from a modest letterpress printer to book manufacturer of international fame, finds out D Ramalingam from All About Book Publishing. What started as different business units since their inception in the year 1974 and amalgamated into a single conglomerate under the name ‘Multivista Global Limited’ in October 1992, Multivista is a closely held public limited company, sagaciously run under astute guidance of the four brothers under dedicated roles of – RS Mani, executive chairman of the group; R Shankar, managing director; R Jayaraman, director, print solutions and marketing; and R Ravi, director, operations. The integration of the next generation has also helped them to cement their place in the industry. Jayaraman’s son Rajesh Jayaraman (a finance graduate from US), vice president (marketing) and Ravi’s son Karthik Ravi (a printing technologist from Rochester Institute of Technology), vice president (operations) have entrenched themselves into business are excitingly ready to take on challenges of this industry. Deepak Subramanian, son of Mani and Mahesh Jayaraman, son of Jayaraman are the vice-presidents (marketing) of their distribution business. Their strong belief in investing in state-of-the-art machines has paid off in the long run, and over the last decade, Multivista started setting their foot in the global market, with the mantra of ‘delivering high quality products with utmost customer satisfaction’. With staff strength of over 500 individuals, the third generation company Multivista Global Limited is now a state-of-the-art printing facility, located in the hub of software companies in the IT corridor, at Pudupakkam (Chennai).

Heidelberg CD 102 four-colour machineInitiator of the printing business was R Jayaraman who started it by outsourcing the jobs, and later seeing the increase in customer needs, put up his own press with indigenous letterpress machines, operating from a 750 sq ft space. Entering this area of operation as a commercial printer catering to the local requirements of brochures, leaflets, annual reports and other materials to clients which included leading corporate houses, banks, advertising agencies, etc, Multivista slowly migrated into manufacturing of books since last decade with the support of some of the leading publishers in India and invested extensively in both printing and binding machines enabling them to fulfill the increasing requirements for books. Previously, Multivista Print Division was situated in the ‘integrated print house’ in a multi-storeyed building at Velachery Road in city limits. With increase in international business, they preferred to be centrally located between airport and sea port for better logistics, and relocated at Pudupakkam three years ago.

Cutting-edge infrastructure…

Kolbus soft cover line with a capability to manufacture 8,000 books/hour.Being one of the leading printing facilities in India, the company is equipped with state-of-the-art printing and binding machines, along with equally efficient prepress having a Heidelberg SupraSetter CtP of size 940 mm X 1,143 mm. For single-colour, two-colour and four-colour printing, their machines include: Heidelberg CD 102 – four-colour of size 711 mm X 1,016 mm (28” X 40”), Heidelberg Speedmaster SM 102 – four-colour of size 711 mm X 1,016 mm (28” X 40”) with two-colour perfecting, two Ryobi 620 – four-colour of size 625 mm X 920 mm (25” X 36”), Heidelberg Speedmaster SM 74 – four-colour of size 508 mm X 762 mm (20” X 30”), two Heidelberg Speedmaster SM 102 – four-colour of size 711 mm X 1,016 mm (28” X 40”) with single-colour perfecting, Roland Parva two-colour of size 584 mm X 914 mm (23” X 36”), Heidelberg SORD – single-colour of size 635 mm X 914 mm (25” X 36”), and Heidelberg SORD – single-colour of size 508 mm X 762 mm (20” X 30”).

For binding and finishing, the company is equipped with an in-line Kolbus soft-cover binding machine along with:

12-station gatherer with signature identification facility, stacker for removal of gathered sections for off-line sewing whenever sewing is required, book block feeder in the perfect binder, 32-clamp perfect binder with hot glue facility, extended conveyor with on-line hologram-pasting facility, three-knife trimmer, and stacker for removal of finished books, having capacity of 8,000 books per hour. They also have a complete finishing system (off-line) along with: two Stahl folding machines, one Diploma folding machine, two Muller Martini Inventa Plus automatic section sewing machines, one Muller Martini online saddle stitching machine, Polygraph – 18-station collating machine (side gathering) etc.

Ensuring quality with quantity…

On asking about total capacity of their overall production, Jayaraman replied, “With our Kolbus line able to produce 8,000 books per hour, in one long run job we were able to produce 1,25,000 books in three shifts. We can safely put our average daily production at 70,000 to 80,000 books a day. The end customer sees our product as a book, while we see the results of our quest for perfection in every page. We are committed to provide cover-to-cover excellence.”

As far as quality is concerned, Karthik (Six Sigma certified professional) added, “Multivista is an ISO 9001 certified company (certified by TUV). The quality management systems in Multivista are a set of well-defined procedures, checklists, and guidelines, which address every step in the delivery workflow. We conduct regular internal quality audits to verify compliance. Based on the analysis of our internal audit and the feedback received from our clients, we implement effective process controls at every stage of the production process. As part of our quality policy, we believe in investing towards state-of-the-art printing and binding machines and use the highest quality inputs to meet our clients’ expectations.”

Multivista has also set up a separate export-oriented unit – EOU, aimed at facilitating delivery of books to Indian book sellers on behalf of international publishers, as there is considerable demand within India for foreign books. Instead of directly importing books from foreign publishers, those received from EOUs, but printed for foreign publishers bring in a substantial saving in freight element for the import of books.

Going beyond…

Asked about their expansions plans, Rajesh quipped in, “We have implemented SAP as our ERP backbone which will further support our operations with tight integration across all functional departments and provide all our clients with real-time information. We have initiated dialogues with major print machinery manufacturers regarding various options to enhance our pre-press, print and bind capacities. Today, we are looking towards further growth by investing to augment our capacity and enabling us to expand our services to our clients in both domestic and international markets.”