Bcm transtech is a Danish company active on the market since 1976, when its founder, current general manager Torben Christiansen, began designing storage systems for various industrial sectors.
In 1997 the turning point, with the first storage system for dies built for a Danish corrugated cardboard converter and the subsequent recognition obtained by Fefco, the European federation of corrugated cardboard producers and converters, which awarded the bcm solution as highly innovative and technological. Since that time, the Danish company has focused on the design and construction of manual, semi-automatic and automatic systems for the storage of dies and flexo plates, becoming a point of reference for printers and converters throughout Europe and beyond.
Today, this Danish specialist in storage systems for printing and converting industry is universally recognized as a world leader in the sector, for being the first company to design these systems, which are continuously improved and now operational in over 40 countries around the world.
Global automation
Since 2015 bcm transtech has sold more than20 full-automatic storage systems all over the world, almost all of these systems are in the corrugated industry, which is the main industry for bcm transtech. In general the trend towards more automation obviously involved not only printing and converting machines, but also all auxiliary systems. In the corrugated industry, bcm transtech can make full-automatic storage systems for all applications, ranging from flat-bed dies and rotary dies to printing plates and all of them can be in multiple combinations of design, sizes and functionalities. The very large range of solutions, flexibility in the range of products and bcm’s ability to customize almost anything, give bcm transtech the possibility to offer the perfect customized storage solution for every need.
What are the benefits of these solutions?
Those who use them certainly appreciate them, but many companies will be considering whether and why they should invest in a storage system. Let’s try to analyze the most salient reasons.
First of all safety: no people are in contact with the storage and thus nobody can get injured or burdened by heavy or unhealthy lifting.
The creation of a structured storage, where all dies or printing plates have their allocated place in the bcm storage and thus the storage robot always knows where dies and printing plates must be stored and where to find them again.
As dies and printing plates can be programmed within seconds, the time spend by the operator to return or collect dies is almost none-existing compared to a manual storage, this assures an important time optimization and spare.
Automation rhymes with Industry 4.0 and thanks to Intelligence with the full-automatic bcm storage solutions, bcm can offer a lot of logging and knowledge to be exchanged with customers, beneficial for production planning and statistics.
Beside the savings of time in programming versus manual collection of dies, there are also savings in less die repair due to mistakes in handling and storing. Also time used to locate dies and printing plates will be non-existing thanks to automation.
Due to the building abilities of bcm, unlimited length in 10 meters height, and the effectivity of the full-automatic storage robot solution, bcm’s customers can profit of an easy-to-use system which is able to deliver and return a very high number of dies per hour. Something that would require a lot of man-power, should equal capacity targets being reached with manual storage systems.
SmartStorage, new family of bcm storage systems
bcm SmartStorage is the name of the new family of semi-automatic concepts as well as the latest storage solution of the Danish manufacturer. It is a semi-automatic crane that can be used for different storage solutions and shelf types. The first bcm SmartStorages were installed during 2019 in Europe and since then other bcm SmartStorages have been sold and successfully installed. At the beginning of 2021, the first bcm SmartStorage was also installed in the USA.
PrimeStorage’, the semi-automatic one is called ‘bcm SmartStorage’ while ‘bcm AutoStorage’ is the fully automatic solution”, says Torben Christiansen.
The SmartStorage concept represents for bcm the middle way between the manual and the fully automated solution, having at its disposal a manual crane, moved in the warehouse by an operator, to which, however, many automatic and smart options are added, such as software, sensors and scanners that make it a smart system. The SmartStorage crane is able to manage cassettes, rotary dies and printing plates and is available in 15 different combinations, for handling and transporting dies and printing plates to and from production with bcm trolleys, all to guarantee safety and productivity.
