During the processing of magazines, newspapers, books, periodicals or other sheet material products or articles, it is sometimes desirable to wrap selected articles with, for example, paper or conventional band wrapping or plastic film which may be a polymeric or polyethylene plastic film. There are many different reasons for selectively wrapping certain articles from a series of articles. This flexibility is important in satisfying the demands of a particular market or geographical destination. For instance, it may be desirable to offer certain customers or subscribers various features or selected advertising depending upon their special interest, income or occupation. Likewise, it may be relevant to customize products or services contingent upon a customer's previous buying history. For example, a publication may issue one demo edition for parents of newborn children who have previously purchased baby products, another edition for farmers interested in the latest agricultural equipment and still another edition for recent purchasers of exercise equipment. In each situation, a publisher may utilize various modes of customization such as blown-in card feeding, invoicing, advertising material insertion, renewal notices and tipping, as well as several types of contact or contactless printing. As a result, it is usually desirable to wrap the products including one or more of these items in order to enclose such loose items.
It is generally understood that magazines or other products can be packaged in such a way so as to take maximum advantage of postal discounts. For example, grouping a certain number of products and sending these products to subscribers having a common five-digit zip code in the same carrier route, qualifies the packages for a lower postal rate thereby saving the publisher money. Therefore, it is preferred that a bindery output articles in an order that facilitates sorting and packaging to maximize postal discounts.
Currently, collation and binding (conveyor) lines for stitchers build magazines, catalogues, brochures, periodicals, etc. in an order that facilitates sorting and packaging so as to receive such postal discounts. Each product binding line typically comprises an inserter having a plurality of signature feeders, a collating chain or conveyor, a customizing station, a stitcher, a trimmer, a labeling station, a bad book conveyor, a stacker and a strapper, as known to those skilled in the art. Once products are assembled and packaged in a desired order, the products are typically delivered to a Post Office for continued delivery to their final destination. So as not to create a slowdown in the overall production of the products, wrapping lines are generally separate and apart from binding lines. As previously pointed out, it is sometimes desirable to customize products with certain advertising or promotional material. It is also sometimes desirable to preserve the appearance of products. Customizing certain products with additional material or protecting certain products from damage requires that these products be wrapped with a protective wrapping. Wrapping machines conventionally apply a transparent polywrap material or paper wrap material or band wrap material around each individual product sent through a respective wrapping line. Like the binding lines, the wrapping lines output the products in an order that facilitates sorting and packaging so as to also enable certain postal discounts.
One problem with separate and distinct binding and wrapping lines is that bundles of products produced by each separate line are delivered to the appropriate Post Office and these bundles typically have overlapping zip codes thereby not fully utilizing the overall savings that could be realized through postal discounts. Therefore, it would be beneficial to provide an apparatus and a method which are capable of combining a binding line and a wrapping line so as to maximize postal discounts by eliminating such overlapping zip codes. However, because the production processes between a binding line and a wrapping line are not generally compatible, combining these two systems into a single system has heretofore been difficult to accomplish. As a result, bundles from binding lines and wrapping lines are often manually combined together to eliminate overlapping zip codes. However, this manual operation is generally unacceptable because any postal discounts achieved by packaging the products according to matching zip codes are outweighed by the expenses associated with the manual labor needed to organize the bundles.