Turbocharging Job Turnaround

Some operations can't be improved by technology alone; improving process efficiencies, studying process flows, and paying attention to the tiny details can also help.

By Lisa Cross, Business Editor -- Graphic Arts Online, 11/1/2000

Technological innovation has changed nearly all parts of the print production chain. For printers, this plethora of introductions, from desktop publishing and filmless workflows to super-productive presses, has ushered in an era in which demand for quality, service, speed, and production efficiencies is at an all-time high.

To better serve existing customers and capture new clients, many printing companies rushed to apply their new technology to "turbo-charge" the workflow, in some cases dramatically slashing job turnaround from a week or even more to just 24 to 48 hours.

Many gains, many pressures

But compressing job turnaround has been a mixed blessing for printing companies. While improving throughput has required printers to gain a better understanding of their processes and develop high-performance/high-efficiency operations systems, the increased focus on turnaround times is exerting enormous pressures that may cancel out any efficiency gained.

Seeking to differentiate themselves from their competition, many printers are promising turnaround times that are pushing the very limits of production. Already, in many markets, competition is shifting from a basis in price to one centered on job delivery.

"As technology evolved, so to did the customers' turnaround expectations. 'What's your best date?' seems to be the number one criterion for getting work today," says Joseph J. DeLarso, chief operating officer and senior vice president of Toppan Printing Company America, Inc., the U.S. commercial printing operation of global printing giant Toppan Printing. Toppan's New York City-based unit employs 200 people and generates sales of $65 million.

"Many times a customer's turnaround demands broach the point of physical impossibility," observes Brad Garlich, vice president of sales and marketing for Garlich Printing, a St. Louis, Mo.-based commercial shop company with more than $20 million in sales. "We don't see this changing; we just say 'yes' to our customers and make it happen."

Two days: what's the problem?

To illustrate the enormous pressures printers face, Geoffrey Pick, president of Clear Print, Chatsworth, Calif., reports, "A customer came to us on a Wednesday and needed digital photography, copywriting, layout and design, and printing for a job that needed to be delivered on Friday. This scenario is not unusual."

Pick, who operates a 30-employee commercial shop that offers traditional graphic arts services plus Internet-related help, terms turnaround pressures in his market "fierce."

"Los Angeles is one of the hottest competitive commercial print markets in the country. We have a lot of printing equipment here, a lot of cylinders that aren't turning all the time. If we can't accept the customer's job and get it on press that night or the very next day, literally a couple of hundred other printers can," says Pick.

New mantra for a new era

Indeed, faster and faster is the new mantra for many printing companies. To turbocharge production throughput, printers are investing in technology, embracing operations methods that improve process efficiencies, and documenting and analyzing process flows to pinpoint flaws and possible opportunities.

Specifically, printers of all sizes are purchasing new presses, digital platesetters, digital proofing devices, and electronic file transfer systems.

To accommodate customer demands for turbo turnaround, The Dot Printer, an Irvine, Calif.-based commercial printer with 250 employees and $34.5 million in sales, equipped all five of its production facilities with DSL and T1 lines to provide for faster file transfer. The Dot Printer is also installing remote proofing stations at key client locations, practicing load balancing between its operations, and producing plates without film wherever possible.

Need for speed

"We are extremely interested in any sheetfed press offerings that speed makeready times," says Bruce Carson, chief executive of The Dot Printer.

Graphix Products, North Chicago, Ill., recently added a sheetfed perfector with aqueous coating in response to customers' ever-increasing demands for speed.

"The press offered quicker makeready, plus the aqueous coating seals in the ink instantaneously," explains Jason Tews, vice president of marketing. Graphix Products, a 60-employee commercial shop that bills $8.5 million a year, offers design services, sheetfed and flexographic printing, multimedia and CD capabilities, and e-business services.

CTP gains time

Toppan Printing Company America has also spent a lot of money to speed throughput. Says DeLarso, "We beefed up our prepress area by developing a completely digital workflow and implementing computer-to-plate technology. Today, up to 95% of our print work is produced without film. Producing plates digitally helps us meet our customers' demands for turbocharged turnaround."

Another major investment for Toppan was a 10-color sheetfed perfector with aqueous coating and numerous automation features. "We're looking at a 45-minute makeready to print five colors on both sides of a sheet. Single-pass perfecting will cut days off of large printing jobs and help us to compete in the half-web arena," says DeLarso.

Gains in process efficiency are not limited to buying new equipment. Some printers are compressing time by maintaining and optimizing the performance of their existing equipment and processes.

Total Production Maintenance (TPM) is a set of methods that focus on maximizing equipment throughput. "Printers practicing TPM can realize significant acceleration of equipment production speeds," according to Ken Rizzo, formerly a senior technical consultant for the Graphic Arts Technical Foundation, Sewickley, Pa., and author of Total Production Maintenance: A Guide for the Printing Industry.

TPM, notes Rizzo, addresses six areas of major operational and mechanical losses that typically occur on printing equipment. The usual causes, he says, include poor operation control, inadequate training and education programs, and inconsistent operator techniques (coupled with a fix-it-when-it-breaks approach to maintenance).

Six target areas

Rizzo cites the following production situations or conditions that TPM methods seek to fix:

1. Equipment failures and downtime.

2. Machine set-up or makeready. This factor is especially important because of the trend toward shorter run lengths.

3. Equipment idling and minor stoppages. "Minor stops are normally easily remedied, but can greatly impede effective equipment operation," says Rizzo. "Closely focusing on equipment operation conditions is the only way to eliminate the defects and abnormalities that cause the minor stops."

4. Reduced running speeds. Notes Rizzo, "This is further aggravated because a given machine is not operating at its designed rated speed. For printers, the main goal is bringing actual production speeds closer to the optimal or possibly rated speeds."

Operators typically run presses at slower rates because of sheet marking concerns, slow-drying waterbase coatings or slow UV curing, poor fit and register accuracy, difficulties feeding sheets or delivering sheets or signatures, picking of sheet coating, mechanical problems, and fear of wearing out the equipment.

5. Defective product. Any machines that are not properly maintained can produce products that customers will not accept.

6. Start-up losses or reduced equipment losses. "A lot of operators lose productivity because they're tweaking or adjusting the device," Rizzo explains, who adds that elements influencing start-up losses include equipment conditions, adequacy of materials, established operating procedures, and the knowledge or skill level of operators.

"Printers that focus on eliminating these losses are surprised at how much capacity they can gain, which can translate into increased sales," says Rizzo, who now serves as process coordinator for Gulf States Paper Corporation and is based in Bethel Park, Pa.

Gains are in the details

Paying attention to the details of operations can yield significant reductions in turnaround times, advises Tim Dalton, president of Dalton Print Consulting, Hewitt, N.J.

Dalton, who tells printers to document what happens in each step of production and how long each phase takes, insists that a company can't improve production throughputs unless its managers understand the details of the process. Thus, a top goal is to reduce or eliminate stand times.

"On an individual basis, writing up a job ticket, preflighting a job, imaging film, or performing a press makeready usually consumes only a few minutes, yet we still see jobs taking days to get through production," says Dalton.

Properly utilized, Dalton says, the focus-on-the-details process can yield dramatic results. It's fairly common for companies that embrace this approach to slash makeready times by 50% or more, he contends.

Using quality methodology

Some printers have unleashed turnaround speeds by using quality improvement programs. R.R. Donnelley & Sons Company's embrace of Six Sigma quality methodology provides managers with a framework for identifying the root causes and delays in the manufacturing process. Donnelley is an information services company with annual sales of nearly $5.2 billion and 34,000 employees.

"We attack turnaround by analyzing and understanding our process so that we get it right the first time," explains Darrell Davis, Donnelley's co-director of continuous improvement. "Eliminating potential mistakes results in faster turnaround."

Davis says that understanding the process begins with understanding a customer's needs, followed by a manager's focus on the inputs that yield the outputs. He says, "We aggressively manage the science of print and practice content management to maximize the art of customer service."

Reaching the right person

Communication is essential to quality control, in Brad Garlich's view, attributes most production delays and mistakes to poor communications. He says that printers need to implement a communications infrastructure that quickly delivers job information to the correct person.

At Clear Print, Pick and his staff developed a proprietary quality control system called Clearcheck, a 56-step quality control system that eliminates mistakes that slow the process. An 81/2x13" quality control card listing the 56 steps accompanies each print job; before a given job can advance in the shop, members of the department that last worked on the job must sign off that all procedures were completed.

"The card is the culmination of the workflow processes and standards that we've identified," says Pick. "It's also a means to standardize how we apply our quality methods because the card travels with every job." Pick says the system has produced stellar results: Clear Print has not missed a fixed deadline in 20 years.

The company developed its own computerized rapid quote system for frequently quoted jobs.

"Our sales representatives can punch in a little bit of data and a quote will come out in 30 seconds," says Pick. "Our sales representatives can bypass the estimating department on a variety of commonly ordered products and give customers quotes faster. The faster they quote the job, the faster we can get the job."