Some Compelling Views from Line Managers
Roger Ynostroza -- Graphic Arts Online, 12/1/2000
As a kind of contrast to the future-peering, globe-spanning viewpoints offered by visionaries, analysts, and experts in year-end issues like the one you're holding, here's a sampling of more modest but equally compelling points of view, these offered by printers and vendors' representatives attending a recent pressroom seminar. I'll leave off names, titles, and companies to save space.
Some of the quotes are actually attributions, such as one speaker's reference to an estimate that as much as 30% of all printing (which would account for tens of billions of dollars each year) is wasted, spent on job reworks, make-goods, late fees, and lost time.
The same speaker quoted another estimate that printing represents from 10% to 15% of Fortune 1000 companies' indirect costs, leading him to foresee a coming trend in print buying that involves far fewer sources and much higher demands on those that remain. "In an e-procurement environment," the speaker advised, "printers have to figure out what they do best--or at least what they do better than anyone else."
Getting ready for makeready
In a session on "world-class" makeready, several printers emphasized the value of pre-makeready, which involves reviewing job layout, presetting press color and folder settings, and analyzing product consistency so that machine loads can be optimized.
Managers apparently believe that they still have a ways to go in controlling makeready waste on press. When asked the theoretical ideal lowest makeready waste level, as measured in number of unusable signatures, the four printers on one panel answered the following: 500; 2,000; 800 to 1,000; and 1,500 to 2,000.
One pressroom manager stated that, in his web operation, the common saying is that a good plate costs $20 but that a bad plate can cost $1,000 in terms of delays and complications from shutting down the press and restarting it.
Seemingly, one print manufacturing manager after another recommended that, to pin down their baseline performance levels, all presses regularly be "fingerprinted," particularly to establish their dot gain profile.
One technical expert, chairing a session on total production maintenance (TPM), made the point that such activity is not intended merely to keep machinery from breaking down but to optimize the equipment for the best possible performance while it's running. To be most effective, he said, TPM requires 3% to 7% of total available production time, or four to eight hours on machinery that is being operated five days a week. He insists that managers schedule machine maintenance just as they would a chargeable job.
How much of total time is chargeable?
The subject of much discussion at the meeting was the percentage of chargeable time to total available time on a given machine; while these figures vary widely, depending on type of equipment, type of printing, and so on, the general industry average is about 75%. But among the most efficient plants, the figure rises to 85% or more, led by the top performers, whose percentages can go as high as 90% or 91%, further indicating how much work is ahead for the bulk of the printing industry.
Finally, several printers dispelled the popular assumption that, over time, production employees somehow absorb a vast understanding of the entire printing process since they're exposed to such operations every day. Curious about workers' knowledge, one company conducted a pop quiz asking employees to estimate the value of a given roll of paper; responses included these figures: $50, $950, and $15,000.
