Looking for cost savings?

Everyone is looking to reduce costs and expenses today. The increasing cost of gasoline, energy and consumables are eating away at profits. So where do you look for cost savings and increased efficiency?

The first place to look is the condition of your printing press and how well it prints. The condition of your press will directly affect your productivity and waste. A maintained press can get to clean sellable copies faster on start-ups, maintain consistency over the pressrun and be a safer place for employees to work.

The press maintenance should regularly check roller settings, dampening system parts and functionality, and web tension. Rollers should be set or checked once a month. A common source of web breaks are dull slitters. Many pressrooms only change a slitter when it causes a web break. Be proactive and change slitters frequently, it will improve productivity by reducing web breaks and make cleaner cuts of the web. Properly set trolleys and nips are also important to controlling the web through the press - improving registration and reducing waste. Trolleys and nips should be set on the outside edges of the web to reduce set-off and quality problems.

Printing is all about consistency - when you shop for paper and ink out of the back of a truck parked in a dark alley, you generally get what you pay for. The consistency and quality of consumables; ink, paper, chemistry, rollers, etc., will directly affect your productivity and quality. The term: Garbage in, Garbage out, applies here. If you are constantly changing your process because of changes in material characterics or conditions, you are losing money and time. It is more cost effective to buy quality products, be consistent, and measure productivity and performance; then going to the bottom of the barrel, rock bottom priced stuff. Guaranteed, inconsistency and constantly changing materials will cost you more in both real dollars and head-aches.

Also look at technology. So many companies are afraid to spend a dollar, even when they would have immediate ROI and improve operational efficiency. If you have a person manually filling ink fountains to your press, invest in ink levelers - the ROI is there.

Lastly, have productivity goals and run speeds for everything you do. Many times, the equipment is run at lower speeds to make it 'easy' on the operation. The press and other equipment is designed to run fast - so don't dog it!