Graphics Arts vs. a Print Manufacturing company

For years industry luminaries’ have touted the need and importance for printers to make the transition from Graphic Arts to Print Manufacturing but no one has provided a clear blueprint to make this transition… until now.

Why should a printer want to make the transition?
The business has never been more competitive for printers, on all fronts:

1. Digital print manufacturers have easy to migrate websites and provide high quality, super low-cost printed products like picture books for $15 for quantity 1, and business cards ($500 for $9.99 including shipping). They will keep expanding their market presence based on their efficiencies and scalability.
   
   
2. Internet Content- many documents that used to be printed are no longer, phone books, catalogs, magazines, and newspapers are all available online, but no longer in print… expect this trend to continue.
   
   
3. Ipad/iPhone mobile devices — much like internet content, a lot of previously printed materials are now available on your personal mobile device.

The number of printers and the capacity of printing equipment exceed customer demand. As the demand for certain types of print has dropped the industry availability of the equipment has grown. This means, it is more competitive than ever, and printers have to be efficient and profitable if they expect to survive.

Efficiency and profitability are something that most printers are NOT very good at. 75% of all printers make less than a 4% profit margin on sales*. For every $10,000 in sales, the printer makes $400. This means, that for every $400 in waste, the printer needs to make an additional $10,000 in sales!!! 50% of all printers, 1 out of 2 make less than 2% profit margin, which brings the dollar amount down to $200 in waste requires $10,000 of additional sales to make up for it. With the lack of sales, NO PRINTER can afford $200 of waste in a month never mind a day or week. Reducing waste has to be the #1 priority for most printers.

The fastest way to reduce and eliminate waste:

1. Define what “waste” is, jobs that are rejected by one customer, could be valid for another; the fact is customers have different expectations, and without qualifying those expectations a printer is vulnerable to be at a customer's mercy to provide free or greatly discounted jobs which cost a printer thousands of profits every year. How to define “waste?” Define a plant tolerance using E-Factor and communicate to all individuals within the company — especially production operators and salespeople, they are the two groups that are most apt to cost your company money. E-Factor provides Product Conformance metrics, not only process control like most programs.
   
   
2. Make Operators directly accountable for output meeting plant tolerances. How do you make them accountable? By providing time, tools, and training for operators and salespeople to help them understand what your “profitable” manufacturing capabilities are in E-Factor and allow them to assess for every output so they can adapt the device to meet E-Factor before unnecessary waste is produced.

Product Conformance is NOT a process control. Most assessment programs assess process control metrics like density, dot gain, G7® gray balance, without assessing: Does the job meet customer expectations. ChromaChecker assesses process control and Product Conformance, which ensures the product meets customer expectations. See the associated write-up on E-Factor.

ChromaChecker™ provides a blueprint to transition from Graphic Arts to Print Manufacturing.

ChromaChecker™ works with virtually every measurement device and software program that measures color, meaning, no need to retrain operators or change the way things are done today. ChromaChecker™ complements your existing process and adds many capabilities that allow you to migrate to a Print Manufacturer.

1. ChromaChecker™'s E-Factor procedure allows a company to create Product Conformance tolerances which define when a printed product passes or fails plant tolerances. If the output device's E-Factor is equal to or less than plant tolerance — then the product passes and will meet or exceed customer expectations.
   
   
2. ChromaChecker™ provides a Print Inspector dashboard which provides a 50,000-foot view of the entire manufacturing organization in near real-time. Shows if all output devices are manufacturing color within Plant desired E-Factor and sends out e-mail notifications if devices start failing conformance, or raw materials fail conformance.
   
   
3. Accountability Inspector allows every operator to know what devices they are responsible for checking, and how often, and provides email reminders and multi-color (red- fail, yellow- overdue to be checked, green-checked and conforming) icons on the Print Inspector dashboard which shows the entire plant what has been checked and what hasn’t within a defined timeframe.
   
   
4. Performance Inspector allows a company to search for any manufactured job and provide a report on how the job is printed compared to company E-Factor and industry requirements like G7® and ISO conformance parameters. This allows for immediate proof that the job is printed as expected, and no discount or makes good is required.
   
   
5. Instrument Inspector not only allows periodic assessments for every instrument to ensure consistency to themselves but also quantifies the differences between instruments and can harmonize the differences providing more tolerance for actual manufacturing, eliminating waste.
   
   
6. Accountability inspector allows devices like light booths, measurement instruments, fountain solutions, Nip rollers, cylinder pressures, and plate setters to be assigned to indirect product personnel to ensure that they are operating correctly and not corrupting the process by being imprecise or not accurate due to improper maintenance.
   
   
7.  Operator Interface works on a web browser or iPad to not only allow an operator to receive an instant report showing that their given manufacturing device is producing acceptable work, but provides details on what they need to change if it's not. It also allows them to easily log their maintenance which shows up on the main Print Inspector dashboard when required.
   
   
8. Event Manager allows a company to track the mean time between failures of devices, and ChromaChecker's data logger allows a company to associate temperature and humidity with every measurement within the plant and proactively assess cause and effect relationships.
   
   
9. ChromaChecker™ can eliminate dozens of handwritten notebooks providing a centralized recordkeeping database with trend data for all devices that exceed ISO 9000 conformance requirements, and closely follow Six Sigma methodologies.

ChromaChecker™ allows a Graphic Arts company to transition to a Print Manufacturing process in defined steps in a short period of time which will provide a guaranteed immediate return on investment. Follow our steps to success to decrease waste and become more profitable in order to succeed in the future.

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* PIA 2017 Flash Report Printer Financials (January 2017)