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3P, Inc. The Print Productivity Professionals
3P Viewpoints
The following View Points illustrate 3P's approach to web press productivity and return on investment. We work with printers seeking solutions to the Print Productivity Puzzle (3P) shorthand expression for web printers needing to do more in shorter time for less.
Viewpoint 1:
Choose Your Partner Carefully!
You’ve been persuaded that special features, productivity, and/or ROI factors favor recycled, rebuilt and perhaps upgraded web press equipment. You’re in a growing group of large and small web printers to have reached this conclusion.
You now face the challenge of choosing your rebuilder, a challenge much more complex than choosing a new press manufacturer.
Shortcuts
Viewpoint 1
Viewpoint 2
Viewpoint 3
Leverage Your Investment Dollars with 3P's Input!
Viewpoint 4
- Rebuilders have the opportunity of excusing rebuilt press performance by blaming it on the original press design or some element not within his rebuilding scope.
- If rebuilders aren’t required to categorically replace all worn components with new parts, they have countless opportunities to leave parts with uncertain wear lives in place. In fact, start-up and print tests will not show many of these unauthorized short-cuts. The rebuilder is financially motivated to avoid the cost of new parts at the owner’s risk and eventual cost.
- Many rebuilders lack the engineering and manufacturing capabilities to provide you analysis and design input, inspection capabilities, quality control, and documentation required for operating and maintaining web presses.
- Many rebuilders are relatively new, poorly capitalized organizations, which may not be able to meet your project goals or provide longer-term support and assistance.
Caveat emptor!
Viewpoint 2: Are You In Tune?
Your web press was most likely designed for a 50,000 hour service life, and with few exceptions the most popular models can go well beyond 50,000 hours before they give out. Long before a press wheezes its way onto the retirement list, however, it has probably lost its “tune” and become an unaffordable liability.
We’re referring to the unpredictable productivity and print quality of a press which has deteriorated enough to be inconsistent but not enough to break down. Traditionally, a well worn, tired press was relegated to the plant’s less demanding work and productivity allowances were made.
Remember, press costs, including “ownership” and maintenance, are usually less than fifteen to twenty percent of the cost of a printed job. How much downtime, slowed down operating speeds, dragged out make-readies and spoilage can you afford in this competitive environment? How often do you see total job cost raised more than twenty percent by downtime, slow speeds and extra spoilage? Allowing a web press to wear its way into unpredictability and sub-standard performance is probably a luxury you can’t afford!
One of the things we do best is to help you find cost effective, conveniently scheduled ways to restore tired web presses. Most older models can be restored and perhaps upgraded to compete successfully with new presses on short and intermediate job run lengths. Print quality can fully equal that of new models.
You can conserve your capital for higher yield, better return projects and still restore your margins on competitive web work. Give us a call, we’re in business to help you.
Viewpoint 3: Leverage Your Investment Dollars with 3P's Input!
Market and industry trends have brought new equipment alternatives and strategy options:
- Shorter run lengths! Probably this is the most significant single trend in that it has dramatically altered print production economics and lowered the relative importance of press run speed as compared to the press make-ready productivity. The tortoise and the hare!
- Printers pursuing a “niche” strategy. More often printers focus on specific print market niches and thus may need specialized pressroom equipment. This may involve modifications or customizing which doesn’t interest the original equipment manufacturers (OEMs). Special configurations, size changing?
- Printer consolidations and public ownership. ROI! ROI! ROI! Investment dollars for equipment must compete not only with other corporate investment projects but also with corporate acquisition alternatives. Buy a press or buy a company?
- Production economics of new versus “recycled”. OEMs haven’t made obsolete the better models in the “installed base”. In fact some new models haven’t demonstrated the productivity and dependability of the best older models! World 16, M-130, Illuman-Polyman vs. M-1000!
- Printing organization staff reductions. Many of the larger printers have cut deeply into their engineering and technical staffing. They need to subcontract more of their equipment audit and “repair or replace” programs.
- Aging capacity. The larger printers find that, in airline terms, their fleet is aging. It’s not uncommon to find large printers with dozens of web presses and hundreds of units which each year pass beyond their design life into a zone where print quality, reliability, spoilage and overall productivity suffer. Can they be operated profitably?
- An “industry” of web press rebuilders has grown up. The best firms are excellent, the worst are to be avoided! How can the printer be comfortable that he’s in good hands? What’s the cost of shortcuts?
- The best rebuilders also have basic press component enhancements available. These often involve complete remanufacturing to make modifications economically and achieve dimensional accuracy not available with field rebuilding projects. Remanufactured presses are truly better than when new!
- We know the weak aspects of the original design and can redesign.
- We can adapt proprietary enhancements and new press design elements to older models.
- We can install state-of-the-art auxiliaries and controls.
- We may take care not taken in the original manufacturing process.
- The most effective make-ready productivity enhancers can be retrofitted to existing web presses. The printer needn’t buy a new press to buy all but automatic plate changers and perhaps motorized folder change-over capability.
- Capital risk exposure limitation. We meet printers who are concerned that a major printing contract may not be renewed and/or that print production technology will advance to the point where web press investment is redundant or obsolete. They want to meet current and projected production requirements with the lowest practical investment.
Viewpoint 4: Tired Web Presses
We’ve recently spoken to several printers who have “high time” web presses that are becoming less than competitive in today’s demanding markets. These printers often don’t need the high production speeds available from new presses and they say they aren’t in a good position to buy a new press. Yet they hesitate to put much investment in their mostly depreciated old presses. They reluctantly continue with “patch job” maintenance projects and suffer the costs of extra time and waste during make-ready and higher run times and spoilage. It’s not a winning strategy!
There’s another way and it might be wise to check it out. Working with one of our highly qualified strategic partners, we can upgrade, update and enhance your existing press line so that it will perform better than when new. Depending on your production requirements we can reconfigure and even resize your existing press to optimize its productivity on your specialty products. If downtime can’t be scheduled we can work with you to cycle extra press components through the remanufacturing process and swap components with minimum downtime for you, perhaps on a weekend schedule.
It’s a safe bet that such remanufactured equipment will have print quality and production life characteristics fully equal to new presses. ROI will almost always be higher on the remanufactured equipment and, of course, your investment will be much less than for new equipment. It may be that you would choose to upgrade some of your press components and controls during the restoration process.