Testimonials

"Our plans to develop a major plant expansion were greatly enhanced by the all-day CAD planning session that we had with RBE. It was a dynamic and powerful tool that accomplished much more in the time than I had expected. It provided us with the clear ability to put our needs together with a workable layout and course of action."

John Berthelsen

President, Suttle-Straus
Waunakee, Wisconsin

Articles

	Printing Impressions
	Ergonomics 101 For Plant Expansion
	By Hal Ettinger

Steve Rudiger, production manager for the Mennonite Press in Newton, KS, shivers at the thought of the way it use to be: "Before, we had our materials stored in a building outside and had to hustle them through the alley. Of course, if the weather was bad, we had all kinds of problems."

Mennonite has been in its new home since September 1986. "Everybody in the plant has really been happy that they've had a facility like this," Rudiger says. "The morale is up and people are positive about coming to work."

A redesign of a printing plant involving layout and equipment locations can redouble productivity by streamlining employees' jobs and enlivening their attitudes. Materials handling, the physical requirements for adding equipment and growth projections, are vital components for successful facility expansion.

"Ergonomics has never been considered in our industry," says John Gels, technical services director of the Graphic Arts Technical Foundation. "As in the case of the carrel concept (stripping station) which is based on the premise that everything in a workstation should be within reach of the operator. It's the most efficient use of the floor area, but also the most efficient use of the people. They don't have to take any steps to be in touch with anything they want."

A plant should be designed so the product will flow without causing workers to backtrack. When there are sufficient storage areas for the product (work in process) as it moves through printing and finishing operations, all of the extra handling will be greatly reduced.

"When you consider that around 60 percent of the factory payroll and indirect labor is involved with materials handling, you can certainly improve productivity by arranging departments in a good way," he says. The unskilled laborers moving materials are draining dollars that could be paid to pressmen and others who are already involved in the printing process.

"I would say that on a two-color, 36-inch press we have probably saved 6 to 10 hours a week in labor and material," Rudiger says. "We only man a two-color press like that with one operator."

The point at which materials handling becomes critical is when a printer converts from a sheetfed to a web operation. The biggest factor is waste--makeready and running waste--the magnitude of which a printer never experiences in a sheetfed operation.

Usually a web must run at a fair speed to get up to production. It is not cost effective to inch along. And during whatever amount of time it takes to get into register, the press is eating paper.

"You're running 1,000 feet a minute at 40,000 impressions, compared to running 10,000 wide open on a sheetfed press," Gels says. "It's a little bit different—meaning you waste paper four times as fast."

One small eight-page web will not be much of a problem. "But you put in about two or three 16-page webs, and you've got a whole new ball game this guy never experienced before."

This is where planning comes in. Plant expansion should be tailored toward projected growth.

Mennonite, for example, has grown much more rapidly during the past five years than it did in the preceding 20. It began in a small section of a strip shopping center, expanded until it took over the whole building and eventually was forced to relocate.

It was a choice between new equipment and expansion, and expansion won. In fact, there was no change in equipment. All the presses were Heidelbergs that were less than four years old. The stitcher-trimmer was brand new.

When planning expansion, printers should project the demands on space that new technology will place upon them. Prepress areas should be built with flexibility in mind because the trend is toward equipment that will reduce labor intensity, but require room for its operation. However, the complexity of some of this equipment requires stringent heating, ventilation and air conditioning capabilities, which translates to a certain amount of mechanical foresight.

Aside from all of these measurable kinds of considerations, though, printers should not neglect the people factor. The lighting, use of building materials and even the color scheme in the working environment can, and does, influence productivity.

  View this page as PDF file

  Back to Article List