Testimonials
“I am very happy with the layout that you put together for us. We are filling up the western side of the building's office space with a design company, a music company and a large format output device. We are going to be rebranding as the COT Media Group later this month. We now need to refine a few Standard Operating procedures to maximize the work flow. Things however are dramatically improved with the new layout. I will keep you posted and please feel free to have anyone contact me for a reference.”
Nigel Worme
Managing Director
COT Caribbean Graphics
Articles
The Georgia Printer
Plant Productivity -The Guiding Light For Printers
By Hal Ettinger
Talking to printers about productivity is difficult because most printers have grown tired of hearing the word again and again in their day-to- day business affairs. Yet the word productivity alone is not offensive but rather intimidating in the challenges it imposes on all printers. Productivity is something you can't live with and can't live without in today's market. Productivity forces all printers, big or small, to come to grips with his or her operations. And while this "operational" soul searching is rather unpleasant, productivity should be a printer's guiding light and a company's operational goal, always striving towards but never reaching.
What Is Plant Productivity?
Is it a better bottom line? Is it a bigger facility or more equipment? It is more employees? Or is it the production of more units with the same or reduced work force? Is it sleepless nights, not meeting deliveries and not being competitive? You be the judge. Big or small shops alike are affected by productivity or the lack of it. The differences are in scale and size.
How Is It Achieved?
Plant productivity is like a three-legged stool. If any one of the legs is weak or nonexistent, the stool will collapse. What is this interrelationship? What is the critical connection? The first leg can be called Plant Layout, the second leg can be called Human Factors, and the third leg, Plant Systems. All printers must consider the primary components that make up plant productivity if they are to grow and prosper.
Plant Layout
Plant Layout consists of plant expendability, material flow, adequate work in process areas and equipment layout. The expendability of a plant layout takes into consideration office and production departments, equipment layout, flow of materials present and future and the way the building is sited on the property. Plant expendability should plan for the construction of future additions onto the present facility. The way people and materials move through an operation will dictate where and how additions in the future are located. Without expansion considerations, printers often find themselves faced with the problems of overcrowding that results in the lack of productivity.
Materials flow can be defined as the movement of raw stock as it moves through the printing operations. Materials flow is critical to the productivity of not only the job being printed but also the overall ease to which employees are required to work. Materials flow affects the moving of materials from one department to the next in addition to the operations that move within a department. All materials should move in a manner that's straight forward in approach. A materials flow that either backtracks or requires accusive handling impacts plant productivity. Anytime a unit (or component of any one job) moves contradictory to a department's natural flow, the department becomes tremendously unproductive.
Adequate work in process areas facilitate materials flow in the sense that it becomes an area to which others functions can be staged, likened to the on-deck circle of baseball. The impact on materials flow without adequate work in process areas is quite severe. Adequate work in process areas is a direct function of material flow. Work in process areas can consist not only of ground level storage, but also multi-tiered racking for skids, thereby utilizing the building's height in those areas.
The equipment layout also become a factor in determining plant productivity. The way press rooms and bindery areas are laid out will facilitate both plant expendability and the ease of which materials can flow to and from the departments. If the production equipment is not located where material moves away from the area to which it is produced, the chance of producing at the designed specification (PH, Feet/Min, Units/Min.) will not be met.
The Human Factor
The second component of plant productivity can be identified as Human Factors. Human factors are the employee support service providing those activities used throughout the work day by the employee such as cafeterias or lunchrooms, lockers, showers, toilet areas, and a first aid office. Support areas become very critical when considering the effects on an employee's attitude and general outlook while working in the plant. The services that are bright, cheerful, well-maintained and in a clean environment greatly impact an employer's productivity. Lunchrooms can become an area where employees have an opportunity to feel better about where they work, along with being suitable for socializing.
Technical training and resource areas also contribute to support services. This technical area is where employees can keep current with technology and where the printer can train inexperienced personnel. Consideration that one gives to employee parking and the way the employer enters the work place further contributes to productivity. If employees don't have to walk great distances, if there are sufficient parking spaces at shift change and if the area where they enter the facility is relatively close to their work area or locker rooms, this greatly impacts an employee's attitude toward his/her work place.
Plant Systems
Plant Systems become the third led of the stool. Without these systems, both plant layout and support services would suffer greatly. Plant systems contribute to the running and control of the overall plant environment, equipment and ancillaries, flammable storage and central support systems (ink, air, chill water, fountain solution). Properly designed plant process systems enable the equipment to run and function at specified speeds. If the plant environment itself becomes overly hot in the summer, or cold in the winter, the people that are working within the operation will be adversely affected. Therefore, the heating, ventilating and air conditioning system (when required) need to be designed in such a manner that they are well engineered for the extremes of weather.
Equipment ancillaries such as dryers on the webs, or spray powder hoods on sheet fed presses are critical to the overall productivity of a plant in so much as supporting the equipment as it runs. A flammable storage area is required in larger operations for the storing and containing flammable liquids, and needs to be considered as a plant system. Plant systems in essence are those mechanical, electrical and plumbing systems that support both plant operation and equipment as they function in a printing operation. A well-maintained, well- engineered plant and process system will contribute greatly toward plant productivity.
View this page as PDF file