Random Rosenisms

We’ve seen far too many printers struggle with their schedules because of customers’ on-press approvals.

We all know that you can’t control customers, but you can influence their behavior. That’s why it’s so important to manage the process of customer press approvals from beginning to end – from scheduling to choreographing every step of the process until the customer has signed off and left happy.

Okays go much more quickly if you manage the process properly, so your press schedules won’t get blown away (as frequently) by long customer approvals.

Schedules are improved and customers are happy -- two nice payoffs. But there’s an even bigger payoff if you get it just right. When printers show their customers how well they manage the process of matching proofs, many of those customers stop coming for okays because they’re no longer worried about the way the printer produces color.

Yes, it’s true that designers and agencies are paid to sign off on jobs, and they rarely miss an opportunity to see a job on press. But a surprising number of corporate clients quickly find other things to do and stop visiting the printer for press okays. In fact, we’ve seen a number of printers cut their number of customer press approvals in half. Yes, in half!

Profit leading printers are using press okays to build customer confidence in their processes, while improving their productivity and helping their scheduling. It sounds too good to be true, but you should give it a try!

If you’d like to have our Six Rules for Managing On-Press Approvals, just e-mail us and we’ll send you a WORD file. There’s no charge.

When printers improve their productivity, lots of good things happen, but there’s one bad thing that often happens by accident. Prices come down even before customers have begun beating up the printer.

Here’s why: If you reduce your make-ready times or improve your running speeds, it’s logical to raise your production standards. But when you increase your production standard for estimating purposes, you can wind up giving the entire productivity increase away in the form of lower prices.

Let’s look at an example:
A printer selling a six-color press for $375 per hour cut his average make-ready time by fifteen minutes, cut his average wash-up time by ten minutes, and increased net running speed from 8,500 to 9,000 sheets per hour.

In a two-sided 7500 sheet work-and-turn form, this reduced average production time by almost exactly one half hour (twenty five minutes in set-up and wash-up, plus about five minutes in running time). When the shorter production time was used for estimating, the half-hour time saving was passed along to the customer – until the estimating hourly rate was increased to reflect the higher productivity.

At the old hourly rate of $375, the customers were accidentally saving $188 on the cost of presswork, because the time for producing the two-sided sheet was reduced from 3.5 hours to 3.0 hours. Only when the estimating hourly rate was raised to $440 did the price for the presswork stay the same – $1318.

We know that everyone is facing relentless pricing pressure, so if you have to lower your prices, go right ahead. And if your productivity has improved, you have plenty of room to lower prices. But be sure you’re doing it on purpose, not by accident!

After all, customers don’t need any additional help in forcing printers to lower prices, and printers need all the help they can get in building profitability.

If you’d like to have a tool for evaluating the effect of productivity changes on pricing, just e-mail us and we’ll send you a small easy-to-use EXCEL file that shows you how much you can (and should) charge for press time if you change your productivity standards. There’s no charge.