Ways to Improve Printing Production Efficiency in the Period of Low Profit

The formation of the era of meager profits is an inevitable trend of social and economic development. As the relationship between supply and demand becomes increasingly balanced, the market becomes increasingly rational and mature, competition among enterprises intensifies, and average profits gradually decline. The era of profiteering has become a thing of the past.

Printing companies also face the same situation. A few years ago, a set of sophisticated equipment could determine the company's orders, benefits, and even scale. Nowadays, when everyone's equipment is in the same grade, the business model changes, focusing on price, service and quality. Some large enterprises began to reflect on and think about it, refocusing their attention from outside the enterprise into the enterprise, and thinking about how to increase production efficiency. According to the statistical data of management consulting companies, the average production efficiency of printing companies is only 60% to 65%. If they can be increased to 80% to 85%, the profits and profits of enterprises will be greatly increased. Therefore, improving efficiency is the biggest challenge and the only way that printing companies are currently facing.

Prerequisites for Process Design Management to Improve Efficiency

Machine operators often encounter such a thing: the work arrives, but the paper and printing plate are not ready; the printing work order is not regularly arranged, and the work piece is inserted from time to time; the printing is completed but it is difficult to carry out post-press processing. , delay delivery time. All of this is due to unreasonable process design.

Process design is an instructional and highly technical work. It is the comprehensive application and reasonable matching of the various processes of the color reproduction process. Specifically, under the conditions of production equipment and raw materials owned by an enterprise, stable operating data and equipment material performance data are obtained, and the variable factors and the relationship between each other and the changing rules of each production process are found. In the process of replication, the materials, equipment and personnel in each process are most reasonably matched to ensure that the process design is coordinated with the actual operation. This work determines the copy quality, production cost, and production efficiency of color print replicas.

According to the actual situation of the company, the following matters should be noted in the process design.

(1) When the salesman is designing the process construction list, he shall explain in detail according to the requirements of the customer, in particular for printing and binding requirements, and delete the redundant information. A simple and clear process sheet can bring a lot of convenience to the operator.

(2) Printed construction orders should be arranged in accordance with the order of magnitude: If several orders are 10,000 to 20,000 printed, they can be arranged in accordance with the specifications from big to small, and the intermediate orders can save the cleaning of impression cylinders. time. In addition, companies generally have multiple printing presses and can arrange the same size of work on the same machine.

(3) The printing construction order should be arranged according to the amount of ink from small to large. If the first printing list is a large amount of ink, then the next list is difficult to immediately reduce the amount of ink, you want to quickly withdraw the ink only constantly curled ink, the machine opened and stopped, wasting time.

(4) Separate the offset and coated paper. If a machine prints offset paper for a long time and reprints coated paper, it is conservatively estimated that at least red and green blankets should be replaced. If the machine for printing copperplate paper reprints offset paper, replace it with a good one, otherwise a good blanket will be scrapped.

(5) When designing a layout, it should be considered whether certain types of publishing will cause unnecessary trouble during printing, such as "ghosting" phenomenon. The arrangement of layout is reasonable. Although the "ghosting" phenomenon cannot be completely eliminated, it can be reduced.

(6) Printing some special products. For example, if the entire book is not marked with a page number, the sample draft will be sampled. Special attention should be paid to the process review. Passwords are prone to problems such as sequential troubleshooting and errors on the front and back. How to make up for it? From the point of view of the machine operator, as long as the serial number is marked on the sample and the main content of this page is added, the operator of the machine can save a lot of time when preparing for printing, thereby improving the production efficiency.

(7) Applying a color patch looks like a very simple process, but bad labeling can cause trouble for follow-up work.

If the color label is too close to the finished product, there is no way to cut it off; if the color label is too close to the outside, it may not be printed. This will cause inconvenience to the inspection of printing and semi-finished products, and often requires slowing down to remedy the situation.
In addition, only a good process design scheme is not enough, but also must pay attention to the process management and effective monitoring in the printing production, improve the execution ability of the process plan, and control the entire process.

Prepress processing capabilities improve efficiency conditions

During the tour exhibition of Heidelberg China Ltd., an engineer calculated an account for the guests: Short-run printing has become the trend of the world today, assuming that the start-up cost of the printing press is 1,000 yuan/hour, calculated in 20 sets/day. Due to inaccurate overprinting, when asked to extend the school edition, the cost per set is approximately 20% of the starting cost, which amounts to 4,000 yuan per day; due to the patching of the dirty spots on the layout, the operation of cleaning, dirt, film marks, eraser, etc., each set The increase in cost is 20% of the start-up cost, for a total of 4,000 yuan/day: Due to the unstable tone of the layout image, the lack of print levels leads to constant color recovery. Each version increases the cost to 30% of the startup cost, which amounts to 6,000 yuan/day. ~ Due to spelling, drying, and printing, it costs more than 14,000 yuan. It can be seen that "the concept of plate making operations centered on printing" is very important.

"The idea of ​​platemaking operations centered on printing" is to make a high quality prepress plate making process. The solution is as follows.

(1) Optimize prepress equipment and output correction. The linear adjustments were made to the key factors affecting the stability of the film graphic document, such as the performance of the row machine and the quality of the film.

(2) Shaiban must grasp three centers of gravity. The layout is clean, the sunning is accurate, and the graphic adjustments match the printing characteristics. Therefore, the dependence on artificial experience is reduced, and the time for loading plates and adjusting plates is greatly shortened; the plate does not need to be repeatedly pulled again and again, which reduces the overprinting inaccuracy caused by the plate deformation and improves the printing efficiency.

(3) Establish a standardized and data-based platemaking workflow. In the process of copying, proofing and production, specific parameters regarding dot gain, paper quality and ink standards are adhered to, ensuring the visual consistency of the proofs and prints.

Standard Operation Improves Efficiency

The quality of the printed matter and the level of efficiency, process control is the key, standard operation is guaranteed.

The construction slip conveys all the information in the printing process and is the basis for printing operations. As a printing operator, it is necessary to carefully read and comprehend the contents of the printed construction documents before production and do a good job of printing preparation and printing.

(1) Printing preparation and printing work.

1 Paper preparation: According to the number of paper sheets in the construction, check the paper and understand the printing suitability of the paper.

2 plate preparation: operators in the printing plate collection, preservation and use of all aspects of careful inspection, proper protection, to avoid unnecessary losses.

3 ink and fountain solution preparation: According to different substrates used different ink and fountain solution: According to the process, materials and product requirements, the fountain solution pH, conductivity, raw liquid content, temperature and other parameters set.

4 determine the printing color sequence: a comprehensive consideration of the brightness of the ink, transparency, viscosity, viscosity and original color, paper properties, layout structure, machine type, a reasonable arrangement of printing color sequence.

5 Job Pre-School: Pre-calibrated information is stored in the center console. When needed, the information is transferred and sent to the printing equipment. The equipment is adjusted according to the instructions to improve the production efficiency.

6 plate disassembly and calibration.

(2) Quality inspection during printing.

Both the trial printing stage and the printing process should always draw samples from the delivery department to keep them consistent with the sample. In the printing process, we must strictly follow the work instructions, remember to check what to do before printing, what to do during the printing process, and to ensure the quality of the entire batch of prints through these necessary checks.
(3) After the end of printing, follow-up work shall be carried out according to product requirements and machine production arrangements.

The key to the success of production process efficiency

Printing has entered the digital process in an all-round way, the efficiency will be improved by 5-6 times compared with the traditional operation, the accuracy and quality will be greatly improved, the gap between man-made experience will be reduced and the space cost will be reduced. Therefore, the digital workflow is an inevitable trend of printing development.

At the same time, with the application of high-tech such as color management, automatic imposition, digital proofing, and direct plate making, the development and improvement of new technologies such as PDF file formats, the factors that hinder the popularization and application of digital technologies are gradually disappearing, and advanced output technologies have been added. The intelligent management of the work flow makes the various control information in the prepress processing, printing, and postpress processing processes incorporated into the computer management, digitally controls the information flow, and integrates the entire printing production process into a compact system, eliminating the need for Many human factors influence the organic combination of production and management. The operator can monitor the status of the product in the production process at any time, proofing at any point, allowing the last minute to modify. The whole process is convenient, accurate, reliable, and the production efficiency is improved. There is no loss or change of color level information in the middle. In particular, the transmission of the outlets is accurate, one data goes to the end, and the product quality is stable. Today, digital workflow has formed a beautiful landscape in many advanced printing companies. It is a profound technological change in the entire printing field and has a revolutionary significance.