Procedure for printed work

[mattf]

Hey all:

I know this subject might not specifically deal with type of press technology, but since my company is printing on a sheetfed press it kind of fits

Anyway, we have a Komori SX29 sheetfed press. Our procedure is as follows for paper:

1) Paper is recieved, goes to pre-press cutter - Specific sheet travels with it to designate job
2) Paper is cut, stack of paper travels to prep area of press.
3) paper is loaded on, press run procedes
4) After printed, goes to designated location for finish cutting

All well and good, probably everyone has the same or near same style or procedure. One thing I have been trying to push is the protection of printed jobs. An example, we do potentially a 15K saddle stitch booklet, but the schedule doesn't have it going to the finish cutter for 2 days because of backlog on the cutter. Thats fine because the schedule won't have it going out for another 4 days, so its ok to station it for 2 days at the staging area to be finished cut. However, at this moment there is no protection measure of the job. It will sit there on a skid with no covering over it.

With that, I wanted to ask anyone for their take on how their print shops operate in terms of protecting work if there is some downtime in the jobs production flow. I big thing I stress a lot with workers is that when customers come in with a Press Check they see the work unprotected and in a seemingly random area. That might turn off customers, and creating a specific area or a specific way to protect jobs would be a plus. Any advice or currently implemented procedure that anyone uses would be swell to hear in order to get myself some ideas on how we ourselves would pursue this type of procedure.

 

[Vee]

I've toured a LOT of print shops this year, primarily packaging printers. Almost all cover their jobs sitting around on skids. Some used plastic tarps, some just turned the top sheet upside down so that visitors wouldn't see who and what they are printing, as well as protecting the printed work.

 

[rich apollo]

What do you want to protect the jobs from?

If you're not running in a heatset or UV cured environment, you may inhibit drying and increase the incidence of offsetting. If you covered a job that had a varnish on it, I'm pretty sure you'd have some nice, big bricks.

 

[nhprinter]

Hi Matt,

In our shop we have no humidity control so we always cover jobs with a good heavy plastic that are going to sit for a while. In the summer we try to keep moisture out of them and in the winter we try to keep the moisture in the sheet. Other than that we have no reason to protect them. Everyone in the shop knows how to treat press sheets.

(PS) We've never had a problem with offset or blocking by covering piles.

 

[mattf]

Hey all:

Thanks for the replies! To comment on Rich Apollos post, you pop up in the weirdest ways, This has to mainly do with "aesthetic" issues. Different terms, a pet project from up high, yay for bosses.

I have been instructed to find a way to "protect" jobs after they are off the press for two reasons. 1) We do Press Checks for some customers. It might be bad mojo to have a job on a skid next to our finisher cutter, but I don't know. Seemingly, the take I got was this: "If this was my job, how would I want it to be treated, with respect and maturity or like a teenager handling his room?" I guess if we seemingly treated a job "poorly" when someone else was in for a Press Check would they feel confident we were taking care of their product? We do have a finisher cutter, and the pressman push the jobs to the cutter to be cut at whatever schedule its on. We have a Komori press with Aqueous coating, so essentially it dries "instantly". That is a small reason but I think the main reason:

2) Aesthetic reasons. Administrative side wants it to look pretty and organized. Pretty as in jobs lined up in a straight line near the cutter and organized as in every job looks "the same" and cannot be differentiated when a customer comes in. Uniformity and organization. I know this can be done, whether this is something that needs specific attention is another story.

 

[LoweringTheBar]

This one is easy. Never, Never, Never let client's in your pressroom! They just ask stupid questions and try to tell us how to run our business, or they get their neck ties caught in the press rollers and then sue us for negligence.

Press checks should be done in a separate room with its own viewing booth just for clients, with a production manager and/or sales rep on hand. The last thing you want is a client interacting with a pressman, because they leave and tell other potential clients how some hairy, illiterate, drunken pervert tried humping their leg between press pulls at your shop. Behavior like that should be limited to the sales offices.

The production manager can then go to the pressman and instruct them how to adjust the color. This also prevents clients from making incredibly stupid color adjustment requests to your pressman like "can you make this photo look, I don't know, happier?" or "can you bring up the orange a skoch?"

Trust me, none of your pressman enjoy dealing with your clients anyway unless they happen to be hot women, or just any women actually... oh, and possibly sheep.

 

[PeterA]

I am not sure what the problem is - are you concerned about humidity change or that it just doesnt look good - I have always found specially printed stack cards look good - and am not sure about the comment from some one about not wanting clients in the pressroom - if you are a good printer you have nothing to worry about - The real problem always is that clients think you can deliver it next day after printing.
Peter

 

[mattf]

You got the problem down...

You got the problem down...

I am not sure what the problem is - are you concerned about humidity change or that it just doesnt look good - I have always found specially printed stack cards look good - and am not sure about the comment from some one about not wanting clients in the pressroom - if you are a good printer you have nothing to worry about - The real problem always is that clients think you can deliver it next day after printing.
Peter

Humidity change isn't much of an issue here, we have humidifiers and environmental controls in the plant. The issue is that the way we potentially would organize multiple jobs might not look to pleasing to customers. If you had a good number of jobs on skids next to each other with no real way dividing them, identifying them, and they aren't really neatly stacked, would you want to go back to the printer that did it? Again, all about image of taking care of the customer is the idea here.

I have heard from some of you that we shouldn't even have customers in the plant. As commonsensical that is, customers aren't . Some of our customers want to make sure their printed work is done to their specifications, nothing less. Some of these customers, if not all of them, are very high profile clients of ours and they hold major accounts within the company. Piss them off and we have lost revenue. The whole reason we do Press checks it to ensure our customers that we are producing their work at the quality they require. This is one of the major driving points within the sales department and how they market the company.

To Peters comment, clients realize a lot of times that we stick to schedules, and if they think just because we print their work on a given day that the next day it will be ready is very ignorant to say the least. Most customers are good about understanding that there are multiple steps to get a job done, but we will always stick to the schedule as it has been planned out, no exceptions.

To LoweringTheBar's comments, if you have a proofing booth in a separate room and have someone running back and forth giving the appropriate information to the pressman, isn't that a waste of time and effort? Lean dictates eliminating waste, and if the customer is in another room at a booth there would be major gaps in time when trying to get the correct quality. I'll take our facility for example, if we have a customer go to this proofing booth, the best place for us to place this would probably be about 180 feet away from the press. So the production manager has to walk this line multiple times in order to take the customer out of the way of the pressman while also wasting his own time by walking that route. To me that seems too much added work for our end. And yes, hot woman are a top priority for these guys, sheep I wouldn't want to know

One solution I think I will strive for here commented by Vee to either cover with plastic sheeting or by just turning over the sheet so people don't see the other work. On top would be an identifier to show which job it was. Any other points I'd love to here, thanks for the continued discussion.

 

[Sfdp2300]

Sounds like your managers are worried about first impressions on visiting customers. Reasonably so cleanliness shows a certian amount of professionalism and care.
We run multiple jobs per shift in a 24 hour shop. Most jobs are small orders (500 to 2,000 shts.) so we may stack jobs on top of each other up to 5,000 shts total give or take a few. Providing they are the same size sheet. Running up to 60 different titles in a 24 hr period they can build up quickly. We identify each job with individual skid tickets (which we print ourselves) visable to all with Title / Job#, Time, Date, and next process. We never cover any job unless it is of a sensative material. Most of our customers are repeat customers and they accualy like seeing thier work on the floor. Just make sure that all the top sheets look the same and the stacks deliver nice and neat and rows of work have some since of order in your staging area. Alot of this you will have to depend on your press guys to work neatly.