Rated clicks vs. Actual Clicks

[jward1212]

I am evaluating a print shop and I am trying to get some kind of an idea of how efficiently they are utilizing the three digital printers in the shop. I have monthly click counts on all three machines and I have the manufacturer's rated monthly click counts for each.

I understand that downtime, maintenance, and other factors reduce the rated click counts. I am trying to establish what a reasonable monthly volume should be on each machine to see if they are as under-utilized as I think they are.

Any thoughts on an average? is there some other factors that I should be considering?

Thanks in advance.

 

[graficworx]

I don't think you will find this an easy question to answer. One thing to consider is does the machine pay for itself in a month? I've seen shops that produce high end laser prints that print only a few thousand sheets a month, but more than pay for the machine. I've also seen shops that do hundreds of thousands of b&w prints, and don't cover the cost of the lease.

Its a question of volume and profit. Too high of volume and not enough profit is because of bad pricing. A high profit and low volume is because the market will support that.

If your shop is making money on all three machines, and average volume per machine is less that 50% of the monthly max volume, I would say three machines may be too many, but you must also consider peak volumes. If a client needs X amount printed right now, can 2 machines do that, or do you still need 3?

To fully understand this problem, you need to know the accounting stats, the customer relations issues, the production issues, and the vendor information.

 

[easiprint]

Agree with graficworx. You need to study the workload of the shop and if profits are made.

We have three Xerox presses in our shop, and for three weeks out of every four we could quite happily cope with just two machines. However due to the large amount of monthly magazines we run, the fourth week requires three machines to be able to meet the deadlines of that week. The nature of digital print is that it is required quickly so you need to look at the bigger picture. Also you need to take breakdowns into account - machines will rarely be able to run 100% of the time you think they will!

 

[jward1212]

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This is an in-plant situation and the output is primarily B/W work. Rush work appears from time to time but most work is standard turnaround. They are running 600K impressions per month on machines that are rated by the vendor for 6 Million. I am just trying to get an idea of how much to discount the rated impressions to account for down time, setups, etc. thanks to all for responding.

 

[kansasquaker]

Assuming you had a truly even and unlimited workload - which of course doesn't exist - I would guess you should be able to run something like 70% of the theoretical maximum clicks on a machine. I'm basing that on our iGen, it might well be different for other machines. I'd say it's down roughly 5% of the time. 10-15% of the time would be for maintenance and another 10-15% of the potential time for job setup, ripping, proofing etc. I'm sure those number vary somewhat from shop to shop and of course workload is a real factor, but that should give you somewhere to start.

 

[jward1212]

thanks for your input. I appreciate your taking the time to reply.