How does a book printing company increase equipment utilization

How to increase the utilization rate of equipment is a topic that is “lasting forever” and is also the focus of discussion in printing plants, especially in book printing. Due to the seasonality of the printing business, books and periodicals printing factories have caused severe business saturation, over-capacity operation of equipment, and even maintenance and maintenance of equipment for months. On the other hand, in the off-season, the equipment operating rate is seriously insufficient. Most of the equipment is idle. The consequence is that either the equipment is prematurely aged due to lack of maintenance for continuous work, performance is reduced, and economic efficiency is not good; either the staff’s income is low and the staff is unstable. How to solve this problem? The author talks about his point of view from three aspects.

Balanced traffic is the prerequisite for improving equipment utilization

For book printing companies, the balance of business seems to be a fantasy, but as the enterprise's managers require business balance is understandable, the business imbalance will produce the following drawbacks: First, due to the production of oversaturated season, the workshop out of task There is no time for the repair and maintenance of the machine, even the sickly production of the equipment, which eventually leads to accelerated aging of the equipment, reduced performance, and even some equipment is scrapped because it has not been repaired and maintained for a long time. This is a common problem in the printing of state-owned books and periodicals, because the important indicator for the state-owned printing enterprises to assess the leadership of enterprises is economic efficiency. In order to complete the indicators, at any cost to open the machine for production, this concept and model directly led to the aging of state-owned printing and printing equipment to speed up. Second, employees are not rested for a long time, they are physically tired, inefficient, and their print quality is reduced. Third, in the off-season, idle equipment, low operating rate, low employee income, and ideological instability are not conducive to technological advancement and talent cultivation.

According to the author's many years of production practice experience, it is concluded that to achieve a balanced business volume, there must be a fixed number of businesses and fixed customers. The first is to establish a long-term cooperative relationship with publishers. In the off-season, they mainly focus on the publishing business. The publishers have many color printing services, high added value, and reasonable prices and quick settlement. The second is to strengthen ties with party and government agencies. Care about national affairs and pay close attention to all possible printing businesses. Party and government agencies have many meetings and activities, and they are indispensable for prints. Some activities have a large amount of printing; the third is to strengthen contact with magazines. After a certain number of national magazines have been developed, they will surely be printed. The fourth is to strengthen contact with post offices and distribution departments. The magazine must be printed first through the post office and distribution department. The production season of books and periodicals printing factories is generally within 3 months before the school starts and about 6 months a year. This period of time mainly produces teaching materials and supplementary books. The above businesses, such as periodicals, are available every month. As for the idle equipment caused in the off-season production season, it is also possible to adjust the tasks of the auxiliary equipment according to the load of the equipment in the peak season.

The normal operation of the equipment is the guarantee for improving the equipment utilization rate

1. Do a good job of repairing and maintaining equipment. Maintenance and maintenance of equipment are the key to maintaining the normal operation of the equipment. There must be a strong system as a guarantee. Whether it is the off-season or peak season of production, equipment maintenance and repair must be done as always, and the rules of the system must be strictly enforced. Under the excuse of tight tasks, maintenance is not carried out, and even the equipment is equipped with “disease” production. Production management personnel must understand the importance of equipment maintenance and maintenance, and arrange production to consider the time of equipment maintenance and maintenance. As a business leader, we must accept this concept. Failure to timely repair and maintenance will inevitably result in a reduction in equipment performance and efficiency.

2. Improve staff quality, good at foreseeing problems, finding problems, and solving problems. The operator is the main body of the equipment. The production level and quality of employees with high level of responsibility and strong responsibility in the actual production are high. Among the employees, the captain is the key, as the captain must not only open the machine but also repair the machine. Anticipating problems, finding problems, and solving problems are the essential qualities of the captain. Only in this way can we improve equipment utilization and increase production efficiency.

3. Make full use of all advanced features of the equipment to increase production efficiency. Some imported equipment has many functions, such as the Heidelberg CD102 machine, with CIP3, automatic ink correction, ink data storage, automatic printing, automatic register, automatic cleaning of the rubber roller, etc. If these functions are fully utilized, it will not only save time but also improve quality. . No automatic printing press has at least 25 minutes from the previous version to the normal printing. If the function is complete, the upper version will normally start for about 10 minutes. If printing a short version, the advantages will be even more obvious. If using CTP plate making, using CIP3's ink preset function will save time and save paper.

4. Strict shift system. The transfer system of many printing factories focuses on the transfer of production tasks. I think that we should also pay attention to the transfer of equipment. It is very important to make equipment logs because it allows the next class to understand the operation status of the previous class of equipment. What problems and how to solve problems can better anticipate some failures, prepare in advance, and further improve work efficiency.

Scientific dispatch is a means to increase equipment utilization

Scientific and rational scheduling can not only increase production efficiency, but also improve the utilization of equipment. Since the operating rate of equipment in off-season is not high, the impact of scheduling on equipment utilization is not obvious, but in the peak season of production, the impact of scheduling on equipment utilization is very great.

1. Carefully select production equipment and processes. The production process must not only consider the properties of the product, but also fully consider the performance of the equipment. The product's attributes (opening, printing, binding, quality requirements, delivery time) are different, and the selection of platemaking, printing, and binding machines must also be different. If quality products with high quality requirements are printed in single-color or dual-color machines, quality cannot be guaranteed, and tasks may not be completed on time. If products suitable for web printing are printed on lithographic machines, the quality may be improved, but greatly affected. Timeliness; if the products of more than 100,000 Indians are taken in conventional plate making, and CTP is not used, it will not only affect the time and quality, but also does not save money because the CTP plate making time is short, the quality is high, and the anti-imprinting force is high. The CTP version is enough, but the conventional version is more than 2 sets; if the products suitable for SM52 printing are printed on the CD012 machine, it will be a huge waste; similarly, if the sticking machine is not used, use the glue production line. Collating machines to bind single-page products not only fail to guarantee quality, but also greatly reduce the efficiency. This fully illustrates the importance of selecting production tools. Only by selecting suitable production equipment can the utilization of equipment be improved.

2. Develop a detailed production plan. The importance of production planning is self-evident, and scientific production plans are an important means to increase the utilization of equipment. In the peak season of production, printing plants generally use the time-reversal method to make plans, and calculate from the delivery time-packaging time-binding time-printing time-making time. Due to the tight time, it is impossible to let each process time have a vacant situation, that is, each production process must not stop waiting for the previous process. Only such a production plan can increase the utilization rate of the equipment. In addition, for a large number of products or products that need to be delivered in phases and in batches, a method of matching printing and batch binding is required. If all the pages are printed and then the binding is started, the binding equipment stops or the binding time is not enough.

3. Supervise and coordinate the production of various processes. Supervision and coordination are important duties of production dispatchers. In accordance with the production plan, inspections are conducted on the production of various processes to identify problems and solve problems as soon as possible. The scope of inspection includes production schedules, process requirements, product quality, etc. Inspection is an important means of ensuring quality and timeliness. Only problems that arise in production can be discovered during the inspection process in order to avoid accidents. Some printing companies have now formulated very detailed quality standards and process requirements, but quality has not only increased but there have also been quality accidents. Managers are confused and employees are confused. Managers say that employees do not follow the system, and employees say that managers are poorly managed. Recriminating each other, solving problems, and causing contradictions. This is the issue of supervision and coordination. No matter how sound the system is, if there is a lack of supervision, the system will be virtually useless. The management personnel are the system's planners and should also be the implementers. The employees are only the system's adherents. When employees are out of compliance in the process of compliance, if there is no supervision or inspection, the employees will be indifferent. Therefore, as managers, earnestly perform the duties of supervision and coordination, identify problems in a timely manner, solve problems, and coordinate the contradictions among processes, so as to promote efficiency.

Millions of militia

Reprinted from: Print Quality and Standardization