PIA Sets the Table --Dickeson
March 2003
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Take a hard look at the included table. Ronnie Davis and Steve Kodey, of Printing Industries of America (PIA), provided us with the basic data. It's taken from the last 10 years of annual Ratio Studies PIA supplied its members.
In 1992 the series was modified to report sales by printing firms of "manufactured" products. The classification of "profit leaders" as companies with 8 percent profit and above on sales was changed. Profit leaders became the top quarter of reporting firms with the highest percentage of profit on value-added sales. Value-added sales are manufactured sales less Direct Order Additives.
First, the table tells us that for the past 10 years there's been only minor variation in value-added as a percentage of total manufactured sales for either the top 25 percent or the lower 75 percent of reporting printing firms. How can this possibly be? There have been major technological advances in these 10 years.
Materials prices have fluctuated. Is this saying that although technology has increased print productivity, and material prices have fluctuated over the 10 years, that those changes were passed through to print buyers? Yes, that's what it shows. Disagree?
In 1992 the series was modified to report sales by printing firms of "manufactured" products. The classification of "profit leaders" as companies with 8 percent profit and above on sales was changed. Profit leaders became the top quarter of reporting firms with the highest percentage of profit on value-added sales. Value-added sales are manufactured sales less Direct Order Additives.
First, the table tells us that for the past 10 years there's been only minor variation in value-added as a percentage of total manufactured sales for either the top 25 percent or the lower 75 percent of reporting printing firms. How can this possibly be? There have been major technological advances in these 10 years.
| Value-added as % of Sales Source: PIA Ratio Studies | |||
| Year | Upper 25% | Lower 75% | Avg. |
| 2002 | 64.03% | 63.87% | 0.16% |
| 2001 | 64.51% | 63.32% | 1.19% |
| 2000 | 64.28% | 63.94% | 0.34% |
| 1999 | 63.91% | 63.69% | 0.22% |
| 1998 | 63.24% | 63.45% | -0.21% |
| 1997 | 63.10% | 62.36% | 0.74% |
| 1996 | 62.02% | 61.78% | 0.24% |
| 1995 | 63.82% | 63.85% | -0.03% |
| 1994 | 64.40% | 63.95% | 0.45% |
| 1993 | 64.98% | 64.01% | 0.97% |
| Avg. | 63.83% | 63.42% | 0.41% |
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Best Practices for Print Automation
Printing Production Management
