Benchmarking Productivity -- Pursuing Profitable Pressrooms
Waste Not, Want Not
Similar to run speeds, the amount of planned waste (amount of paper consumed to bring the job up to acceptable quality as a percentage of total paper consumed) and unexpected spoilage (amount of paper lost in production due to quality problems after makeready was completed as a percentage of total paper consumed) vary from job to job based on the run length and number of colors used. Median planned waste for a six-color, very-short-run job (less than 500 impressions) was close to 240 percent and the median amount of unexpected spoilage was 30 percent.
On the other side of the spectrum, the median amount of planned waste for a two-color, longer-run job (more than 10,000 impressions) was just 1.5 percent and the median amount of unexpected spoilage was a mere 0.6 percent.
The median planned waste figures of productivity leaders (firms in the top 25 percent of productivity) were just one-third of the median planned waste figures for the industry as a whole. The differences in planned waste figures were most dramatic for two-color jobs, where the average productivity leader only encountered one-fourth the planned waste that other printers experienced.
Differences are even more evident when examining unexpected spoilage; productivity leaders encountered median spoilage figures that were just 20 percent of what other printers encountered. This indicates that productivity leaders were on average five times more productive than other printers with regard to unexpected spoilage. For six-color jobs, in particular, productivity leaders were almost 10 times as productive as other printers.
Planned waste and unexpected spoilage figures have been declining since 2002 for just about all types of printing. When compared to 2002 waste statistics, planned waste figures for all printers are down by an average of 4.6 percent for jobs of all sizes and colors. Unexpected spoilage figures for all printers experienced a comparable decline of 0.8 percent for all job sizes and colors in comparison to 2002 spoilage statistics.
