The team stays the same
The factory runs smoother with fewer interruptions, so the business can take on more work without the next hires.
Home / Industries / Commercial print
A model case: commercial print A commercial printer, one building, 140 people.
About 140 people in one large building: prepress, offset, digital, large format, finishing, a mail house and despatch, with a job passing through five or six hands and about 350 jobs a week.
Book a conversation → Modelled on industry research
Modelled
About 430 hours a week
back across the business, about twelve people’s worth, with the same team.
Modelled
About 7,800 hours a year
today are people walking a five-minute floor to ask, check or tell. Most of that walking goes away.
Modelled
About a third of the week
back for each customer service rep, and about a quarter for the supervisors and the production planner.
Modelled
About 890 press hours a year
no longer lost to waiting on an answer or a short sheet of stock.
Where the figures come from. Modelled on published research and industry documents, and measured where a business’s own systems gave us the numbers. Once we model your business, your own data replaces every one of them. The time is capacity for your team.
A day today
The work no system does.
The systems each do their job. What none of them does is the work around them: the question, the chase, the handover, the redo. It is done on foot, by phone and from memory, and nobody counts it.
With Kula
Every station signs the job through on a phone or a tablet, so the client’s question is answered without a walk, the operator asks at the station and gets the answer from the job record, a schedule change tells every station it touches, and the last sign-off carries the quantities and extras that draft the invoice. The handover is already on the board.
Where is my job?
A client rings. The customer service rep walks to the floor or rings the supervisor, finds the ticket and calls back. About 280 times a week.
The proof round
Prepress sends the proof, the rep chases the client, then retypes their changes into an email to prepress.
The question on the floor
Which stock? Is this the revised file? Fold or score first? The operator walks to find out, and the press stands.
The schedule change
A rush job or a press fault. The planner re-sequences, then walks the floor telling each press, finishing and despatch.
The handover
Each supervisor walks the floor for 45 minutes to gather status, then the production meeting goes over it again. Twice a day.
Job done to invoice
Finance chases the final quantity, the overs and the extra work before the invoice can go.
What the research says
The loss is real before the model is.
The size of the losses in this model comes from published research, not from guessing. These are the findings behind it, with where each one came from.
US$10 to 15 a touch
Every time a person handles a job’s information it costs money and adds a chance of error. A worked example uses 10 minutes of tracking per job.
Avanti Systems; Xerox40 calls a morning
One offset printer reported more than 40 status calls every morning before a shared system, each one a walk to the floor or a call to the supervisor.
Clicarity, GP Offset case studyThe whole role
The industry’s own description of the customer service role is built around status enquiries, schedule updates and shipment confirmations. That is the work the model gives back.
PRINTING United Alliance, Customer Service Representative40% faster
Highly automated print businesses finish jobs 40% faster than the rest.
Smithers, via the printIQ white paperFive or six hands
A print job passes through five or six people, and each one has to find something out: which stock, which file, where the pallet went. Office studies put looking for information at about a fifth of the week; on a print floor it is a walk to the rep or to prepress, and a press standing while it happens.
The commercial printer model; the one-fifth figure from McKinsey, checked by Ainora3,500 orders a month
The average European print provider, about 117 a day. The model uses 350 jobs a week, deliberately lower.
Keypoint Intelligence, via WhatTheyThink Who gets the time back
The same people, a smoother day.
Customer service reps
About a third of their week back, spent with clients instead of on the floor finding out.
Supervisors and the planner
About a quarter of their week back. The floor walk becomes a look at the exceptions.
Press and finishing crews
Fewer stops. Their gain is a machine that keeps running, not fewer hours.
Finance and admin
Invoices drafted from the last sign-off, and the quality records written as the work is done.
Beyond the hours
What else changes.
Growth with the people you have
A ten percent lift in volume would normally mean another rep or two, a supervisor and admin help. The model says that load fits inside the hours released.
Quality records for free
Every sign-off, check and nonconformance lands in one record, which is the evidence quality audits ask for.
Where the figures come from
Modelled on research, measured where we can.
Every minute here is a planning assumption drawn from printing industry figures and a walk of the floor. The business’s own job counts, proofing rounds and shift pattern replace them at calibration. The hours are capacity, not a saving: the same team, more work, fewer interruptions.
Every model is built the way an industrial engineer studies a factory floor: list every role and every task, count how often each one happens, time it as it runs today and as it runs with Kula, and multiply out. Real volumes are used where we have them and published time values where we do not. Every figure is replaced by the business’s own data before it is used for anything, and the time given back is read from what the team actually moves onto Kula, not from asking anyone to log their day.
Every loop, the minutes behind it and the sources are in the full model. We walk through it with you in a conversation, and then build yours from your own systems and a short walk-through with one of your managers.
Book a conversation → Other businesses we have modelled
About 197 hours a week
back to the team across five clubs. The biggest share is staff questions: about 460 a week, each a walk to find the manager today.
See the model →About 9,800 hours
back across the build, and the last house handed over about six months sooner.
See the model →About 1,776 hours
back across the production, and a shoot day that does not have to be added.
See the model → Start here
See what Kula gives back in your business.
Tell us a little about your business and we will model yours. Replies come from Phil or Peter.