When it comes to expansion, or making their business more efficient, many print-shop owners make the ‘knee-jerk’ decision of buying new equipment and/or hiring new staff. They get caught up in the excitement of gaining new customers and earning new work. Yet, those decisions can often be a ticking time bomb for future financial failure. How?
Well, one reason is the accumulation of debt by purchasing expensive new hardware (such as presses that will require parts, servicing, and consumables, as well as new finishing equipment), coupled with the financial burden and uncertainty of hiring new employees who may or may not work out and will likely require weeks of training.
“Not surprisingly, companies in the printing industry will continue to have difficulties in attracting and keeping talent in 2023,” said Joe Marin, Senior VP of Member Services at Printing United Alliance in a March 6, 2023, feature in Printing Impressions written by Toni McQuilken. “There is a skills gap, and people with industry experience and technical expertise experience are in increasingly high demand.”
Automation is the solution
“I’ve seen it happen time and time again,” said Marc Raad, President of workflow automation and integration specialist Significans Automation. “Well-intended print shop owners are ‘mortgaging’ their business and going into unnecessary long-term debt, when they are sitting on one of the biggest opportunities of their lifetime: Automation.
Such can provide critical efficiencies, can cost thousands of dollars less than new hardware and new employees, and can ‘future-proof’ their operation. All they are doing is clogging up their production floor by taking up business real estate and delaying any substantial ROI.”
Raad continued to explain that he’s seen firsthand how automation across companies augments capacity to sustain business and production growth. Moreover, having an integration partner who can guide printers through their hardware and software buying decisions, is often better than the prospect of hiring a new employee who generally takes a good 9-12 months to get up to speed, and may be so distracted with the daily needs of the business, that any form of continuous improvement projects take at least three times longer to get started – or never get started at all.
$800,000 in year-over-year savings
In 2019, an InfoTrends study evaluated labor costs for 12 common workflow steps, from artwork design to correcting customer files. When all the results were tallied, it was discovered that the average North American print shop could save up to $800,000 (USD) a year for all twelve tasks!.
“This represents one of the biggest missed opportunities in the printing industry today,” said Raad, “because the proven benefits and cost savings of deploying affordable, highly customized workflow technology resulting in an unmanned ‘lights-out’ operation are beyond question. Why buy new hardware and hire new staff when you likely already have what you need?”
Raad cited the success of his current clients who’ve adopted customized workflow automation and have experienced about a 30% increase in yearly printing capacity, several hours of labor reduced to a few minutes, job prep times reduced from 8 hours to mere minutes, prepress productivity increased from 10 to over 50 jobs a day, labor costs cut by over 50%, and a return on investment in weeks or months, rather than in years.
An extension of your own company
“One goal of just about every commercial printer and packaging converter I’ve ever met is to be self-sufficient while reducing risks and costs,” Raad pointed out. “Make no mistake, time is money – and to put it bluntly, workflow automation does not take vacations or require sick days or regular salaries. The results I’ve mentioned above are not ‘pie-in-the-sky.’ They are a matter of record and are more than achievable with the proper automation and integration partner, as you’ll discover here: https://significans.com/case-studies/
So, my final message is to let Significans Automation become an extension of your own company. We can help you navigate the best hardware, software and even staffing options, to help you reduce costs, avoid unnecessary debt, become more efficient and self-sufficient, and ‘future proof’ your printing business.
It’s entirely up to you. You can be sitting on a ticking timebomb – or on treasure chest of untapped opportunities to take your business to unprecedented new levels of efficiency, cost savings and self-sufficiency with proven numbers that you likely never imagined.”
For an assessment of your shop’s specific workflow automation needs, please call Significans Automation at 1-877-463-4465 or visit https://significans.com.
Don’t miss out on significant, untapped growth opportunities for your print shop.
