Part 2: When is Automation Right for your Pad Printing Business?
Comments Off on Part 2: When is Automation Right for your Pad Printing Business?In Part 1, I explained some of the indicators of a need to implement automation in your process, and some of the challenges you needed to anticipate and control during the implementation.
Let Me Tell You a Story
This is the story of a manufacturer with two endings – one happy, one sad. The company printed and labeled widgets at a rate of 100,000 per day with 15 employees on task in an environment that created an overhead of $22,000 per laborer. The supervising print manager, unable to keep up with that large a shift, threatened to quit, forcing the owner to offer him an extra week’s vacation immediately, and each year thereafter, to stay on the job.
A year ago, the CEO/owner received an email from his engineering manager. The PPMOVT sales rep was nagging him to consider a really expensive ink jet machine. The cost was $350,000 and ran at an operating speed of 150,000 widgets per day. In his opinion, the expense and production was far more than their company needed, but he wanted to keep the owner informed of what was available.
The owner summoned his engineering manager to his office. “How many people would it take to run this machine? What would the operating costs per widget be?” The manager had done his homework. “The ink cost per piece would be less than it’s costing now, and one unskilled person could operate the machine. But how could we afford such a big investment?”“We can’t afford to not buy it. Our total ROI would be less than 14 months!” (This didn’t even include the cost of the disgruntled print manager, who earned $56,000 per year.)
The Happy Ending:
The owner purchased and installed the new equipment, and was able to reduce the price of his widget by two cents apiece. Sales increased and their biggest customer dropped his Chinese supplier to give them the work.Over the next 12 months, profits increased by $300,000 and they hired 14 people to fill additional jobs created in the customer service department. Now that’s what I call ROI. They lived happily ever after.
The Sad Ending:
We have all personally known companies that have gone out of business because they never picked up on opportunities like this; companies that wouldn’t make the hard but necessary decisions to support growth.The alternate ending to this story? The CEO allowed himself to be convinced that the more powerful ink jet’s expense was not worth the risk, and some of their long-time employees would be out of work, too old to find new employment. They subsequently lost orders to other manufacturers who invested in new automation, which resulted in poor old ‘Jane,’ the operator who complained her replacement would be a machine, losing her job, along with the 250 other employees who went on unemployment.Then the snack bar around the corner from the formerly thriving manufacturer closed, leaving Jim the proprietor without an income and his Chef looking for a new job.Several other former vendors went out of business as well because they no longer received orders from their preferred customer. THE MANUFACTURER HAD GONE OUT OF BUSINESS.
Join the conversation! How have you handled growth and change in your workplace? Are you involved in the tough growth decisions?