Choose Your Business Adventure, Volume 3: “Escape to Capacity Meadows”

Your Own Little Piece of Paradise…

It's great being successful! Your employees are busy, the machines are humming, and your customers are sending quality work your way. Your efforts to gain and retain customers are really paying off! This is the growth trajectory you seek, right? But with all that work, your company is bumping its head against its capacity ceiling. Ouch! In a metaphorical sense, what your company needs is the vast, grassy expanses of Capacity Meadows – a place without limits. Instead, you find yourself fenced in, limited by company capacity to your own space. If only there was a better way!

There are a few key approaches to increasing capacity for a printing business and each has its own implications – your challenge is to identify and implement the one that works best. To begin your adventure, you have four choices: to buy another press for your business (I mean, who doesn’t want a new press?), to reduce pressures on your existing presses by focusing before and after the print, to locate additional capacity by improving your processes, or to simply stick with what you have. Select your path below.

Begin Your Adventure…
If you choose to purchase another press, skip to “A” below
If you choose to relieve pressure before and after the print, skip to “B” below
If you choose to improve your processes, skip to “C” below
If you choose to stick with what you have, skip to “D” below

A
Just like deciding to buy a new car, there’s something exciting about deciding to purchase a new press: a shiny new machine that looks as good on your website as it does on your shop floor. A new, incrementally better way to do more of what you do. So, get your financing in place and schedule meetings with your preferred OEMs – you can almost picture it, delivered and operational. But first, consider the following: Do you have enough business to make the payments on that new press? Do you feel confident you can find skilled operators to keep it running? Is the rest of your operation, for example finishing, capable of handling the increased output from the new machine? If not, would you also have to invest there? If you have favorable answers to these questions and many more that should come to mind, then sign that contract! Skip to “E” below…

B
Consider the equipment you currently have, with two key questions in mind. First: Are the presses you’re seeking to supplement running full time on every shift? If not, ask why. Is it a problem in pre-press, in preparing or processing files; if you’re an offset or screen printer, is the problem in plate or screen making? The point here is that if activities taking place before printing are resulting in press time spent waiting for the job, then steer resources toward fixing that first. Second: Do you have stacks or skids of printed work queued to be finished, thus slowing productivity (not capacity)? Are you printing more than you can process? If so, consider investing in or automating finishing systems. Simply put, if the weak link in your production chain is not the press, then you may not need to add one. Skip to “E” below…

C
Often, the capacity numbers you see on equipment marketing materials are hypothetical, somewhat realistic goals based on optimized production. In many printing operations, however, there may be a sizable gap between optima and actual. Your task is to minimize that gap through process efficiency, with the goal of maximizing productive press time. Questions to consider: Is your current press often down due to a lack of preventative maintenance? Is your production team appropriately trained to minimize make-ready or changeover times? Does the press operator have what they need (ink, substrate, ready-to-print files. etc.) when they need it, thus eliminating time spent waiting around? Does the operator know what the next job is and how to prepare for it? How much of this can be automated? By removing wasted time from these and other areas of production, it is possible to get ever closer to optimum and reclaim revenue-producing press time. Skip to “E” below…

D
Okay…cool. Your metaphorical fenced-in yard is well-maintained, beautiful even. But by choosing to do nothing, you are, either on purpose or by mistake, choosing to limit the growth of your business. But as the opportunities to serve customers continue to expand – a unique feature of Capacity Meadows – your little piece of the broader landscape will become comparatively smaller. If that’s what you want, then that’s okay. And if profitability becomes an issue, you can always raise prices, right? Skip to “F” below…

Your Adventure Continues…

E
Congratulations! Regardless of whether you made a capital investment, beefed up your capabilities in pre-press and/or finishing, or gained improvements by repurposing wasted time, you have expanded the capacity of your business and done so with wise intention. High five? Yesss! Focusing ahead, keep in mind that as your business grows, this process you’ve undertaken – doing a careful evaluation of the efficiency of your processes and procedures to gain what you can until you truly need to invest – should be continuously. Skip to “H” below…

F
You stand on your company’s grassy patch, looking over the fence at Capacity Meadows, its seemingly endless expanse extends in all directions. In the distance, a hiker approaches. Many minutes pass before the hiker passes your fence, says, “Nice place you have here,” and ultimately disappears over the distant horizon. Where are they going? What will they see and experience? What opportunities will they find? For your business, these questions can be answered by you only if you choose to explore the implications of, in some way, expanding your capacity. Someday, maybe.
If you choose to stay here, you’re done. Do not read on.
If you choose to see what’s beyond the horizon, skip to “Begin Your Adventure” above…

The Final Scene…

H
As though have emerged from a dense forest into an open meadow, you have plotted out room to grow, and have gained additional capacity for your business. What you wanted has become what you have. Will you use it to produce more of the same, or to explore new applications or markets? That decision is for you and your business plan to make. Skip to Epilogue below…

Epilogue…

So where does it go from here? Surely there are limitations to capacity, be they space limitations or the heavy weight of numerous capital investments. For some, adding capacity begins with a real estate investment, not a press. For others, it may include adding a shift, which, given today’s staffing challenges, can be difficult to manage. Another option is to find capacity through strategic partnership. Regardless, the goal, it seems, is to know where you are, know where you’re going, and anticipate the ways your growing company will need to change. Carefully managed, the possibilities for your company may be as limitless as the waving green grass of Capacity Meadows.

Enjoy other adventures by reading:
Choose Your Business Adventure, Volume 1: “Escape to Profitability Island”
Choose Your Business Adventure, Volume 2: “Escape to Succession Acres”