Straight Path to Optimization:
Heidelberg’s Business Development Services
It goes without saying that over the years, Heidelberg has been
inside a great many printing plants as an equipment and supplies
provider, a technical trainer, and a service organization. Through
these consultations, the company has gained a wealth of insights
into what can be done to help printers reach their full potential
in productivity and profitability.
Because these insights are too valuable not to share, Heidelberg has added powerful tools for business development to its lineup of customer service offerings. The Business Development program offers tools for operational analysis that most printers lack the time and resources to develop for themselves. It is rooted in Heidelberg's belief that with the right information, every printing company can capitalize on its strengths, eliminate its inefficiencies, and plan the best course for future growth.
Heidelberg has offered Business Development services in Europe, Asia and Australia for nearly eight years. The program came to the U.S. in January 2007, and since then, about 35 customer audits have been completed. More are in progress.
Printing businesses of all kinds can take advantage of the program, which is available to firms with at least $2 million in sales. Although most participants have been shops with some Heidelberg equipment, any printing company that wants to make better decisions about its operational efficiency can request Business Development services from Heidelberg.
ONE-YEAR OVERVIEW
To bring these services to the print market, Heidelberg has organized a team of expert auditors and data analysts at its U.S. headquarters in Kennesaw, GA. When a customer inquires about Heidelberg's business development program, the consultants answer them in an initial presentation that reviews the menu of available services.
Usually, the best way to begin is with a Machine Room Audit. To prepare for this audit, the customer is asked to fill in a template with one year's worth of estimates, job costing data, and other production-related information from the plant's MIS. Besides giving them a comprehensive picture of plant operations, having access to a year's worth of information also lets the auditors account for the seasonal trends that most printing businesses experience.
The auditors clean up the data as needed and proceed to analyze it, in strict confidence, from a variety of operational perspectives. Once all of the data are in, it takes about two weeks to develop the Machine Room Audit's list of recommended outcomes for presentation to the customer.
Process optimization is always the goal of the Machine Room Audit, which looks first for ways to improve productivity with existing equipment. In some cases, these audits have identified opportunities to cut makeready time, waste and expense by a substantial amount. They also can help printers measure the relative profitability of their individual accounts and develop a plan to increase business with their most profitable customers.
BY THE NUMBERS
When the findings indicate that equipment replacement is the way to achieve the biggest savings, the logical next step might be an Analysis of Option. This simulates running jobs from the past year on new equipment to show the best possible cost-saving solutions. Another way to accomplish this might be the Quick Machine Room Audit, which looks at the plant's most common job types and simulates them based on the hypothetical new equipment.
The Analysis of Option pinpoints the equipment scenarios that can bring about the greatest reductions in production cost through corresponding gains in efficiency-for example, replacing two existing presses with one new press that can handle the plant's workload more cost-effectively. This can be shown by modeling a year's worth of work on the new press and calculating the savings that will result.
In this way, the consultants can confidentially guide customers through crucial decisions about the kinds of production equipment to acquire and the costs associated with operating it. As a special project, the analysis could be used to calculate total cost of ownership for a start-up business investigating various printing technologies.
Although it is a numbers-based procedure, the Analysis of Option also considers the owner's personal sense of where the business is headed and what near-term conditions in the local market are likely to be. If the owner foresees flat or negative growth, the consultants will take this into account when making their recommendations. Experience has shown that as long as the input is candid, detailed, and accurate, the Analysis of Option can identify potential growth opportunities even in slow times.
When adding equipment is found to be the best strategy, customers are encouraged to acquire the capacity they need-but never more than they need. Although printers usually know what they would like to buy, Heidelberg's consultants often can show them how they can achieve the same capability in a , less expensive configuration. In one audit, for example, it was found that a new five-color press with coater was a better choice than the six-color-plus-coater machine that the customer originally had in mind.
OPTIONS FOR OPTIMIZATION
Heidelberg's business development services concentrate on operational matters and generally don't cover executive areas such as sales and marketing or financial management. But when it comes to manufacturing, the menu of options addresses almost everything that touches the preparation and delivery of the printed product.
Personnel performance, for example, can be reviewed in the Competency Check, which tests the skills of operators in materials, productivity, troubleshooting, and quality. This yields a knowledge profile for each individual and an action plan for building up his or her knowledge base. The Process Analysis takes the same approach by observing the job flow throughout the shop. The Material Flow Analysis aims to optimize material handling and plant logistics. The result can be cost savings through reduced inventories, decreased downtime, and faster material throughput.
In development is a Productivity Monitoring service that remotely transmits data from Prinect CP2000 press control consoles via the Internet to the business development team's location in Kennesaw. There, auditors can turn the data into monthly Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) reports: indices that reveal precisely how efficiently the machine is being operated.
The reports benchmark quality in a press run by dividing the number of good sheets printed by the total number of sheets produced; time, by dividing time actually spent in printing by total available press time; and speed, by dividing the total number of sheets printed by total printing time, and dividing the result by maximum printing speed. The aggregate score is the OEE, and eventually, the service will enable a company to compare its OEE with that of other companies in its category.
Heidelberg scores the success of its Business Development services in the success achieved by the companies that take advantage of them. It offers the program to all printing companies in the hope of making them better at doing what they already do well.
Details are available online at
http://www.us.heidelberg.com/www/html/en/content/articles/business_development/overview.
Requests for information can be e-mailed to hus.businessdevelopment@heidelberg.com.
Business Development services also will be a highlight of Heidelberg's exhibit at Print 09 in Chicago (September 11-16).
Because these insights are too valuable not to share, Heidelberg has added powerful tools for business development to its lineup of customer service offerings. The Business Development program offers tools for operational analysis that most printers lack the time and resources to develop for themselves. It is rooted in Heidelberg's belief that with the right information, every printing company can capitalize on its strengths, eliminate its inefficiencies, and plan the best course for future growth.
Heidelberg has offered Business Development services in Europe, Asia and Australia for nearly eight years. The program came to the U.S. in January 2007, and since then, about 35 customer audits have been completed. More are in progress.
Printing businesses of all kinds can take advantage of the program, which is available to firms with at least $2 million in sales. Although most participants have been shops with some Heidelberg equipment, any printing company that wants to make better decisions about its operational efficiency can request Business Development services from Heidelberg.
ONE-YEAR OVERVIEW
To bring these services to the print market, Heidelberg has organized a team of expert auditors and data analysts at its U.S. headquarters in Kennesaw, GA. When a customer inquires about Heidelberg's business development program, the consultants answer them in an initial presentation that reviews the menu of available services.
Usually, the best way to begin is with a Machine Room Audit. To prepare for this audit, the customer is asked to fill in a template with one year's worth of estimates, job costing data, and other production-related information from the plant's MIS. Besides giving them a comprehensive picture of plant operations, having access to a year's worth of information also lets the auditors account for the seasonal trends that most printing businesses experience.
The auditors clean up the data as needed and proceed to analyze it, in strict confidence, from a variety of operational perspectives. Once all of the data are in, it takes about two weeks to develop the Machine Room Audit's list of recommended outcomes for presentation to the customer.
Process optimization is always the goal of the Machine Room Audit, which looks first for ways to improve productivity with existing equipment. In some cases, these audits have identified opportunities to cut makeready time, waste and expense by a substantial amount. They also can help printers measure the relative profitability of their individual accounts and develop a plan to increase business with their most profitable customers.
BY THE NUMBERS
When the findings indicate that equipment replacement is the way to achieve the biggest savings, the logical next step might be an Analysis of Option. This simulates running jobs from the past year on new equipment to show the best possible cost-saving solutions. Another way to accomplish this might be the Quick Machine Room Audit, which looks at the plant's most common job types and simulates them based on the hypothetical new equipment.
The Analysis of Option pinpoints the equipment scenarios that can bring about the greatest reductions in production cost through corresponding gains in efficiency-for example, replacing two existing presses with one new press that can handle the plant's workload more cost-effectively. This can be shown by modeling a year's worth of work on the new press and calculating the savings that will result.
In this way, the consultants can confidentially guide customers through crucial decisions about the kinds of production equipment to acquire and the costs associated with operating it. As a special project, the analysis could be used to calculate total cost of ownership for a start-up business investigating various printing technologies.
Although it is a numbers-based procedure, the Analysis of Option also considers the owner's personal sense of where the business is headed and what near-term conditions in the local market are likely to be. If the owner foresees flat or negative growth, the consultants will take this into account when making their recommendations. Experience has shown that as long as the input is candid, detailed, and accurate, the Analysis of Option can identify potential growth opportunities even in slow times.
When adding equipment is found to be the best strategy, customers are encouraged to acquire the capacity they need-but never more than they need. Although printers usually know what they would like to buy, Heidelberg's consultants often can show them how they can achieve the same capability in a , less expensive configuration. In one audit, for example, it was found that a new five-color press with coater was a better choice than the six-color-plus-coater machine that the customer originally had in mind.
OPTIONS FOR OPTIMIZATION
Heidelberg's business development services concentrate on operational matters and generally don't cover executive areas such as sales and marketing or financial management. But when it comes to manufacturing, the menu of options addresses almost everything that touches the preparation and delivery of the printed product.
Personnel performance, for example, can be reviewed in the Competency Check, which tests the skills of operators in materials, productivity, troubleshooting, and quality. This yields a knowledge profile for each individual and an action plan for building up his or her knowledge base. The Process Analysis takes the same approach by observing the job flow throughout the shop. The Material Flow Analysis aims to optimize material handling and plant logistics. The result can be cost savings through reduced inventories, decreased downtime, and faster material throughput.
In development is a Productivity Monitoring service that remotely transmits data from Prinect CP2000 press control consoles via the Internet to the business development team's location in Kennesaw. There, auditors can turn the data into monthly Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) reports: indices that reveal precisely how efficiently the machine is being operated.
The reports benchmark quality in a press run by dividing the number of good sheets printed by the total number of sheets produced; time, by dividing time actually spent in printing by total available press time; and speed, by dividing the total number of sheets printed by total printing time, and dividing the result by maximum printing speed. The aggregate score is the OEE, and eventually, the service will enable a company to compare its OEE with that of other companies in its category.
Heidelberg scores the success of its Business Development services in the success achieved by the companies that take advantage of them. It offers the program to all printing companies in the hope of making them better at doing what they already do well.
Details are available online at
http://www.us.heidelberg.com/www/html/en/content/articles/business_development/overview.
Requests for information can be e-mailed to hus.businessdevelopment@heidelberg.com.
Business Development services also will be a highlight of Heidelberg's exhibit at Print 09 in Chicago (September 11-16).
People at Heidelberg
Heidelberg has around 16,496 staff worldwide - ensuring that each and every customer gets only the very best in quality, advice and commitment. All of this combines to ensure competitive products, inte- grated solutions and servic- es that are geared to our customers' success - this is our goal and motivation.
