Labelling Solutions
The cost of bad success to label printers
Gary Seward, managing director at narrow web ink manufacturer, Pulse I
n the pursuit of operational excellence, the unfortunate reality is that many label printers continue to overlook what really matters when it comes to measuring genuine success.
So many continue to prioritise OEE and press speed, but this leads to ‘bad’ success. When you deem something to have been a success based on limited factors without fully appreciating the wider impact to production and acknowledging holistic failures, this is bad success.
For label printers, specific examples of bad success are the number of mistakes and defects during production runs, the need for reprints and the volume of excess waste generated. OEE will not reveal the value and impact of this on your operations and if you continue to look at success in broad terms, it is easy to misconstrue positive performance for business success. Take a 26in-wide flexo press running at 200m/min, or an inkjet engine printing at 100m/min for that matter. Extra width and high speed mean additional capacity for certain, but what is the knock-on impact? How is the order book being maintained? Are backlogs being juggled? Have you enough stock to keep presses running at that speed? Is finishing keeping up? What is the state of an order from receipt to delivery?
Even Total Effective Equipment Performance or ‘TEEP’ does not reveal the true picture, even though that measurement includes all the potential production time, including planned and unplanned downtime.
It is important not to view production in silos, rather have vision of the whole process as an
as metrics of success. The goal of all label printers should be to ensure every job is completed correctly the first time and every order is delivered on time, in full. That way you are measuring production efficiency and effectiveness, not just utilisation, and ensuring customers come back for more. Both RFT and OTIF are self-explanatory. RFT aims to ensure that activities or processes are performed correctly the first time, so minimising errors and rework and ultimately improving efficiency and quality. OTIF is a supply chain management metric that tracks the ability to meet delivery promises in their entirety and within agreed timeframes. Both are strict metrics for performance, but this makes them highly valuable to any manufacturing business seeking a genuine measurement of success. They involve complex measurements that must be monitored, alongside other considerations such as inventory age, but the rewards are big if you get them right.
When RFT and OTIF are excelling in your business, this is the time to focus on run speed to improve OEE.
An area where label printers can make an immediate improvement is by removing complexity and bottlenecks from make- readies and simplifying changeovers. A system such as the Monolox fixed anilox printing technology from Pulse delivers exactly that.
ecosystem that ebbs and flows. Each part of your manufacturing environment is symbiotic, living and breathing off one another. Each must be fed and nurtured to ensure system-wide efficiency and success.
Focusing on one area, as OEE will inevitably lead you to do, takes your eye off the overall prize and skews the perception of success. Ergo, bad success. Your OEE score can be as high as 100 percent, but if you are printing defective work, creating waste and not getting jobs completed and despatched on time, how is that a measure of success?
Instead, label printers should prioritise Right First Time (RFT) and On Time, In Full (OTIF)
By standardising anilox selection around a single low volume cell and utilising high- strength, mono-pigment PureTone inks in conjunction with our proprietary mixing database, you can immediately remove the most well-known and visible bottleneck in flexo printing, as well as ensure consistency, increase quality and minimise the risk of errors.
When you adopt the Monolox system, you take a giant leap towards getting work off your press that is right first time and delivered on time and in full.
These are the metrics that truly count and that should be used to measure a label printing company’s real success.
34
April 2025
www.convertermag.com
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