Well, I had my hopes too high.
I was informed that the owner of our company isn't convinced on the whole direct to plate and workflow yet.
I thought the ROI was decent at 2-3 years, but the initial sticker shock seems to be the issue.
Unless.......
You all can help me come up with some good reasons for having a dedicated workflow and platesetter. Anything you can come up with, no matter how seemingly obvious it may be. Then I can compile a new list.
I would really like to convince the owner that this is the smart thing to do.
Productivity will increase by at least double. Guaranteed!
I belive it.
How do I convince him? He tells me that regardless if i'm stripping or computing, he pays the same, so how does he save?
It seems painfully obvious; more work in less time equals more saving.
Why he doesn't see it kills me. I need something more...
Thanks for trying Joe, I know and you know, What i don't know is how to get him in the know!
Oh shit, if you are still stripping film your productivity will increase by about 8 fold. You can do so much more in so much less time and NOT BUYING film will pay for the entire system in very little time. And it very well could become difficult just to find film before too long.
Quote from: Joe on May 07, 2010, 04:22:57 PMOh shit, if you are still stripping film your productivity will increase by about 8 fold. You can do so much more in so much less time and NOT BUYING film will pay for the entire system in very little time. And it very well could become difficult just to find film before too long.
Oh, totally
We've been told as much from our Fuji supplier.
I've given him the numbers, and my supervisor is all for it, I'm looking for every other reason now!
What a maroon.
What A Maroon! (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_Kh7nLplWo#)
Quote from: Grimace on May 07, 2010, 04:31:17 PMQuote from: Joe on May 07, 2010, 04:22:57 PMOh shit, if you are still stripping film your productivity will increase by about 8 fold. You can do so much more in so much less time and NOT BUYING film will pay for the entire system in very little time. And it very well could become difficult just to find film before too long.
Oh, totally
We've been told as much from our Fuji supplier.
I've given him the numbers, and my supervisor is all for it, I'm looking for every other reason now!
Also, better quality both color wise and registration wise. No matter how good of a stripper you are you are not as good as a computer when it comes to registration of the separations. :laugh:
Customers expect CTP these days as well as virtual/soft proofing. If you haven't seen this yet you soon will and you very well could lose customers if you don't get on the bandwagon.
Just hard to believe your owner doesn't realize that he can't stand still in this business or you get left behind pretty quickly.
Grimace,
I have some ROI models if you are interested.
Regards,
Mark
All of what Joe says! And then some... We went from having 3 people relatively busy. A good film stripper. Someone with digital experience when we switched in-house. But then we had to retrench the stripper; even before CTP. After CTP...whoosh. If I knew I would never get sick, or never need a holiday, I could do the whole shebang myself. That's not a brag, just a fact.
If you can get reasonably good PDFs, and if you're doing your impo within, say, a 'flow like XMF...it's coffee and feet up time. Slightly facetious there, but you get my drift.
I did the figures on JUST leaving film when we wanted to go CTP. It means you're by-passing a whole step of (increasingly expensive) consumables. Huge dollars. Not to mention you then have to get a hickey-free exposure to plate...and the time involved. Plus, if you have an autoloader and online processor, plate output is a BACKGROUND process. You're doing other prepress while the plates are outputting.
Marktonk's stuff will tell it to you in figures, I'm sure, but get out the calculator and 6 months of film/chemistry invoices. Then factor in your time 'filming', then 'plating'. It's such a no-brainer that half the time they think you're bullshitting. :rolleyes: The ROI is incredibly short. Plus there are very generous tax breaks on prepress equipment here (OZ), but may apply 'Stateside' too.
I think I still have my work-up figures, If I do, I'll summarise 'em in a PM, when I'm back Monday. The sad buggers just take a while to cotton on. Yep, it's expensive, but they're not looking at a year's figures up against it. Hell, we were paying $450,000 p.a. for bureau film, just before we got the Katana, and brought film in-house. Meh...I had the same trouble explaining the bleedin' obvious.
P.S....Joe and I touched on this topic the other week....Though there is some good skill needed with crap files, all in all, things just happen mu-uch quicker/smoother now in APPE, with CTP.
Oh, if they don't understand the basic economic concept of 'opportunity cost', get them to look it up on wikipedia. The opportunity cost of not going APPE/CTP will rise steeply for each year delayed. Joe's said all this succinctly, I've blabbed on because I enjoy it and relaxing before dinner Saturday... :laugh: Either way...am sure you get it, even if your bosses don't yet.
Thanks guys.
It's good to hear that I'm not alone. I like the the term "opportunity cost", that so perfectly describes what i could babble on about and in doing so, lose my point and my boss. To put a title to it is very helpful.
I think I need to go to him directly (my supervisor has been handling it) with a clearly written outline.
At least that way I can try to counter each of his assumptions. My super is completely on board, but will only push so hard. I'm just one department in this joint that needs some upgrading, his duty is to the whole shop, and to focus too much on just the Prepress Dept. could jeopardize his other projects in need of some money.
I however have just my department. I hate to jump over any management, but I think I can drop off a friendly suggestion to the owner without creating any animosity.
Marktonk, thanks for the offer, please understand that I can really only control so much. If it were entirely up to me, I would have checked many systems, but I'm not the shop supervisor, he gets to steer cart, I just point out the bumps as I see them.
Grimace,
You have some good advice from all here. Break it down to how much you spend on film and film chemistry, how much you spend on plate and plate chemistry and how often and how much labor is spent on cleaning and maintaining two different processors. On top, how much time is spent stripping a job and what material do you use (ruby, etc).You could even look at electrical usage for an imagesetter, plate frame, light table versus a CtP with processor (as a comparison, the Suprasetter CtP only uses 700 watts). Time and costs can be reduced further by using a chemfree plate and a clean out unit. Depending on production, is self cleaning for several months before you pull and clean the 6 rollers and two brushes. You could go with a develop on press plate but now you spend more time cleaning the press at a much higher hourly cost.
Oh yeah, registration will be much tighter and quality will improve. Get a CtP that can punch and registration will be even tighter. Get one that punches after the plate has been tempered and imaged and registration will even be better yet. You also have control of the dot gain digitally and are first generation dot. Bet the clients would not complain of quality increase. We could also wrap in reduced press makeready and paper savings, very tangle able savings. If you can digitally set ink presettings, it becomes even more aggressive. We do understand the pressroom and add that to the ROI, it will have the most dramatic impact. Again, this is some information we can wrap into a ROI that may give the owner reason to reconsider but I can only help so much via the forum. Good luck to you in upgrading
Regards,
Mark
Grimace - we switched to CTP back in '04. At the time we were using 2 rolls of film/week at about $ 650 a roll at the time + the chemistry cost. Add to that the fact that a Color Art laminate proof took about 35 min each to expose and put together. At that time we had a full time film stripper, a part time film tech putting color proofs together and two platemakers working two shifts exposing FTP producing about 20 plated jobs a day.
When switching to CTP, the cost of film, Color Art material and all of the associated chemistry disappeared completely right away. For us the savings were approx. $100,000 a year for film + chemistry alone. We retrained 1 tech from film stripping to digital, the part time tech retired. We reduced to one platemaker working one shift and are producing more plates in that one shift than we were producing in two shifts previously - approx. 30 plated jobs a day in 1 shift. Since proofing is digital, all calculations and proof outputs are done in the background.
The savings are immense with ROI being achieved usually within 2 years. Quality is always improved with the switch and turnaround times will improve immensely. I have heard from our Fuji rep that film production days are numbered and that Color Art material for proofing is no longer available. The problem for your owner that the switch will become a matter of business survival and that time is probably approaching soon...
Andyfest,
More good points...I am aware of another large vendor (one of the big three) that has discontinued film, so sooner or later....
If you wrap the pressroom savings into the ROI, it is greatly accelerated.
Regards,
Mark
Thanks for the input, all.
I will reread the posts later at work today, and compile a list.
Hopefully I can swing the whole proposal we originally did, or at least a partial, so as to get CTP.
The hope then would be to show such improvement that they will listen more quickly on future items suggested.
I've always found it's better to push for everything you need up front. Most of the time I've found owners not to be too receptive to purchasing more stuff after they just purchased stuff. It seems once they turn the spigot off they are not to keen to turn it back on. :undecided: That's why I always ask for everything and more to start with and then cut out some of the extras along the way and hopefully end up with the necessities at the end.
^ that's the approach we took with this. We priced out a new CTP, now we will do a refurb proposal.
My hope is that they don't try to save a few thousand dollars going with some bare bones impo system.
I will really push for XMF, because, like you said, the tap will dry out. Also when they want to implement a digital press 3 years form now(speculation) I don't want them to think we are "All set" with the stripped down software they "just bought".
Your concerns are well-founded, grimace. What you know you got, and what they think you may may be 2 different things. And, as Joe says, vendors sometimes like charging double for something you could have included first time round. I think often it's the parent Co., not the local agent. Punishment for poor "selling"? :laugh:
And don't forget that single vs multiple impo seats in XMF.
Grimace,
How many plates do you make a month ??? How many bluelines do you make in a month ??
Aren't you the one that said plates sit ready for press for up to 2 weeks, or was that someone else I'm thinking of ???
I think Joe's guestimate of doubling your productivity is very conservative.
But if you're not making enough plates, it's possible that it may not pay for itself...
Quote from: impodave on May 12, 2010, 01:13:09 PMGrimace,
How many plates do you make a month ??? How many bluelines do you make in a month ??
Aren't you the one that said plates sit ready for press for up to 2 weeks, or was that someone else I'm thinking of ???
I think Joe's guestimate of doubling your productivity is very conservative.
But if you're not making enough plates, it's possible that it may not pay for itself...
Yeah, that was me. For sure we don't go through a ton of plates, but regardless, every plate we do make usually has film, mylar, masks, and chemicals (and disposal service fees) and blueline associated with it. The plates we use now we pay about twice as much for, because we don't get preference price that we would with a Platesetter purchase.
We would save about 30-40 grand a year in just plates, the less known savings would be from press time, make ready and bindery. So, even though it would be 3 years at current production rate, the idea would be that we could get more done on press, hence more plates, equals even more savings.
Our presses (or pressmen) are the bottle neck in our shop. If we can get them better and more consistant quality, they should output more. If not, they run out of excuses and then....
I think that sort of (pressroom)bottleneck is universal, especially in small operations. Theres a lot to be said for plates where the image is perfectly consistent position-wise from one job to the next , especially if you're running internal plate punching on your setter. Then again, the documents have to be right too to start with. I initially fought the move to CTP because of the volume of the film I was rejecting at the stripping table, now I find myself just checking it more in during impo and proofing. In our operation our document people lack the knowledge to make impo decisions on their own.... :sad:
So, at times, getting the plates right can still be a challenge...... :huh:
Good luck to you.....