Consumables aren’t cheap.
As with any business or manufacturing process, finding ways to reduce costs and improve quality is always an important goal to strive for. The ways in which we attempt to reach this goal in the printing industry (and more specifically with consumables) can often differ greatly and have varying degrees of success.
Consumables range from materials in prepress (such as proofing substrates and ink, as well as plates and plate processing chemistry); to the pressroom (including ink and toner products, dampening solution, etc.); to post press (including wire for stitching and film for shrink wrapping). It is critical to pay attention to these smaller costs and maximize the value of the everyday essentials.
There are cost-cutting strategies that range from rudimentary processes (like producing your own black ink by combining leftover cyan, magenta and yellow inks), to more advanced processes such as Grey Component Replacement (GCR). Let’s take a look at a few ideas regarding how to cut consumable costs, while at the same time, improving product quality.
Colour Bars
Colour bars are required on a press sheet for quality control purposes. These colour bars are made up of solids, tints, as well as sharpness guides and are required to ensure correct industry standard ink densities, as well as colour consistency throughout a run.
There are a variety of handheld and scanning densitometers available to measure colour bars. The width of the colour bar required will depend on the measuring device (some will need the patches on a colour bar to be as wide as 12mm, which is almost ½”). The Tobias Associates SDT Scanning Densitometer can read a colour bar as narrow as 1.6mm (1/16″) and the company claims that there is no other scanning densitometer on the market that can do this.
The ability to gain a few critical millimeters on a press sheet could mean the difference between achieving an efficient imposition layout versus an inefficient one. Maximizing a press sheet by decreasing the required colour bar width increases the overall efficiency, decreases paper waste and reduces consumable usage.
Grey Component Replacement (GCR)
Cyan, magenta and yellow can be mixed with one another to create the colours in the visible spectrum. When reproducing a given colour on press, the most prevalent two of the three process colours (cyan, magenta and/or yellow) make up the hue and the third most prevalent process colour contributes to the greying of the hue (otherwise known as decreasing saturation). The Grey Component Replacement (GCR) process proportionally adds black ink where either cyan, magenta or yellow would have printed as grey. GCR is mainly used for neutral or unsaturated tones.
From a consumables perspective, the benefits of GCR include using an increased amount of black ink (which is less expensive) versus coloured ink. Also, less black ink is required to replace the equivalent amount of grey, thereby decreasing overall ink usage. When there is less overall ink coverage, drying issues can be avoided, thereby helping to increase efficiency and reduce spoilage. Quality is also increased because the colours are less susceptible to change once they have been output due to there being fewer colour variables. The printing process is therefore more stable, also helping to reduce unnecessary waste and spoilage. Lastly, using black ink provides a “cleaner”, richer, black in the shadows improving contrast. It is important to note, however, that GCR is not completely foolproof, as impurities in the black ink can shift or dull the colour.
Digital Press Innovation
Some digital presses (like the HP Indigo digital press lineup) have the capability to simulate black by combining cyan, magenta and yellow to decrease costs. For example, the HP Indigo digital press can operate in “Enhanced Productivity Mode” or “EPM”, whereby black is simulated by overprinting cyan, magenta and yellow in a “one-shot” printing process to maintain excellent registration. EPM allows a printing service provider to save approximately 15% per page (click charge), as well as increasing the speed of the equipment by 33%. The downside is losing approximately 10% of the colour gamut in the dark blacks. This loss of colour; however, is almost unperceivable to the trained eye when compared to the same image printed CMYK. This innovation can add up to significant productivity increases.
Additional Ideas
Additional ideas to help cut consumable costs include hands-on employee training and inventory management systems. Regarding training, new employees should not only be trained to use equipment properly, learn company policies and have health and safety orientation, but they should also be thoroughly trained on how to reduce material waste (applying “anti-skin spray” to open ink cans, for example). For the short amount of time this type of training takes, it can pay off greatly if even a single can of ink is saved. Employees should also be encouraged to voice their own ideas for reducing waste. Listen carefully to the ideas of your front line staff – after all, they are the ones who know their departments best. Lastly, it is essential to have a systematic method to manage and track material usage. It is not only critical to understand true consumable costs and use this information to provide more accurate estimates to clients, but also to ensure you have the required materials on-hand when needed.
The notion of reducing consumable costs while simultaneously improving quality sounds too good to be true, but it can be achieved with clever tactics. We have just skimmed the surface (pun intended) because there are so many other ways to achieve success in this area. Brainstorm ideas across functional teams, think outside the box and accomplish even more than what you set out to do with your creative solutions.