In terms of production strategies, in-plants face the same challenges as their commercial counterparts. They struggle with:
- Staffing issues – shortage of staff or a need to cost justify the number of staff
- Inefficient processes– manual production steps including estimating, writing job tickets, manual prepress, press step up, finishing, and mailing processes
- Peaks and valleys in demand.
Comparing and contrasting commercial printers and in-plant printers we can see similarities and differences. In terms of operations both perform the same basic functions: estimating, customer service, prepress, printing, and finishing. In other ways they are very different.
In addition to the different financial models of in-plants and commercial printers, there are also differences in focus, what is considered most important, motivation for investing, and bottlenecks.
#1 Issue: Cutting Costs
Based on our experience, the “typical” in-plant staffs between 10 to 15 people, provides services valued between $3 -$5 million/year, and struggles to meet their financial objectives.
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