Reaping advantages of relocating the production facility

Naturally, adequate working space to operate conveniently is one of the most vital prerequisites to ensure the long-run growth of overall output in the printing industry without compromising on quality and services. But at most of the printing presses in any city centres across India, the working areas allocated to pre-press, press and post-press are so cramped, that one feels like coming out the press at the earliest. Used plates are generally piled up near the pre-press area and bundles of paper are stocked near the printing machines. Imagine how much dust would be spread when these bundles are dumped, which will not only settle down in the printing units but also be a deterrent to the health of the staff in the long term. The situation of post-press is no better because the floor area offered to this is too little compared to its requirements, which results into multi-dimensional problems. The neatness of finished products is minimized while consistency in finishing operation is missing altogether.

The very solution to overcome these limitations is to have bigger space for the facility apart from efficient equipments. Undoubtedly, the bigger pieces of land cannot come in affordable price range within the city and as such printers need to go beyond city limits, may be 50-100 km. With this concept, they can manage their day-to-day production activities in a much better and systematic way. The overall output with quality standard is of higher level at those printing facilities where enough space for operating various production processes is available, with scientifically arranged equipments. Taking initiatives in this regard not only increase the production efficiency and facilitates handling lot of jobs ‘at a time’ from those valued customers who are not just much quality-conscious, but also results in prompt ROI making every investment worthwhile to go ahead winningly! Some of the printers have already understood this concept and have managed themselves to acquire bigger areas of land and are much happier having taken the decision long ago. In a study made by P&P with few such printers located in different parts of the country, it was also revealed that the output of individual staff has also gone up compared to the time when they were operating within the city. Here’s a brief. Multivista Global Limited
Chennai Pudupakkam

Multivista management and staff in front of the new facility.Specialized in the art of book production, Multivista Global Limited moved out of the city (Chennai) to the new location and has been working from the current location from the year 2007. On asking what has been their experience in terms of: meeting the emergency requirements of the consumables; delivery of smaller quantity of jobs to local customers, getting ready at different timings during the day; and having the staff regularly reaching timely and leaving the press during odd hours, Rajesh Jayaraman (a finance graduate from US), vice president (marketing) of the company conveyed, “We had started to plan and forecast our requirements of consumables better and certainly the importance and emphasis has lead to avoiding lot of crisis situations. We also had to increase stock levels of certain consumables to reduce down times because of this. We do not have many deliveries within Chennai so this is not a major issue. However, wherever applicable clients are aware of the distance and are well informed about the time taken to deliver their products. A lot of our staff have moved closer to the facility. The public transportation system has also improved tremendously from the time we re-located to our current location. However, transportation time factor is also considered while deciding on the shift timing to avoid inconvenience to our staff.”

“The primary benefit has been the platform we have been able to create for future expansion which would not have been possible functioning from a location in Chennai. We have also had a lot of reliefs in the day-to-day functioning like uninterrupted movement of trucks/containers both inward and outward at all points of time,” stated Rajesh Jayaraman, vice president (marketing) of Multivista Global Limited, mentioning the overall benefits in shifting to outskirts of the city. Mentioning, the overall benefits in shifting to outskirts apart from availability of substantial working area, Rajesh stated, “The primary benefit has been the platform we have been able to create for future expansion which would not have been possible functioning from a location in Chennai. We have also had a lot of reliefs in the day-to-day functioning like uninterrupted movement of trucks/containers both inward and outward at all points of time. We currently do not have to disturb neighbors/children as well which was a concern when we used to work from within the city.” Now being a fully integrated print unit, the company is equipped to handle most of their jobs completely in-house. However on a rare case, they may outsource some part of the process within the city.

Talking about power supply at the new location, he said, “We do get supply from the government resources, however considering the power shortage the city is facing today, we have to manage 100 percent back up for our machines keeping in mind. We do hope the situation will get better in the near future. However, we are also aware that the situation would not have been any different if we were situated inside the city.”

“Internet has certainly made the world flat. With good internet speed, we have been successful in using FTP for downloading/uploading of files. Around 75 percent of our jobs comes through online channel,” Rajesh added. “Because of moving out of the city, we have not seen any significant change in the inventory level. We procure over 95 percent of our materials from manufacturers and the inventory levels are based on the production lead times for these manufacturers. Our ERP system SAP helps us to plan/forecast and monitor our stock levels closely,” he added fruther.

“With the current expansion plan we have in mind we should be able to work from the current location for 8-10 years at least. We had envisioned this growth while moving to this facility three years back,” concluded Rajesh.

Replika Press Pvt Ltd
Delhi Kundli

Management team of Replika Press.Spread over 1,32,000 sq ft area at Kundli Industrial Area near Delhi, Replika Press Pvt Ltd is another printing company who are reaping the advantages of being located at the outskirts of the city. State-of-the-art technologies, skilled and quality-conscious professionals to provide fresh solutions from typesetting and comprehensive design, pre-press, printing to post-press make the company one-stop printing service provider. Ultimately, inherited a rich tradition in print production of more than six decades, Replika Press has now become an established name and a symbol of trust with good track record in domestic and international publishing, and is constantly surging ahead with collective endeavours of Bhuvnesh Seth, managing director; Jagdish Seth, director (business promotion); Sanandan Seth, director (marketing); Vikaran Seth, director (Production).

“We focus on evolving with sublime milieu for ensuring spectacular quality in our outputs. For the purpose, we not only procure top-of-the-line machinery but also give equal importance to handle them properly. As production process passing through several stages from pre-press to postpress, we require open space to provide free movement of the operating staff,” said Bhuvnesh Seth, managing director, Replika Press Pvt Ltd. An ISO 9001:2008 and FSC accelerated company, Replika Press is one such printer where ‘place and people’ makes backbone for sure towards achieving success. When SK Khurana, editor, Print & Publishing visited their twin facilities located at Kundli, it was pleasing to see at their facility, every machines and products have been paced uniquely in such a way that nothing can be found scattering here and there despite executing abundant number of printing jobs. “We focus on evolving with sublime milieu for ensuring spectacular quality in our outputs. For the purpose, we not only procure top-of-the-line machinery but also give equal importance to handle them properly. As production process passing through several stages from pre-press to postpress, we require open space to provide free movement of the operating staff. However, we have effectively been utilising the space available at our facility to increase production efficiency,” said Bhuvnesh.

Being one of the top integrated printing presses in India delivering close to 11.5 million books per year, their facility is sophisticatedly equipped with efficient equipments in pre-press, in-press and postpress segments. With staff strength of over 550 individuals, working in two shifts, they handle around 300 jobs at a time in printing and almost 160 jobs in binding/finishing.

Our mission has been to provide the valued customers international quality at economic price alongwith maintaining strict delivery schedules, providing customised services, and adhering to highest business standards and ethics making us stand apart from our competitors. Our well-established organizational structure in the well laid out facility situated outside the city provides us adequate strengths for rising up to all possible levels of the business,” conveyed Bhuvnesh who in the previous year achieved the feat of printing thousands of titles ranging from scientific, technical, medical, cook books and coffee table books in mono and multicolour, soft cover and hard cover with high print runs in record time for reputed international publishers. “Being professionally managed and procuring cutting-edge equipments from the world’s renowned brands, we are effectively attracting internationally reputed publishers as our clients from the UK, the USA, Germany, France, Norway, Sweden, Czech Republic, New Zealand, Russia and Cameroon in Africa,” he concluded.

Nagaraj & Co
Chennai Thiruvanmiyur

Nagaraj & Co ChennaiNagaraj & Co was probably another one of the earliest printers to shift out of city limits. “My father late Shri ME Subramanian had the vision to shift our press way back in 1967, to Thiruvanmiyur. Our press was just outside the city limit, and there was no public transport to that area and we had to provide bicycles to few people and offered loans to a few others, who wanted to shift their residence to nearby places,” said MS Nagarajan of the company in conversation with D Ramalingam of P&P.

“Within the city limit, the land prices are very expensive and generally the government does not allow the factories to exist there. The movement of goods and parking becomes very difficult, particularly when heavy trucks/containers carrying machines/consumables come to unload in the facility. By relocating our facility to the outskirts of city, we could overcome all these problems effectively,” stated Nagarajan of Nagaraj & CO. “We had to plan our consumable requirements for an entire week, sometimes for fifteen days since delivery cost adds to the cost. In case of emergency, we used to send our vehicles and get the materials. Procurement after office hours is definitely difficult and at times we had to stop production due to want of materials. We had three timings intervalled during the day when our delivery vans/ boys shall leave and plan to consolidate all our deliveries accordingly. The clients were also reasonable in understanding our difficulty, and adjust accordingly. At present, the transport is so good that our workers reaching for the early morning shift has also become easy and so is about the night shift staff,” conveyed Nagarajan telling about their experience in terms of: meeting the emergency requirements of the consumables; delivery of smaller quantity of jobs to local customers, getting ready at different timings during the day; and having the staff regularly reaching timely and leaving the press during odd hours.

“Within the city limit, the land prices are very expensive and generally the government does not allow the factories to exist there. The neighbours in the residential area object working in the night hours. The movement of goods and parking becomes very difficult, particularly when heavy trucks/ containers carrying machines/consumables come to unload in the facility. By relocating our facility outskirts the city, we could overcome all these problems effectively, along with ensuring availability of substantial working area,” stated Nagarajan, adding, “However, we still outsource some of our requirements from units located within the city, but we entered into an arrangement by which one way transport cost is borne by the vendor, thus keeping the cost little lower.”

On asking whether they are getting power supply regularly from the government or they majorly depend on their own power generation he stated, “We are a HT consumer hence, the power supply is uniform, but experiencing the power cut, etc do not make any difference whether you are within city or outside.” The company receives fifty percent of their jobs online, downloading through their FTP.

“With the shifting to outside city, our inventory level has gone up marginally, and as I said earlier, we need to plan at least fifteen days of our stock. We buy majority of our purchases from the mills and also import fifty percent of our coated stock from overseas,” he mentioned.

“At the new facility, we have built up 50,000 sq ft area three years back thinking that it might fulfill our requirement for at least ten years, but unfortunately we need more space even now and as such we are planning to add additional 25,000 sq ft,” concluded Nagarajan.

Reaping advantages of relocating the production facility (Part II)