Discipline of the day!
Editor – S K Khurana The world is facing recession; all industries are facing the brunt. Everyone is being affected – in conventional printing industry – there are lesser number of jobs, input costs have increased specifically related to consumables, manpower, power, transportation, etc. Companies are resorting to cutting corners in all spheres and the worst affected are the marketing and advertising budgets, which is a major blow to the graphic communications industry, bringing it under unprecedented pressure for almost the last decade.
Amidst all these issues, pricing has become highly competitive and the under-capacity utilisation of high-end machines puts additional burden on the printers as the ROI is sometimes not achieved in the desired timeframe. Hence, it has become imperative for a printer to take a strategic decision not to just survive, but make profits with optimum utilisation of his manpower, machinery and equipments, which probably can be achieved if reasonable sense of discipline is maintained with respect to all available resources.
Human resources can be optimally utilised, if they are guided well to perform their assigned jobs in a disciplined manner, both quantitatively as well as qualitatively. Sometimes a job is attempted multiple times to reach perfection, which otherwise could have been done in a single attempt. I am sure, if a detailed individual analysis is done for all the staff in a printing establishment, the results would be astonishing.
Secondly, as far as the performance of equipment and machinery is concerned, one needs to ensure that all the equipments remain in operations to the tune of 75%+. The focus must be to achieve this by different ways and means. It may look tough but not impossible. Many times the workflow within the departments is not in the disciplined format, resulting in delay in completing the process inspite of having regular flow of jobs. The lag in co-ordination between marketing, production or even the materials department and despatch section can incur huge time loss. Last but not the least, it is also important to somehow improve upon the clients’ style of working; there is need to bring in a sense of discipline in this area as well. Unproductive operations like last minute changes apart from getting the inputs at the eleventh hour, making the things go worse in terms of the schedules going haywire, needs to be avoided.
So, put on your thinking hats and look for solutions – the growth in the industry may be declining but the scope is high and with discipline, you can surely achieve an upward growth curve!
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