White Paper. Seven Myths about Printing Metrics that Impact Sales and Profitability. August Prepared for:

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1 White Paper August 2015 Seven Myths about Printing Metrics that Impact Sales and Profitability Prepared for:

2 Table of Contents Introduction... 3 Myth 1: Why Measure Performance? Our Productivity is High!... 5 Myth 2: Why Monitor My Digital Press? Print Sales are Declining... 7 Myth 3: Increasing Productivity isn t Very Important... 9 Myth 4: My Print MIS System Provides Everything I Need Myth 5: Productivity Does Not Impact Costs or Profits Myth 6: We Measure Clicks That s all we Need Myth 7: We Don't Have Enough Waste to be Worth Tracking! InfoTrends Opinion About InfoTrends About the Author List of Figures Figure 1: How much automation are you using?... 5 Figure 2: Fastest Growth Areas... 7 Figure 3: Most Important Direction for Next Five Years... 9 Figure 4: Print MIS Investments Figure 5: Utilization of Color Production Digital Presses Figure 6: IPMA 2011 Operations Report Figure 7: Waste Tracked In- plants vs. Commercial Printer InfoTrends

3 Introduction When studying leading companies, one finds common denominators such as: leaders hire and train better, leaders are better "hunters" for new customers, and leaders implement new technology better. What separates leading companies from the rest of the industry is that: leaders measure operational performance more, benchmark their performance against other companies, and when they fare poorly in those benchmarks, take action to increase their performance. Operational performance measurements can be daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly measurements of performance in the manufacturing of products or delivery of services. The simplest measure of productivity is output over time, such as a machine printing 110 pages per minute (ppm). A slightly more complex measure might be the number of good or sellable pages per shift. Two very popular financial ratios used in our industry are the sales per employee ratio and the payroll as a percentage of revenue ratio. Examples of operational performance ratios are utilization rates of equipment, percentage of correct work, and downtime of equipment. While many companies have intuitive feelings about individual staff or equipment productivity, most don't have measurements of this performance. As a result, the most common question we are asked during operational evaluations of performance is, "How does our performance compare to the average company; to leading companies? Do we fare well or poorly when we benchmark our productivity and manufacturing costs? Productivity, the ratio of usable output to invested resources, is intimately tied to manufacturing costs. As productivity goes up, cost for manufacturing goes down. Print is a manufacturing business the manufacture of printed output. Although few want to admit it, competitive print pricing is critical for commercial and in- plant printers. Commercial printers compete with online service providers, while in- plant printers compete with outsourcing companies. The irony, however, is that most companies do not measure their operational performance. They do not have the culture to measure performance, to put appropriate tools in place, to make changes, and to evaluate those changes to assure increased productivity and reduced manufacturing costs. InfoTrends

4 When we ask companies that do not measure performance why they are reluctant to do so, we hear a variety of different reasons. Many could be considered excuses or myths. As the printing industry merges and consolidates, we believe that leading companies that measure performance are more likely to survive and thrive. Let us address some of these myths. InfoTrends

5 Myth 1: Why Measure Performance? Our Productivity is High! In our consulting activities, we often walk into companies and work with management that has never worked at another company. It is somewhat premature if they claim that their productivity is as good as any other company. As stated earlier, productivity is simply the ratio of usable output to invested resources. Let us examine further. What are the invested resources? The simple answer is people, machines, and consumables. What is usable output? Usable output is printed output that meets the criteria of your customer. Management wants to know whether their machines and people are generating as much usable output as is possible. Usable output requires people and machines to work well in harmony. Many companies we talk with do look at simplistic measures of performance: monthly sales, or monthly clicks. That said, they do not know if they could produce more sales or how many of those clicks represent actual sales. They also do not know what bottlenecks and obstacles are holding them back. In their quest to improve productivity, many of the companies I talk with are implementing workflow automation. Figure 1: How much automation are you using? InfoTrends

6 As demonstrated in this chart from the InfoTrends Study, Trends in Workflow Automation- - Emerging Trends 2014, when companies were asked to rate the level of automation throughout their manufacturing operations, the average was only about five out of 10 for commercial (print for pay) service providers, and less for in- plant printers. This translates to low productivity. Unfortunately, workflow automation is not sufficient, service providers need to measure productivity, identify the obstacles and bottlenecks, and address them. Quad/Graphics, the second largest printer in the U.S., is engaged in direct mail, commercial, and publication printing. Earlier this year, they announced multi- site use of a system by SpencerMetrics LLC, the sponsor of this white paper. In the original press release, the Director of Continuous Improvement at Quad/Graphics, Mike Stark, said, We look forward to using SpencerMetrics data- based analyses to enhance digital printing operations, supporting our continuous improvement efforts in the plants that will use the system... We particularly appreciate its scalability, depth of analysis, and ease- of- use. InfoTrends

7 Myth 2: Why Monitor My Digital Press? Print Sales are Declining It is important to recognize that significant growth is projected in the demand for digitally printed products. There is a renewed interest in printing services, such as digital printing, wide format printing, and offset printing. In the recent InfoTrends study, U.S. Production Software Investment Survey 2015, commercial print services providers and corporate in- plants were asked about their businesses, investment trends, shifting services, and spending levels. Figure 2: Fastest Growth Areas Perhaps most interesting is that this renewed interest in printing services makes managing digital printing devices more important. As print demand increases, companies need to manage; to monitor printer uptime, downtime, people, machine efficiency, and paper waste, as well as scheduled and unscheduled maintenance. A complaint we heard often after the last recession was, "We are so busy trying to meet our deadlines, why should we spend time monitoring the performance of our equipment? If equipment does not run optimally or if some staff is not properly trained, the resultant downtime, rework, and overtime can contribute to delivery delays and excess costs. InfoTrends

8 One way of thinking about these excess costs is to use the budgeted hourly rate (BHR) calculation, the standard operating procedure for estimating the cost of manufacturing in the printing industry. The BHR breaks each production area into cost centers such as sales, customer service, prepress, pressroom, and the finishing area. The most expensive production cost centers, those that contribute the largest percentage of cost, are the areas that use the most expensive equipment, while the lowest cost centers have little or no equipment. For example, it is not unusual for the BHR of the press to be in the $250/hour range, prepress to be $75/hour, and finishing around $45/hour. It is no surprise that the pressroom is usually the most expensive cost center. Consider the cost of an unproductive press, especially as the demand for digital printing continues to grow. An hour lost in the pressroom is more expensive than an hour lost in the finishing area. Achieving high utilization rate on the press is more beneficial than achieving high utilization in, for example, the finishing area. Essentially, it is most important to measure the performance of your production presses. Rob Lingard, the Director of Central Services at Deseret Mutual Benefit Administrators (DMBA) is very aware of the importance of monitoring the uptime of their new HP Indigo 7000 press. Like any good manager, he has set a very high utilization goal. Rob knew he needed the SpencerMetrics system the first time he saw a demo. He says, "Sometimes we hit that goal and other times we do not. But achieving that goal is not always under our control, but I know that monitoring our uptime and setting a high goal is resulting in much higher productivity than we ever reached before." InfoTrends

9 Myth 3: Increasing Productivity isn t Very Important Another myth underlies this question, "Why focus on increasing productivity when it is more important to build and sell new products and services? As the demand for traditional print and mail products declines, the importance of creating new products and services grows. That said, InfoTrends research shows that increasing efficiency is more important. In the InfoTrends report, U.S. Production Software Investment Outlook 2015, the need to reduce production cost and improve efficiency became the most important initiative reported. When asked, Which initiatives best describe your strategic business direction in the next five years," the number one response at 65% overall was Reducing production cost and improving efficiency," while Expand to new print applications and services was number two at 53.4% overall. Figure 3: Most Important Direction for Next Five Years At DMBA, an unexpected benefit of monitoring productivity was more efficient scheduling and a reduction of overtime. According to Rob Lingard, "For almost three decades the staff has been making their own schedules. When demands are high, they work longer hours and when work slows they work shorter hours. Our pressroom staff had been cross- trained to help in the finishing and mailing areas but no one measured how much time was spent in those areas." InfoTrends

10 Using the SpencerMetrics tool, the staff began using the "idle time" category to monitor time spent in other areas. "Using the data from the SpencerMetrics tool, I can more accurately estimate how long jobs will take to print. Knowing how long jobs will take to print and when they are due, I am more accurate in my scheduling, and sometimes I tell a staff member who requests overtime that they can print that job the next day", says Lingard. InfoTrends

11 Myth 4: My Print MIS System Provides Everything I Need Many companies believe they already have tools to collect the data that helps them to understand their productivity. The problem however, is that most companies do not invest much in software to streamline the tasks of the business, and instead use spreadsheets to create estimates, write job tickets, bill customers, and track jobs as they progress through the manufacturing process. In the NAPL (Now Epicomm) Investment Study 2014, most companies reported that they did not invest at all or invested less than $15K on Print MIS systems. The most common features at that price point were estimating, job ticketing, and billing. Figure 4: Print MIS Investments Source: Epicomm (formerly NAPL) NAPL Investment Study 2014 Unfortunately, most Print MIS systems track little- or- no data about the shop floor and even less on the shop s largest investment, the production presses. They do not collect or analyze the necessary data to identify bottlenecks and the root causes of delays. Not identifying the root cause of a problem significantly hampers corrective action. This became clear to John Yeager, the Digital Production Supervisor of Colorfx, Iowa s largest privately owned commercial printing and marketing services company. Yeager realized that their Print MIS system was helpful in working with individual jobs, but did not provide the data required to measure pressroom productivity. According to Yeager, "SpencerMetrics system lets me measure press operation information a complement to the job centric information from an MIS System." InfoTrends

12 The training at Colorfx was fast, and the results were immediately apparent. Staff were trained in less than an hour, and productivity monitoring began immediately in the 24 hour/seven day a week operation. After collecting data to establish trends, the staff identified productivity bottlenecks and gained insights into how to optimize their pressroom performance. They changed their workflow and updated their maintenance procedures, increasing their productivity by 8.4%. Until recently, the Printing Industries of America (PIA) performed their own print production and provided hands- on training of printing equipment. Before closing the print production facility, the PIA used the SpencerMetrics tool for their in- house production and as a teaching tool. Bryan Llewellyn, the PIA Lead Digital Production Specialist, used SpencerMetrics tools in training workshops, as well as for monitoring internal production. As an operator, Bryan finds the touch screen data entry fast and easy. As an in- plant manager, he finds the analysis quantifies all press activities, providing new insights. Bryan stated that, "The tool was quick and easy to use. What I liked best about the tool was that it gave me in- depth information about job setup, RIPing, repair time, consumable replacements, paper jams, and of course, time spent actually producing sellable print. InfoTrends

13 Myth 5: Productivity Does Not Impact Costs or Profits Another misconception or myth is that productivity, a measure of print volume, does not impact the cost- per- page. Each month provides fixed costs of owning and running a production printing device. In addition, most manufacturers charge a click fee, part of the variable cost, which scales for different "volume bands." For example, you may pay 6 /page if you print 300,000 color pages in one month, and you may pay 4 /page if you print 700,000 color pages another month. These fixed as well as variable costs are what is divided into the number of pages to arrive at the cost- per- page. This means that how often you use a production press, your productivity or utilization rate, determines cost- per- page. In most companies, expensive digital color presses run 25% - 75% of the time, averaging only about 50% of the time. Figure 5: Utilization of Color Production Digital Presses Inkjet 51.0% Heavy Production 46.7% Medium Production 46.1% Light Production 48.2% 0% 20% 40% 60% Source: InfoTrends Substrate Opportunities in Production Color Printing: May 2013 A production color digital press running a low utilization rate a few hours a day could result in a cost of $.45 cents per page. The same press with high volume and utilization rate could see the cost- per- page fall to less than $.07 per page. A world- class company may achieve the 75% utilization rate, an average company 50%, and a laggard may only achieve 25% utilization rates. InfoTrends

14 A more interesting question is how this may impact revenue or profits. Copy General operates one of the premier, high- tech digital printing facilities in the Metro Washington D.C. area. Their clients include the area s largest associations, tech companies, and universities, as well as small businesses. With the increasing demand for high quality digital print jobs, Copy General added an HP Indigo 7500 press. The considerable investment in a new press made maximizing their return on investment (ROI) a key business priority. After a month of data collection with the SpencerMetrics tool, the analysis showed where corrective actions were required in training and reallocating priorities. A few months later, Copy General was achieving an increase of 5.4% more sellable output with the same equipment working the same shift and using the same staff. Doing the math reveals that an increase of 5% in productivity for a press running at 110 pages- per- minute, seven hours- per- shift, two shifts- per- day, for 250 days- per- year, an average sell price of $.25/page results in additional annual revenue of $315,000. InfoTrends

15 Myth 6: We Measure Clicks That s all we Need How would you increase your performance or productivity? You could increase usable output (better equipment, more sales) without increasing your investment in resources, or you could decrease your investment in resources (think less overtime, fewer shifts) while generating the same usable output. How do companies increase their productivity? It requires two steps. The first step is measuring productivity, identifying the bottlenecks and obstacles that limit performance. The second is changing something you have identified, and measuring if that helped or hindered productivity. How do you measure the productivity of your printing equipment? Some companies try to use their Print MIS systems, while others use spreadsheets or even paper forms. When companies are asked about what they measure and report, the most common response is click charges another myth, because clicks are not always sellable pages. In the IPMA (In- plant Printer and Mailing Association) 2011 Operation Survey, participants were asked, "If you provide reports to management, identify the types of information included." The number one answer was productivity/clicks, with 68% of the respondents listing it as their most important metric. Figure 6: IPMA 2011 Operations Report Source: IPMA 2011 Operation Survey The problem with clicks is that they are not a true indication of productivity. For example, you can print an entire job and then find that the pages had streaking, requiring that you print the job again. Looking simply at clicks would make it seem like InfoTrends

16 the equipment was busy, when actually there was an equipment issue resulting in poor productivity. Furthermore, clicks do not provide actionable data to help make decisions to improve productivity; to reduce maintenance problems, mistakes, and rework, or to improve training, workflow, scheduling. These are real obstacles and barriers to increasing productivity. Some innovative firms have developed better tools that actually measure production press productivity and provide actionable information. On the PIA website, Sam Shea, the Digital Content Manager for the Printing Industries of America, wrote a review of the SpencerMetrics tool and said, SpencerMetrics does not simply measure if a press is running, it actually measures whether or not the output from the press is sellable. This is due to the unique fact that that the system gathers and analyzes operator knowledge. The staff at ASU (Arizona State University) Print and Imaging Lab uses the SpencerMetrics system to help train student operators to run an HP Indigo According to Cathy Skoglund, the Manager of Operations & Business Development at ASU, one of the advantages of the tool is that it helps student operators to benchmark their performance against others, motivating them to talk to and watch leading operators to learn how to improve their performance. Skoglund believes this would be even more beneficial to commercial companies with multiple shifts or multiple sites. What is the difference between actionable and un- actionable information? Before using the SpencerMetrics tool, students at ASU knew when they made a mistake, but they did not know if the frequency and magnitude of their mistakes was higher or lower than other students. All that was known was the number of clicks or pages they printed by the HP Indigo 5500 un- actionable data. That said, once the students could compare the number of pages they printed to other students, it became clear how much paper and ink they were wasting and throwing away. Not all clicks are usable or sellable output. Counting clicks alone is un- actionable, but comparing usable output for different staff or different equipment would be meaningful, actionable data. InfoTrends

17 Myth 7: We Don't Have Enough Waste to be Worth Tracking! Traditionally in the printing industry, the motivation to reduce waste and increase productivity tends to swing back and forth like a pendulum. During times of high demand and growth, the interest declines. During slow periods and economic hardships, the interest increases. This waxing and waning emphasis is changing; however, as pricing pressure continues to grow and mistakes become more and more costly. As we write this, we are completing a consulting assignment for a company creating and delivering almost 300,000 signs per week. We are estimating 20% waste of $3 million in annual production, or $600,000 in waste. It always surprises companies to learn about the inefficiencies in their processes and how much they are costing. What proves to be the greatest shock, however, is the concept that eliminating waste goes right to the bottom line. If you are a commercial printer, another way to think about this is how much would you have to sell to increase your bottom line by the money lost in waste? The figure below compares how in- plants and commercial printers track waste. Approximately 63% of commercial printers track paper waste, compared to 47% of in- plant printers. Figure 7: Waste Tracked In- plants vs. Commercial Printer InfoTrends

18 Paper is one of the most expensive components of the printing process. Paper waste can range from 5% to 25%. As noted above, we have seen companies with 20% paper waste, resulting in $600,000 waste and higher costs. If an executive responsible for an in- plant printing facility was approached and told they could save $600,000 by eliminating waste, they might consider closing the in- plant. While paper waste is one of the more obvious types of waste, other forms of waste are more subtle and tougher to identify. Unscheduled maintenance is a good example of a subtle type of waste. For some companies, unscheduled maintenance issues appear every week; while other companies encounter problems only occasionally. According to Chris Myers, the Production Manager at the ASU in- plant, "We almost never have to make an unscheduled maintenance call. This is much different than in other companies I have worked with in the past. In those shops, we never really performed preventative maintenance because we never knew what to do and when to do it. The SpencerMetrics tool helps use schedule our maintenance, which has almost eliminated the need to call for unscheduled maintenance. Waste is more than just paper and ink. Tracking all waste and minimizing it goes right to the bottom line. InfoTrends

19 InfoTrends Opinion Do not let these myths lead you astray. Leading companies act differently than the rest of the industry. In addition to better hiring and training, superior marketing and sales skills, they are also better at monitoring and improving their productivity. The first step toward improving production is measuring day- to- day operations. Contrary to popular belief, most companies are not achieving high levels of productivity, do not have the right tools in place, and are not measuring the right information. In this highly competitive environment, companies not performing like the leaders are more likely to go out of business or become consolidated or acquired. Companies that are going out of business or becoming consolidated or acquired are continuing at a high pace. According to InfoTrends Study, U.S Printing, Publishing, and Packaging Market Size and Outlook , commercial printing companies have declined from about 23,000 to 18,000, and in- plant printers have declined from 50,000 to about 47,000. The good news is there is a tool today that is easy to use, relatively inexpensive, and can help monitor and improve pressroom productivity. The SpencerMetrics tool does not require change or integration into your press (which may violate your lease terms) or your Print MIS system. Most importantly, it is fast, easy- to- use, and provides actionable data indicating where corrective action is needed. InfoTrends

20 About InfoTrends InfoTrends is the leading worldwide market research and strategic consulting firm for the digital imaging and document solutions industry. We provide research, analysis, forecasts, and advice to help clients understand market trends, identify opportunities, and develop strategies to grow their businesses. About the Author Howie Fenton Associate Director, Operations Consulting, InfoTrends Howard "Howie" Fenton is the Associate Director of Operations Consulting at InfoTrends and responsible for working with in- plants as well as commercial printers and to assess and benchmark their customer and graphic communications processes and provide recommendations on staffing, technology, and sourcing. He also works on strategy, workflow optimization, and business development initiatives. InfoTrends