OPTIMISATION OF SQUEEGEE USE

Training programme initiated a saving on squeegee use of £11,000 per annum.

This company, a well known plc in the UK recognised that they needed to get all their printers up to the same skill levels. During the training we got to the area of squeegees and everyone agreed this is probably the biggest problem area. “Some days we spend more time dressing the squeegee than we do printing.” The production manager joined in with “and we spend a flipping fortune on it”. As the discussion went on they admitted that if the squeegee got damaged in production they just took it off the machine and put it straight onto the squegee dresser, then straight back to the machine. It was explained to them about correct squeegee care and use.

It was agreed that in the period between the next training session they would carry out some tests. The two 4 colour lines would both start with new squeegee. One line would carry on with the normal practice and the other line would set up spare holders and allow the damaged squeegee to rest for 24 hours before dressing. Each line would keep records of number of prints, down time due to squeegee and if or how often the squeegee was replaced.

When I arrived for the next training session I couldn’t believe it, everyone was already there with logs and graphs spread all over the desks. I didn’t even get time to take my jacket off before they were bombarding me with facts and figures. Do you know? ……….. On average we get 3 times the life out of the squeegee if we don’t dress it straight away and downtime per squeegee changeover is a couple of minutes not 15 minutes. We reckon we can save up to 2 hours a shift on each line and we didn’t even realise that was how much time we were losing.

With cost savings on squeegee use and reduced machine time they put in a request to purchase additional squeegee holders to enable them to implement the new procedure. Squeegee use has been reduced from £18,000 per year to £7,000 and there is an increase of 84 hours per week of machine utilisation. That one change in production technique more than paid for the training and has had a significant effect on the bottom line. This one success sparked off a whole range of issues that the printers couldn’t wait to get started on.

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