New Finishing Equipment Arrives Today

I have written before about our wonderful state of the art digital label printing presses we use here at Lightning Labels. We are very proud of the quality that our HP-Indigo presses are able to produce. But the printing presses are only half of the equation. Once the labels are printed they need to be diecut and slit on to individual rolls. The equipment to do these jobs is called finishing equipment.

Today we took delivery of our new Omega Digicon 2 die cutting machine from AB Graphics. It is the current state of the art as far as finishing equipment is concerned and we are excited to get it installed. At the same time we have purchased four additional pieces of equipment to help improve the efficiency of our operation here. But what does this all mean to you as a Lightning Labels customer?

For a start, once all this equipment is up and running it means we will be able to move jobs through our plant more quickly, which will reduce the turnaround time for everyone. We will also be able to expand our capabilities - with a couple of new options for you. Stay tuned here, we will make an announcement about this when we are ready for production.

Here at Lightning Labels we always like to stay on the cutting edge of technology. Now we will have state of the art printing combined with state of the art die cutting. This will allow us to provide even better service to our customers than ever before.

Comments

[Dr Adrian Steele of Mercian Labels Ltd (UK)]

Hi Peter

Do you collect accurate and systematic data on your leads times, and if so what do you regard a "quick" or "industry standard" in the USA market?

I'm happy to discuss Mercian Labels' lead time data here if you wish to from a UK perspective - your blog, your call!

regs

Adrian

[Peter Renton]

Adrian,

We promote a 3-4 day turnaround on all orders, but internally our goal is always to get every order out the door within 3 days from proof approval. When our new equipment goes into full production we hope to reduce that to 2 days. The industry standard for flexo printing here is 8-10 days, but for digital it is more like 5 days.

I would be interested to hear what the turnaround times are like in the UK.

Regards, Peter

[Dr Adrian Steele of Mercian Labels Ltd (UK)]

Hi Peter

As you may gather from my interest in this thread, lead times are a subject of interest to me, as certainly in the UK there is often a significant gap between the marketing claims and the actual service.

The classic trick is to claim something like "we can offer you a 24 hours turnaround" which they can do, but it is so disruptive to normal operations that its rarely used, and very, very expensive.

I also find that lead time estimates in marketing material are just a carrot really, and really the only thing that counts is the actual speed of a normal job that a company processes. This gives a clear indication of what a company offers in terms of a lead time without any special intervention.

I think that everyone would agree that lead times have come down in recent years, and from our view as a UK supplier specialising in short runs, its a key USP.

In 2001 we were offering 3 weeks, by 2003 is was 5 days, and since 2004 we have offered a standard 3 day lead time. Where I think that we differ from the norm, is that we write our own MIS software in house, and track the lead time of every job (to the second) from artwork approval to dispatch, and produce internal real time stats on the 400+ jobs we do every month. The past month is pretty typical, and having just looked up the stats, our average lead time was 2.4 working days and 73% of all jobs leaf us within 3 working days. We find these the best metrics to jude lead time, but its only worth something if you systematically record lead times for every job.

I have looked a number of times at changing the company target and culture from 3 days to 2 days, and to be honest I dont see the market need for this, and the costs incurred are significant and unjustifiable. I expect that the costs in running a 100% digital operation on 2 days is bearable, but is there really the demand for a 2 day service? I#m not sure.

In terms of "normal" flexo lead times in the UK, I dont have any real data on this, but I was to guess, I'd say that 5-7 working days is about normal.

Do you see a real market push for 2 day lead times Peter?

[Steve Smith (Lightning Labels)]

Hi Adrian,

From my perspective (being the person who customers usually choose to complain to when we don't meet their expectations), I'm not sure there's yet a compelling "market push" for lead times any faster than we currently achieve - but there will ALWAYS be customers who absolutely need (or want) their labels even more quickly than we can produce them.

Unlike most print shops in our experience, we don't offer a "rush" service - we treat every order as equally important and work towards fast turn on every job. Could we capitalize on a given customer's desperation and charge them the ubiquitous rush charges? - yes we could - but we've always had a philosophical issue with that approach. After all, rushing a job through just because somebody's prepared to pay more must adversely impact your loyal customers who are patiently waiting in the queue. I know this is an unusual attitude in our industry, but I make no apologies for it.

In more direct response to your question, my perception is that the vast majority of our customers are extremely happy with our turn times (indeed they're often "blown away") - so I would not feel compelled to spend enormous amounts of money to shave an extra day off them. Having said that, I suspect there are folks who will always be attracted by "better service" (whatever that may mean to them and regardless of whether they actually need it) - so we constantly focus whatever reasonable resources we can to improving that.