(1) Actual operating rate
The actual operating rate of 65% for company A is a good figure when looking at the entire printing industry. It is not rare for companies in the industry to have actual operating rates of 50% or less. The main reason for company A to have such high actual operating rate is that, among the two factors of machine hour rate and operating hour rate that constructs the characteristic, the operating hour rate is high.

(2) Machine hour rate
The machine hour rate for company A is 86.3%, which is at a higher standard than most cases. Since the machine hour rate uses relative expression B, shorter the indirect working hours, higher the rate. <Relative expression B> Direct working hours/actual working hours = (actual working hours - indirect working hours) / actual working hours There are two main factors that determine the length of the indirect working hours:
(a) Good or bad schedule management
(b) Facility management, especially good or bad machine maintenance In other words, good or bad machine hour rate is not the performance of the press or operator skill, but mainly how the production is managed.

Unless sufficient schedule management is made and the prepress work controlled for the preparation of printing plates according to a set schedule, necessary printing plates will not be ready even if the press is ready for the next job, resulting in having to stop the press. This is the " wait time " included in the indirect working hours. There is no problem if the next job can be performed in advance. But if the deadline for the job is close and the job must be completed even if it means to wait on the printing plate, or if the printing plate for the next job is not completed as well, there will be time when the press must be stopped.

It is also possible to reduce having to stop the machine due to malfunctions during printing by maintaining the machine daily. Although machine maintenance is also a factor of indirect working hours, periodically inspecting the machine for necessary maintenance takes less time than not maintaining and having to stop the machine for repairs. In addition, having to stop the machine due to malfunctions also causes delay in meeting deadlines and may also cause the efficiency of the entire factory to decrease since the set schedule is disturbed. Good or bad facility management has influence on whether the machine hour rate is high or low.
In the case of company A, the wait time was only 3.5 hours in the 25 days the data was taken due to good schedule maintenance and the comparative actual working hour ratio was only 1.9%. Moreover, there were no problems encountered with malfunctions since the machine was well maintained. Thus, much of the indirect working hours consisted of jobs during when starting and finishing, and the indirect working hours is much less than that of normal and the machine hour rate is high. Generally, the indirect working hours is much more than that of company A and the machine hour rate is about 80%.
Since the shifting of the schedule becomes larger at later stages when work is not performed as planned resulting in complications, it is normal for the machine hour rate at later stages to decline than at the press site.

(3) Operating hour rate
The operating hour rate of company A is 75.9% and is much higher than that of conventional companies.

Since the operating hour rate is:
Main working hours/direct working hours = (direct working hours - preparation working hours) / direct working hours, shorter the preparation working hours, better the operating hour rate.

The main factors that determine good or bad operating hour rate are: 1. lot size, 2. level of worker's skill, and 3. press performance.

Although the preparation working hours is the same regardless of the work lot size, the main working hours increases with the lot size. The larger the lot size, the percentage of the main working hours that takes up much of the direct working hours increases, therefore increasing the operating hour rate as well.
When the economy develops and the printing market matures, the demand for small-lot printing work increases, usually resulting in a decrease of the operating hour rate.

Through the 1970's, technologies and facilities to print in constant quality when initial settings for each part of the press were made accurately were developed and disseminated. These contributed in increasing the machine hour rate. However, the fact that accurately making initial settings for each part of a machine required much experience and high standard of skill in the field of printing did not change. For this reason, the preparation working hours differed heavily depending on the level of the worker's skill.
But starting from 1980, each press manufacturer developed vigorously technologies to automate each adjustment operation and as a result, major shortening of the preparation working hours was made possible. At the present, the preparation working hours differ by much as 300%, depending on what kind of options are installed in the press.

For company A, the average run length is 7291 prints per unit and is longer than the average as a lot of full-sized, four-color sheet-fed press. This is one of the factors for the high operating working hours. Although the aimed speed of the press for company A is 10,000 rph, the actual speed is 9,338 rph. Since the average lot is 7291 prints per unit, the actual average print time is 0.7784 hours (=7269 prints/9338 rph: 46.7 minutes). On the other hand, the direct working hours is 61.7 minutes (46.7 + 15.0) since the average preparation working hours is 15 minutes. Among this number, the main working hours for printing the actual product, or the actual print time of 46.7 minutes as the operating hour rate is 75.7%.
However, it is not rare for a full-sized, four-color press in the Japanese printing market to have an average lot of 3000 or 4000 prints. If the average lot for company A's full-sized, four color press was 3000 prints, the print time would be 3000/9338=0.32 hours (19.2 minutes) and the operating hour rate would be 56.1% (=19.2/(19.2+15.0)). Thus, the actual operating rate would break 50% at 0.563 ~ 0.863 = 0.486, a number that is average in Japan.
In order to maintain an operating hour rate of 75% with an average lot of 3000 prints, the direct operating hours must be 25.6 minutes. To achieve this by shortening the preparation time, the preparation time must be reduced to 6.4 minutes.
In February 1999, company A installed a CTP (Computer To Plate) system and in September, the company also installed a four-color press equipped with a fully automatic printing plate changer and a CIP3 system (the ink volume of the direct press is adjusted using digital data prepared for the CTP). Although the main purpose for this capital investment was to increase productivity by advancing automation, this also made a company stance that even if the average lot decreased to 4,000 prints, the hour rate would maintain a high standard of approximately 72%.

(4) Cylinder pervade rate
As a characteristic of the operating rate, there is the cylinder pervade rate. This characteristic is defined by relative expression C.
<Relative expression C>
Cylinder pervade rate = actual no. of units used/no. of units held by the press

The four-color press at company A is not only used to print four-color jobs, but single and two colors as well. For this reason, the number of plates (colors) used per job for the four-color press is 2.4 plates (colors) per job. In other words, the cylinder pervade rate, which is one of the characteristics that determine the operating rate, is 60% (=2.4/4.0). This is not a very good number.
The cylinder pervade rate is influenced by: 1. good or bad schedule management and 2. conformity of facility and content of order received. When the schedule is not going according as planned, there may be times when you want to print a two-color job using a two-color press but is busy with another job. In this case, you must use a four-color press for a two-color job since waiting for a two-color press to finish its job will not get the job done on time. In addition, the cylinder pervade rate will be less than 1.0 in such a case as when there are not enough jobs to constantly operate the four color press.

One unit of the full-sized, four-color press at company A can produce an average sales volume of approximately \53,300 daily. However, the actual number of units used for printing by this machine is 2.4 units on an average and 1.6 units are running without producing any profit. When converting this to monetary unit, the number becomes approximately \85,300 per day with a loss of \2,132,000 per month.
Although it is better to have a high cylinder pervade rate, in reality under various situations there are times when installing the facility has overall merit even when the cylinder rate is considered below the ideal number. As with company A, it is not a bad judgment to install the machine if it can be determined that profits can be produced even at a cylinder pervade rate of 60%.

2) Speed productivity
(1) Print speed (number of sheets fed through in 1 hour)
Although the actual operating hours of the four-color press at company A is 184.4 hours per month, the number of hours spent printing actual products (main working hours) is 120.7 hours. On the other hand, number of prints made in a month is 1,126,665. Thus the average number of prints made in an hour of actual printing, or the average print speed is 9334 prints/hour.

The maximum speed of the four-color printer at company A rated on the catalog is 12,000 rph. However, it is not possible to print at maximum speed at all times since there are various types of paper and images to work with. At company A, the aimed speed is 10,000 rph. This aimed value is an average standard. In addition, the actual speed of 9,334 rph is not a bad number.

(1) Plate replacement speed
The four-color press at company A prints 379 plates in a month. On the other hand, the total preparation working hours per month is 38.4 hours. Thus, the preparation working hours per plate, or the plate replacement speed is 6.1 minutes/plate (38.4 ~ 60 minutes / 379 plates). As a result, approximately 25 minutes of preparation time is required for four-color printing.
Although this machine is equipped with a ink preset system, it is not equipped with a blanket cleaner or automatic book replacement device. Furthermore, due to the fact that there is only one personnel working on the machine, replacement speed of 25 minutes is average.

(2) Paper-loss rate (number of sheets)
Although this outside productivity, number of sheets lost is taken into account as a characteristic that has influence on the cost.

Fig. 4 shows numbers used as the standard for paper loss in the printing industry of Japan.
For example, the rough standard for paper loss when printing 5,000 single-side sheets using four colors is 111 ~ 4 sheets = 444 sheets and the ratio for the necessary number of sheets is 8.9% (=444/5,000). Since the average lot for the four-color press of company A is 7,269 sheets, the standard paper loss for four-color printing is 148 ~ 4 sheets = 592. The ratio in comparison to the necessary number of sheets is 8.1% (=592/7,269). Regretfully, there are no data concerning paper loss at company A.
For companies with a great amount of work demanding high quality such as automobile catalogs, the standard for paper loss is much higher than the above (5,000 - 10,000 sheets of four-color job is 225 sheets ~ 4 = 900 sheets).
The paper loss referred to here include white paper used in the preparation stage for ink adjustment, registration, etc., as well as defective prints during the actual printing.

Although new technologies and facilities all contribute to reduction of paper loss, recent technological advancements made possible drastic reduction of paper loss especially in the preparation stage. For example, Komori's Hyper System allows actual printing with testing using only 20 to 30 spare sheets even for four-color printing.