OPINION  

Of printer to industralist
(21-12-2009)

Before beginning this article of opinion, I must say that, given to my character and style, they could not to me have put before nothing else delicate. It is not “the furnace for buns”, in ours mistreated industry, nor can be said that I am used to indicating opinions, we say, “politically correct”. And it will not be for want of affection and respect to our sector and its components, no;

I have always indicated my admiration by the value that has the graphical industralist when investing, but is truth that also I have been very critical with that Numantine resistance to accept that the things cannot follow equal: with crisis or without her. On the other hand, Procograf lives, indeed, to improve the form in which the companies use their resources, technological and human, so that the economic results improve, and so I can have a privileged vision of the evils that affect our industries. Therefore, the unique thing that attempt is to contribute some detail that can help.

I cannot stop deciding to me a phrase that oía, does few days, to one of our last clients: “To be printing no longer socially it is considered what was” and is certain, very certain. And of there the title of this writing. That one of the printing teacher, craftsman in each one of the small details of its daily task, has happened to better life. No longer it is the transmitting vehicle of the knowledge, nor the alchemist who did miracles with waters, inks, hanging papers, composing in lead, granulating and emulsionando plates, interpreting original and improving them, buying average of production that adapted to their form to understand “the graphical art”… that finished.

But the delicate thing of this situation is that all what has been said happened very just a short time ago, and few of our industralists do not continue being those people who have grown thus, and so the contamination persists and they have not assumed that, for example, no longer can be bought machines simply because they like as they print, and without to have made a previous study of how they are going to remove yield to him, or because he has said to them a client-friend (one of the most dangerous figures of our activity, and most frequent) than is going to employ much to them. This continues happening today, with the danger addition that the banks, until do very little put, it very easy to buy what, in not few cases, is being the ruin of the companies that invested bad and inopportunely.

In order to invest, we needed to know how how we are going to make money with that investment, having made the economic, technical studies and of market corresponding. The impulses are very dangerous. And it is that, in the hard reality that is called on to us to live, in that a very important part of the companies has threatened their survival, we know cases that very goes or, that has increased to their sales and benefits (and no, indeed, lowering prices of reckless form) and, which can be surprising, it is that they do it directed by young people and who they do not have nor idea than it is a point of plot or a water-red balance. They are professional of the direction.

And this he is another one of the urgent duties that there are to do like industralists: To decide, with criterion objective, if we can to direct our company, once it reaches a volume that can exceed our capacities, or we must delegate the work in professionals. Why we do not do with we ourself, to decide that we are enabled for a work, which we do with the officials who we contracted. The fact of being proprietors does not enable us to be directive of our own company. The fact that we are able to move paper batteries while we take care of the telephone and we approved a sheet, the unique thing that means, and is not little, it is that we are honest industralists and workers, and who the business turns around us. But, every day, is not that more what the company needs its manager who, without wanting it, can become the greater brake for the good march of the activity.

And it is that the changes have been too great like trying to make the things in the same way, with totally different tools. So different that we are not going to recognize our sector in few years. For not too much time, between the client or the creative phase, and the end item was no more stage than the marked ones by us, photomechanical and printing, with well-known, predictable and, more of the times, opaque average nuestos for the own client. And we marked to terms and prices. But no longer it is thus.

Now that client does what it seems to him and like and when it seems to him, in a computer that can have in its house already sends, it without messengers where wants, demands the results that considers opportune, can print that same file to thousands of kilometers, in the same day, with a predictable and measurable result, and to a cost infinitely smaller than cost to him few years ago… Therefore, we cannot continue giving the back to that world that as much fear gives us: The one of the abbreviations (ICC, LAB, pdf, JDF, CMM, ERP, MY…) and what they represent.

And the sad thing is that, in the reality of multitude of factories, it is continued living almost other people's to which that type of tools supposes. And still worse it is than our more experienced, those “of all the life”, almost enemy officials are declared of any thing that implies to change its form to make the things. The sad result, so many times seen, is that the industralist invests in technology of last generation, able to improve the economic results of the company, and the officials handle who it do it as if they were the old woman means. So not always one works with data CIP 3 and one important part of the machines works with their means of disconnected automatic measurement and correction.

“It is going to teach that gadget to me how a sheet is intoned”. It is a phrase sadly intoned by the officials, when the industralist insists on which he is used what he bought, and vió to work so wonderfully, in a fair. The final result usually is that our companies pay by means to which usually they do not remove the yield to him that can to them and it is due to remove to them. And not only that. The industralist can get to live with the heart in a fist, thinking that what has bought is not worth so it seemed that it was worth, and that only thanks to the skill of its “old” officials is going to obtain that a machine of last technology gives the same yield him that the old ones. The times of change and the cruise speed of a good part of our factories testify therefore it: They are very far from the possibilities of the new machines.

Solution? Good, this already always is variable following which each wants to sell to him to the printer, but always there is peculiar similarity the value to me that we threw to him to buy a machine that costs million Euros and what it hurts to us to be spent about to obtain thousand more than works as it must. The improvement margin is very great. The certain thing is that there is a reality that prevails, and is that the distances are more and more low, and so the digital impression already is more than a threat, is a reality that, rather soon that behind schedule, is going to us to affect more than we would like. The technological base and the communication between the parts or begin to be sufficiently mature like beginning to compare, and, in those comparisons, or parcels can be seen with clarity that are the more own of the digital impression that of the Offset. The rest, is only time question.

All previous and some other remoras take, us to a situation in which it is very difficult to make money with the prices that the market imposes and that follow the loss. And, until where we can lower, without putting in risk our company, and losing more money with the seated personnel working who. She is another one of the great deficiencies of our printers: The lack of a minimum of analytical accounting that allows to know our capacity real to compete. One does not treat either, necessarily, to buy program after program and to follow with the same deficiencies in spite of having much information. Although it is in an Excel leaf, done well, we must know what the things cost to us, pay whichever us by them and if we can live in that scene.

And all this, in that market that already buys impression like which it buys any other service: Comparing quality, cost and terms. And the quality to which the buyer talks about today does not have anything to do with which many printers defend saying: “This I improve you”. He says himself, often, to that one client who presents a certified evidence and the unique thing that it tries is that the impression adjusts to that test. Or to a concrete standard, without tests. And this, technically, is not any problem but that turns out to be it at labor level.

We follow pawned on speaking of ear of everything what has to do with the standardization of the data and the color, and to thus goes us. Our numbers, generally, continue being bad, and, for sample, a button: The annual invoicing by worker is around the 90,000 € in Spain and to the 160,000 € in Germany. Although the better prices are something, the machines are the same and the unique thing that it changes is the form to work and to understand the business. Nothing else, and nothing less.

In order to summarize, no longer we will be able to continue selling “art” or imprimiendo “to the taste” more time (safe for few clients, and that is arranged to pay what costs), because it does already enough that we sell services, although we have resisted to accept it. Who it buys to us is a client, and it does not have why to be a friend, fidelizado over the logic. And, like salesmen of services, we will have to do what so many do and so many sectors: To study the market to see what wants, it wants how it and how much it is arranged to pay. And, on that base, to draw an enterprise activity that allows us to make money and to manage it since there is to do with a company.

The crisis, among others damages, which has done is to open our weaknesses as sector (the sobrecapacity and the very strong indebtedness worried already us to all) and, without a doubt, ends up to us passing a painful invoice if we are not able to adapt us to the exigencies of the present market. Who conserves the cold head and can maneuver, if she does in the suitable direction (forgetting nostalgia better times, than they will not return), will leave reinforced and assure his future. Hopefully that we are the majority.

Manuel Go'mez
Procograf manager
manuel.gomez@procograf.com

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