The cheapest press capacity expansion is the press capacity you already own and are not using. For most flexo plants, that is 15–25% of their theoretical output. The trick is finding it.
Where to look
Hidden capacity hides in three places: changeover time, unplanned stops, and ramp time after a stop. Each of these is influenced more by upstream workflow than by press operation.
- Changeover time: The gap between theoretical and actual changeover time is almost entirely upstream — sleeve and plate retrieval, staging, and verification.
- Unplanned stops: Often caused by sleeve damage, wrong-sleeve scenarios, or plate quality issues that trace back to storage and handling.
- Ramp time: Slow recovery after a stop because the next job kit was not ready when the stop happened.
The math
Take your current press utilization. Calculate what 5% improvement would mean in additional press hours per year. Multiply by your average revenue per press hour. The number is usually startling.
For a single CI press, 5% improvement is roughly 100 additional production hours per year. At typical converter economics, that is $150,000–$300,000 of revenue per press per year.
Multiply across your press fleet. The hidden capacity is a six- or seven-figure annual opportunity.
What this is not
This is not a software dashboard project. Real-time monitoring tells you the gap exists. Closing the gap requires fixing the upstream physical workflow that creates the gap in the first place.
The Flexopodz Team
Purpose-built mounting room solutions for flexographic printing.