Welcome to our Award Winning Bindery Success Blog!

by guest author Dan Kennedy
I am an ex-boozer.  For a while, after quitting, I had to decide not to have a drink everyday. Now it's on rare occasions that I consciously decide not to. I became a non-drinker. But I'm also a diabetic, and every meal I decide not to eat something toxic to me - or to eat a little - or to say the hell with it. Every doughnut shop I drive past is a decision. Every milkshake I don't swing into a drive-through for, a decision.  Most days I work in complete isolation. No one sees me at all. So I must decide whether to work on the planned work or welcome a distraction or be de-railed by a new urgent.

An Intro to 'Technifold 2.0' but first, a bit of fun...

   When you run out of hours in the day to finish your work, what do you do next? Since we all have the same 24 hours a day, outsourcing becomes the way to multiply our daily effort. It's a tool to use whether we are busy or slow, to be a relief valve for everything that we do now in our businesses and for everything that we want to do in our businesses.

by Dan Kennedy...

In my relentless search for I don't know what, I found an article in the December 1, 2008 edition of Nation's Restaurant News, the trade journal of the restaurant industry, headlined : "Operators Bank On Profit And Loss Scrutiny To Stay Afloat." It made me laugh out loud.

  Millions of dollars of training resources are available to printing companies and binderies courtesy of Uncle Sam and your state government. There are 2 ways to access this money:
• direct grants to your small business
• training programs run by community colleges and schools who received these grants.

  Training and continuing education can be frustrating and expensive if you conduct it yourself. Especially for basic office, math or communication skills. There is however, a shortcut to some of the best training available... call your local community college.

  New Jersey, for instance, gets about $30 million in grants each year to upgrade workers' skills. Their Basic Skills Training project offers these no-cost classes for your employees:
* Computer applications (Windows, Outlook, Excel, Word)
* Math & Measurement
* Communications
* English as a second language

  There is absolutely no tuition charge. The only "catch" is that the employee must be paid at their usual hourly rate while in the training. An 8 hour course means you'll have to pay them for 8 hours. (more info here http://njworkforce.org/) Community colleges in every state are huge recipients of these grants so it pays to call to see what's available in your town.

  If you prefer to access grants directly, start at the federal level, www.doleta.gov/business/  Here you'll find details on getting grants, registered apprenticeship programs (up to $5000 per employee available), tax credits and incentives. You have to dig around the site, but the resources are there. State and local economic development agencies are another resource for similar grants, tax credits and incentives.

  The bottom line: the resources are out there and all it takes to get started is a couple of phone calls. Everyone benefits. You get a better educated, more motivated workforce. The employee is better and happier at their job. So be sure to invest in ongoing education and training for maximum productivity in your printing company or print finishing business.

A double gatefold as shown in the figure below, requires a special folding machine attachment for automatic high-speed production. There is an easy way to do this without the attachment, but it does add a manual labor step to the process.

Here's a useful Basic Training tip for anyone in the bindery or pressroom. At first glance it may sound too simple to be effective but once you've mastered it, I promise, you'll use it forever if you’re working in any kind of bindery, pressroom or print finishing environment.