Whether you are thinking about attending Graph Expo or are already registered, here are 5 tips to help you get around and/or entice you to make the trip. It’s not too late!
Whether you are thinking about attending Graph Expo or are already registered, here are 5 tips to help you get around and/or entice you to make the trip. It’s not too late!
It took a while to sink in but eventually I realized that one of the reasons I was hired for my first job in the bindery department of a commercial printing company is that there wasn’t exactly a waiting list of people willing to do the work. As interesting and varied as the work can be, there were times when it was monotonous, tiring and a little tedious.
I can hear the muttering…what can possibly be creative about working in the bindery? “After all, I run the same folding machine and same jobs over and over again, every day.” Or, “I manage 2 shifts with 50 people, a dozen machines, demanding customers and it’s the same stressful stuff every day.”
In my bindery supervisor days I recall a few PIA salespeople (and I don’t mean Printing Industries of America) following client’s jobs through the print shop, snooping around in what seemed to be a random fashion. They might pick up a press sheet, glance at how a skid was wrapped, or pull a few folded brochures from a box. If they glared at me and walked back to the office with brochures in hand I knew something was wrong.
Troubleshooting bindery problems can be frustrating, with dozens of variables often leading us in the wrong direction. As we gain experience the process is simplified because we learn to quickly narrow down the field of possible causes to a handful of critical items.
In 2010 OSHA stepped up enforcement actions against printing companies due to “persistent high levels of amputation” in the industry. (Details here in a previous Bindery Success blog post.) Early data from OSHA reports suggest a positive trend.
John and Carol Rickey have been riding print industry waves since they founded House Graphics in 1979. Their story inspired us to select them as the prize winners in our recent 60,000th Tri-Creaser Contest.
The ‘fully automated print shop’, where there are minimal human touches in a job workflow, is a worthy ideal. The grim reality is, I suspect, a little messier. No matter how much modern automated pre-press, printing and bindery equipment you have in your shop, I’ll wager there are days when your staff has to actually pick up sheets of paper and collate, fold, glue, insert or assemble by hand.
Bindery work can be a joy on those days when you figure out how to do something a little better, faster and easier. If cheaper is included, and you don’t have to buy anything to do it, then everybody’s happy! Fewer touches in the printing and bindery production process means higher productivity and more profitability and this concept is the driving force behind much of today’s new bindery equipment and software.
Forget television for entertainment; check out the reality show taking place in your own shop. I had an interesting encounter with a Muller saddle stitcher operator that got me thinking about the psychology of bindery equipment operators.