Pages, Not Printers

Efficiency Studies Show Real Costs
Since the dawn of the Industrial Age, business owners have improved profitability through careful management of the "flow" or movement of people and materials in factories, warehouses, transportation and office environments. More recently, airlines have routed passengers through hub cities such as Atlanta, Dallas or Minneapolis, convincing their customers that such indirect routing is actually more efficient. Overnight package delivery companies might bring an envelope from a building in Washington through Memphis, only to deliver it to a building across the street from its originating location the next morning. And companies have eliminated distributed or desktop printers in favor of a smaller number of large, centralized printers, believing that the reduced number of machines reduces cost.

Sun Print Management has worked with some of our customers to gather real-life data from their printing environments and overlaid that data with detailed cost analysis. We have also studied motion science and research from similar industries to help our customers understand the real impact and real cost of printing. While every situation is unique, some of our findings might surprise you ...

One of our customers used the data available from our print management services to determine the following facts, based on over 10 months of data:

• Average print job = 5 pages
• Total number of print jobs = 30,734¹
• Average time per job = 12.33 seconds²
• Average time between print jobs = 3.23 minutes³
• Utilization = 6%⁴

This particular printer, generating approximately 15,000 pages per month, was "working" about 3.6 minutes of every working hour. From this data, alone, someone might conclude that higher utilization (more users assigned to the same printer) would be more efficient, reducing overall cost. But it is important to consider some other data as well.

The same customer has another printer, where the average print job is 20 pages or more, and is used by 12-14 people. Because the average print job is larger, the users expect to have to wait in line (this is referred to as "contention"), and users frequently congregate at the printer while queuing for their print jobs. When creative users have sent their larger jobs to the other printer, the users assigned to that other printer complain that the larger job creates backup for their 5-page jobs. Contention creates both frustration and additional waiting time. What does that cost?

In a study originally published by Zebra Technologies, the efficiency of portable, hand-held printers for bar code labels on palletized products in a warehouse was being measured. While this is different technology in a different application than most of Sun Print Management's printer solutions, the data can be related to an office or hospital environment quite directly. The study found:

• In a warehouse where the worker only had to take nine steps to travel from the pallet to the printer, pallets were labeled in 49.74 seconds.
• With belt-worn printers, the same pallet could be labeled in 28.11 seconds, representing a time savings of 21.63 seconds, or a 44% improvement.

In another study reported by technology consultant Glen Emerson Morris, a call-center in India conducted a time and motion analysis to improve the efficiency of several hundred people employed there. The manager discovered that each time an employee left the work station for a glass of water, it took approximately ten minutes to re-establish the tempo and efficiency of work. By providing water at each work station, efficiency was improved by more than the cost of the water and the study.

Mr. Morris also reported on a company that had decided to put only two printers on each floor of its large office buildings. Most employees were between 20 and 75 feet from their printer and "the waiting line at the printer was sometimes three people deep, with people talking about where their printout might be, or people just talking." On average, a person seated just 20 feet from their printer will take about one minute to get to the printer, find their pages, and return to their chair - not including any socializing or distraction.

So if a company can focus on PAGES instead of PRINTERS the balance of proximity to production might indicate a different model for efficiency. If that company must be concerned with maintenance, monitoring, toner and supplies, the natural inclination will be to centralize and minimize the number of printers. If, however, the focus is on minimizing time between request and print, reducing the cost of contention and distraction, and optimizing the efficiency of dollars spent on human resources, the company may conclude that it should minimize the cost per page.

Utilizing the customer and research data, we have considered alternative print solutions for a department of eight people, producing 40,000 pages per month. If there is a single, centralized printer, with an average distance from each employee of 20 feet (nine steps), the average print job is 5 pages, and the average pay of the users is $15/hour, the "cost of motion" would be:

• Total print jobs = 8,000⁵
• Time spent between work stations and printer = 48 hours⁶
• Monthly cost of motion = $720⁷
• "Per page" cost of motion = $0.01⁸

Therefore, if we assume a company has a choice between a single printer, producing pages at one-cent per page, or eight printers, each producing pages at one-cent per page, the monthly cost for printing would be $400. HOWEVER, by avoiding the cost of motion, the company SAVES between $720 and $1,995.50 per month or approximately 2 to 5 times its cost of printing!

We at Sun Print Management, too, are skeptical of facts and figures that may be "more precise than accurate". But for that reason, we have tried to combine real-life experience and cost analysis from our own customers, with empirical data from other studies to avoid selecting data that supports a foregone conclusion. We can provide our customers with a single machine or eight machines based on their preference. But if we can work together to find an optimal solution, and especially one that essentially pays for itself, we consider that additional added value of working together.

So as you consider ways to improve the profitability of your business

• Let Sun Print Management add the value of our experience to your process.
• Let us focus on printers, so you can focus on pages.
• Let us eliminate your need to worry about numbers of machines, toner and supplies, maintenance, and administration of a printer fleet.
• Let us manage your print process at a penny-a-page.
• Let us show you how we're changing the way the world prints!

1 (153,668 pages) / (5 average pages)

2(7 seconds for first page out) + (60 seconds/45ppm * 4 additional pages)

3 ((10 months) * (22 days/month) * (8 hours/day) = 1,760 working hours. (12.33 seconds per job) * (30,734 print jobs) = 105 printing hours. (1,760 working hours) - (105 printing hours) = 1,655 interim hours. (1,655 interim hours) / (30,734 print jobs) = 0.538 hours between print jobs.

4(105 print hours) / (1,760 working hours)

540,000 pages at 5 pages/job

6(21.63 seconds) * (8,000 print jobs) = 173,040 seconds, or 2,884 minutes, or 48 hours. Alternatively, 133.3 hours, one minute * 8,000 print jobs

748 hours * $15/hour] to $1995 [133.3 hours * $15/hour

8($720) / (40,000 pages)] to 5 cents [($1995.50) / (40,000 pages)