Post-press intelligence "overcomes" the labor cost problem
Source：Time：2020-10-16 10:50:38CTR：
The development of the times, the advancement of society, and the enhancement of the aesthetic needs of the public have made printed matter no longer limited to the simple model of "information carrier", but appeared in an image with more aesthetic value and use value. Take printing and packaging products as an example. According to relevant statistics, good packaging can increase product sales by 15% to 18%. As a result, the market began to emphasize the importance of design, layout, color and decoration processing, and the increasing demand has been transformed into a challenge to all aspects of printing, especially post-press processing.
Post-press processing is an important means to ensure the quality of printed products and realize value-added. Through modification and decoration, the product grade is greatly improved and its special functions are increased. So in a sense, post-press processing is the key to the success or failure of printed products. The key to determining post-press processing lies in people and equipment.
Labor shortage "threats" post-press development
Relying on the advantage of the demographic dividend, Chinese printing companies have been "seizing" the global printing market share with a smile. However, in recent years, this "advantage" has gradually lost its "dazzling halo"-labor shortages and rising labor costs have become "traps" for corporate profit growth. I remember that when we recruited a worker 2000 years ago, at least five or six people competed. Now, even though the wages have more than doubled, it is difficult to find suitable talents. In my opinion, the rise in labor costs can be attributed to the following points. ① The shortage of front-line employees has become an unavoidable topic for many companies. ②The new generation of "post-80s" and "post-90s" employees have strong personalities, and many are reluctant to engage in repetitive and boring work, and choose to leave when they feel unsatisfactory, which greatly increases the pressure of the company's employment and training. ③The development of emerging industries and challenging jobs are more attractive to young employees, which directly leads to an increase in the turnover rate of printing companies. ④ The average period of newly recruited employees working in the enterprise is relatively short, which causes an increase in skills training costs.
Compared with pre-press and printing, post-press is the most concentrated area of labor, which is determined by its own characteristics such as complexity, diversification, and relatively low degree of automation. Therefore, post-press, which is characterized by labor-intensiveness, has more deeply felt the threat of labor shortage. On the one hand, the rising labor cost, on the other hand, is the "stable" post-press processing wages. This kind of profit margin makes printing companies face a crisis of development and even survival.
Perhaps, for printing companies, especially post-press companies, they can only find the bottleneck if they face up to the changes in labor, break away from the dependence on cheap labor, and realize the transformation from extensive labor price advantage to intensive technology advantage. Breakthrough.
Intelligent equipment "forces" post-press development
Post-printing equipment refers to a type of equipment that further processes semi-finished printed products to enhance or beautify them in terms of binding, appearance, flatness, anti-counterfeiting, and packaging. Such as paper cutting equipment, folding and page locking equipment, glazing and calendering equipment, laminating and gluing equipment, bronzing and coding equipment, punching and binding equipment, etc. The modern development of post-press equipment can be classified as three changes. The first change: the mid-1950s, the change from manual to stand-alone; the second change: the early 1980s, the change from semi-automatic stand-alone to fully automatic on-line; the third change: the mid-1990s In the future, everything will move closer to international standards, and fully automatic stand-alone and linkage will enter the advanced level of reform. Since the third revolution, post-press can no longer rely on cheap labor, and through the development of automation and intelligent linkage, help printing companies get out of the bottleneck of post-press profit growth. On the contrary, the rising labor cost also "forces" printing companies to start understanding and accepting automated post-press equipment. In addition, customers’ requirements for production efficiency are becoming more and more "rigorous", so it is imperative to improve the level of intelligence in post-press production. .
The focus of post-press intelligence is to use high-tech and practical technology to transform and improve the automation, intelligence and online level of the plain packaging linkage line, the hardcover linkage line, the die cutting linkage line, and the paper cutting linkage line to ensure quality Stability and reliability, improve labor productivity, reduce labor intensity and improve working environment. Market research shows that the current printing industry has an urgent need for high-end automated printing equipment, especially post-press automation equipment. But how to help your company "counterattack" printing profits through a suitable intelligent device is another multiple choice question for printing companies.
Chinese companies "challenge" the post-press market
Currently, the status quo of my country's post-press equipment manufacturing market is that there is a surplus of low-end products and a large number of mid-to-high-end products rely on imports. This seems to be "running against the reality that printing companies' demand for post-press equipment is mainly concentrated in mid- and high-end equipment. As a result, China's post-press equipment manufacturing companies have begun to make efforts to develop and manufacture domestic equipment that can replace imported equipment in the field of high-end post-press equipment. In fact, the cost of purchasing domestically-made equipment is only one third of the cost of purchasing imported equipment. Therefore, purchasing domestically-made intelligent equipment is an improvement for printing companies, especially small and medium-sized printing companies with insufficient capital accumulation. Production capacity, the best way to reduce production costs.
Currently in my country, some equipment manufacturing companies are tirelessly developing mid-to-high-end post-press equipment that can be in line with international standards, and they have made breakthroughs. Shanghai Zihong Machinery Co., Ltd. is one of them. It has always been a leading enterprise in the field of domestic folding machines, three-sided book cutting machines, hardcover single machines and intelligent in-line machines. Based on years of experience, it has been Integration and innovation, developed an intelligent hardcover linkage line product group, filled the domestic gap, broke the monopoly of foreign enterprises, provided strong technical support for the development of my country's hardcover book printing enterprises, and provided substantial reduction in labor costs for enterprises help. At the ChinaPrint2013 exhibition held in May 2013, Shanghai Zihong’s intelligent hardcover linkage production line has officially appeared on the market for demonstration.
Looking at the development of the international printing industry, the mainstream direction of the progress of post-press technology is clear, that is, in-line, intelligent, and automated, reducing reliance on “people”, and reducing intermediate repetitive, inefficient, and physical labor. Investing in this technological advancement, printing companies can naturally remain invincible.
