Abstract:

Today, printing companies are often confronted with the necessity to adapt quickly to the emergence of new products and technologies, to increasingly diversified demands of their customers. In order to stay competitive, companies need to continually improve their business, both in the technical and organizational fields. This paper presents solutions for optimizing the production workflow of a printing company in order to increase its efficiency and productivity. For some specific printing products of the company are presented and analyzed the production workflow in order to identify the factors that influence them and the critical points in the current layout. At the same time, the solutions proposed in this paper for optimizing the production workflow highlight specific production constraints in a printing company, such as: a very large number of orders are managed at the same time; the raw materials and materials used to make a product are very varied; the finished products are in a wide range of formats and involve different finishing operations; the necessity of a period of time to acclimate the paper before it is printed and another one to dry the ink on the printed sheets. Based on production requirements and the production workflow analysis, the optimal layout of production areas, storage and transport areas is determined for the company's current available space. It was taken into account that rotary printing machines cannot be relocated because of their sizes and the costs necessary for disassembly and assembly. Therefore, the current delivery area for rotary products will not change, contrary becomes the back-up for the new delivery area created. Also, the distances between the work areas and the number of daily movements between them for the transport and handling of semi-finished or finished products were determined. The reorganization of the layout of the production units represents a first step in the development strategy of the company. In conclusion, the paper presents a possible optimization of the production workflow achieved in the studied company, taking into account the significant constraints specific to the printing company and the first steps that have been taken to increase its productivity.