Helpful Tips

This Month's Topic: Tips to Increase Production Speed
November 2004

Everyone is looking for solutions that help projects get turned around as quickly as possible. Post press production is no exception. Delivering high quality work as efficiently as possible is the result of an effective partnership between printer and finisher. To that end, here are a few tips to planning and communication tips that will help Allied Bindery produce your work as quickly as possible.

Begin Planning Early - Perhaps the most important step to ensuring fast production is submitting your project details to us as soon as possible. Once final print proofs have been approved, send us a purchase order with all pertinent job information. This will allow us to schedule time on appropriate machines and order materials such as wire, glue, plastic coil, twin loop wire or shrink film well in advance of us receiving your printed sheets or signatures. Remember, we need to know what is coming (materials), when it is coming (your timing commitment to us) and what you expect (your final specifications) as soon as possible in order to provide consistently superior scheduling and turnaround.

Once a proof has been approved, contact Allied Bindery to get an accurate scheduling estimate and help streamline the binding process.

Pack it Carefully - Printed materials should be properly packed and identified when sending work to us. Shipments that arrive without labels or in poor condition can lead to production delays, missed schedules and unhappy customers! Here are a few packing tips that will serve to protect your work:

Keep 'em dry: The condition of pallets is often overlooked, yet wet pallets can ruin an otherwise excellent job. Moisture can migrate from a wet pallet into several inches of adjoining stock, destroying hundreds of signatures per pallet. This means your job will not only run short, it will take much longer to produce as we rifle through the shipment to locate useable material.

Sharp corners means faster production: Projects that arrive with inadequate corner protection often have multiple ruined signatures. Even if signatures include ample trim-off area, curled or damaged corners will slow down pocket loaders and reduce turnaround times. Proper corner protection means fewer damaged pieces and shorter turnaround times.

Top off your skid: Skid tops keep your signatures or sheets from shifting during transport, which can create a mess when skids are unloaded for bindery production.

Clearly identify multiple forms: If you place multiple forms or projects on a single pallet, use a separating device to help us identify everything. Without these aids, precious production time is wasted as we sift through forms individually.

To guard against transit marking and shipping damage, Allied Bindery offers shrink wrapping and other packaging services to protect your pieces en route to their destination. Special packing is ideal prevention, so ignore standard 'counts per box' and let Allied pack your projects for increased protection.

The Allied Advantage
At Allied Bindery, we help you save time and money by performing a complete range of binding and finishing services in-house, including PUR perfect binding, mechanical binding, saddle stitching, folding and cutting. We also take the time to properly package your products and carefully shrink-wrap skids to ensure safe transit of your finished products. Give us a call today to get started on your next successful, efficiently-produced project.