Park started life in 1991 when managing director Alison Branch and chief executive Heath Mason acquired five firms out of receivership. According to Branch their aim was to offer faster turnarounds and greater reliability than their rivals with an absolutely straight approach with clients.

The firm’s markets include fund management and annual reports; government contracts; high-end marketing and membership communications. Much of the work is extremely quick turnaround, being either same-day or overnight. Work such as annual reports and high-end marketing, including auction catalogues, demand high quality and the ability for the client to be able to pass on press.

With the chance to start afresh, Park had a list of requirements for its new building. Top of the list was space, partly to allow for anticipated growth, but also to ensure the layout of the factory enabled the most efficient workflow possible and was a pleasant and productive place to work. Also on the list was the desire to create the greenest print site in London.

Location, location, location
While the features of the factory were important, as with all property, location was crucial. The firm wanted to be close to central London to suit its London clients, but not add any time to staff journeys, many of whom commute from Essex. The location also needed to have good public transport links. All these needs were met in the new address – Alpine Way, Beckton – in what was previously a bowling alley.

At 3,200sqm, the Beckton factory is between 20-25% bigger than the previous factory. It’s in the office areas that the firm has made the biggest increase with a whopping 50% more space for the sales, customer service and IT departments.

“Providing technology and managed services is becoming an increasingly large part of our business, which is why there is such a large increase in the available space for sales, customer service and our technology team,” says Branch.

“The first thing we looked at on this site was workflow, and not just manufacturing but sales and administration too,” says manufacturing director and deputy managing director Paul Walker. “In the office area, workflow is about an efficient working area with meeting rooms to catch up with clients and private offices to make calls in a quiet atmosphere.”

In pre-press, the new site has been divided into different areas. File checking and preparation is in one office, with proofing and proof checking carried out in a separate area. Platemaking, with two Fuji Luxel V9600 platesetters, sits in a separate room along with two plate inspection boards. As part of Park’s ISO 9000 quality procedures, every plate is checked visually. Pre-press manager Daniel Hopkins says: “It saves time on press, because 95% of the time the check picks up problems before a plate is on press.”

Digital print is located next to pre-press and overseen by Hopkins. The move to the new site coincided with the delivery of a third Digimaster mono machine and a Horizon BQ-270 perfect binder. Other machines include two Xerox DocuColors. The area has space to accommodate more digital colour to meet an increasing demand for personalised work.

Material movement
Working with BPIF consultant Mike Craven, the firm worked out the most efficient layout of print and finishing kit to minimise material movement. The production area is roughly square, with big bay doors at either end of the front of the building. Adjacent to the offices is the goods-in door with goods-out at the other end. All the press feeders are at the goods-in end, as is the paper store. Finishing is arranged to be near the delivery end of the presses with cutting and folding followed by stitching and binding.

“The redesign of workflow has drastically cut job times. For example, the time taken to move paper to the presses, and from the presses into finishing, is now under one minute,” says Branch.

The move also gave Park the space to install long perfectors, with an eight and a 10-colour Heidelberg Speedmaster 102 replacing two straight 102s.

“Our press investment was close to £3 million in long perfectors and it’s enabled us to produce even the highest quality subject matter with no loss of detail or lift, and we are doing so at over twice the output of our previous technology,” says Branch.

Finishing line
From the presses, work can pass to the new guillotine, a secondhand Polar flow line model: “We were aware of the risks of RSI,” says Walker. “We run continental shifts and over the 12 hours the operators’ productivity fell. The new guillotine has improved productivity, and the operators love it.”

The other major investment in post-press was a Muller Martini Acoro, which allowed the firm to bring perfect binding in-house.

“The £500,000 investment in the new binder means that we can bind up to 320 pages in one pass and bind 10,000 copies in the time taken for other firms to pack up the pallets and deliver them to an outworker,” says Branch. When combined, the new kit is estimated to be shaving a day off five-day schedules and up to three days off some bigger projects.

The move wasn’t cheap. Refurbishment and refitting of the new factory came to over £2m, which fortunately the London Development Agency paid for. On top of that was the £3m investment in new kit. Some of that was met by the LDA, but only the cost of secondhand kit of equal performance to the firm’s existing equipment to ensure continuity when moving from the old site to the new site. Park decided it was necessary to upgrade to the latest technology and therefore had to foot the bill for the difference.

To ensure continuity, the new site was commissioned while the old site carried on production. Due to the firm’s continental shifts it could use off-shift staff to commission the new factory, and also benefited from a recently retired factory manager overseeing the new site during commissioning, which reduced the need to divert other managers from production.

Overall the new site has met all its expectations. In addition to the production and environmental benefits, the feedback from customers has been positive – whatever their requirements.

“Customer perception of the old site was of a friendly, professional and well-organised company that delivered an excellent service, but which had limited capacity to take on larger productions, and had a site which was not commensurate with its service,” says Branch. “New prospects could be put off.

“This perception has now completely reversed. Visitors tell us that the site sings solutions, technology and service.”

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INSPECTION LESSONS
Making the best of a relocation

If you can’t fit the latest, most productive kit into your current site it may be necessary to move to accommodate these bigger beasts

Any location must meet the needs of staff and customers for ease of access and on-site facilities that enable them to do their work in the most comfortable and productive way

Total efficiency is about more than machines. A well-planned physical layout to minimise movement between processes can make a big difference to overall efficiency

Think of how your business will evolve: it’s not just the shop floor but also front-end and service facilities that need to be planned. A greater proportion of the building may need to be devoted to offices for customer-facing staff and IT kit

Your factory can make a big impact on customer perception and the type of work you are considered capable of