How to Reduce Make-Ready and Print Waste and Recover Press Capacity
To reduce make-ready and print waste, sequence similar jobs back to back, standardise how every press is set up, prepare plates, inks and materials before the press stops, and track waste live on every job. Together these recover press hours you already pay for — usually the cheapest capacity a printer can find, well before buying another press.
- Make-ready and waste are hidden capacity: press hours and material paid for but never sold.
- Job sequencing cuts the number of changeovers; standardisation cuts the time each one takes.
- Prepare plates, inks and substrate while the previous job is still running.
- Track waste live by job, so problems are fixed during the run, not after.
What are make-ready and print waste?
Make-ready is the set-up between jobs: changing plates, washing and loading ink, setting colour and register, and adjusting for a new substrate — the paper, board or film being printed. Waste is material that never becomes sellable: sheets or metres used while setting up, plus rejects during the run. Both cost press time and money, and neither appears on an invoice.
Sequence jobs by colour, substrate and size
Standardise set-ups; prepare plates, inks and stock off-press
Checklists, labelled ink stores, clear job tickets
Detailed reports that nobody acts on
Positions are typical; your own job mix decides the exact order.
Why make-ready matters more as runs get shorter
Run lengths are commonly getting shorter as brands add product variants and order closer to demand. Each short job still needs a full make-ready, so the share of the day spent setting up rises. A press can look busy all shift and still produce far less sellable print than its rated speed suggests.
How to recover hidden press capacity
Process- 01
Measure the baseline
Record make-ready time and waste per job for two to four weeks, by press and job type.
- 02
Find the biggest losses
Rank changeover types and jobs by time and material lost; start with the largest.
- 03
Sequence similar jobs
Group jobs by colour, substrate, size and die to remove avoidable changeovers.
- 04
Standardise set-ups
Write one set-up method per press, with checklists and target colour values for every crew.
- 05
Prepare off-press
Stage plates, inks and substrate before the press stops, so set-up time shrinks.
- 06
Track waste live
Watch waste by job during the run and review the results weekly with the crews.
- 01
Measure the baseline
Record make-ready time and waste per job for two to four weeks, by press and job type.
- 02
Find the biggest losses
Rank changeover types and jobs by time and material lost; start with the largest.
- 03
Sequence similar jobs
Group jobs by colour, substrate, size and die to remove avoidable changeovers.
- 04
Standardise set-ups
Write one set-up method per press, with checklists and target colour values for every crew.
- 05
Prepare off-press
Stage plates, inks and substrate before the press stops, so set-up time shrinks.
- 06
Track waste live
Watch waste by job during the run and review the results weekly with the crews.
Three ways to reduce make-ready time
First, sequence smartly: group jobs with shared colours, substrate, size or cutting die, so changeovers are fewer and smaller. Second, standardise: agree one set-up method per press, with checklists and target colour values, so every crew works the same way. Third, prepare off-press: stage plates, inks and substrate before the press stops, so set-up covers only what genuinely needs the press.
Tracking print waste live
Waste figures written up at the end of a shift arrive too late to act on. Live tracking — material in versus good output, by job — shows straight away when a job is running heavy on waste. Owllys combines live waste and speed data with optimised sequencing, so each improvement shows up in the next schedule and the next estimate.
Questions people ask
How much make-ready time is normal?
It depends heavily on press type, job complexity and run length, so there is no universal figure. The practical approach is to measure your own make-ready by press and changeover type, then set improvement targets against that baseline. Comparing crews on the same press often reveals the quickest gains.
What is the difference between make-ready waste and running waste?
Make-ready waste is material used while setting up a job, before output matches the approved proof. Running waste is material rejected during the production run itself — from colour drift, register problems, material breaks or damage. They have different causes, so track them separately and fix each properly.
Is it better to reduce make-ready or buy another press?
Recover existing capacity first. Fewer, shorter make-readies and lower waste add sellable hours without new capital, operators or floor space. Once the presses you have are running close to their real potential, the case for new equipment is clearer — and much easier to size correctly.