Sullivan Graphics
Marengo, IA

For more than a decade, the Navy's Best Manufacturing Practices (BMP) survey process has been a primary avenue for industry and government to present individual and distinctive success stories in management and manufacturing disciplines. For those organizations seeking to advance their overall manufacturing performance, the BMP program has provided validated and documented best practices. These practices, verified on-site by BMP survey team members, have served as a model for improvement in business and industry and as a tool to promote teaming.

In 1995, industry and government representatives discussed the idea of broadening the BMP program's scope to incorporate success stories submitted by industry. The objective was to find an efficient, cost-effective way to share a greater volume of information on the latest technology and business developments. Since the BMP program had a proven approach for sharing success stories, this seemed to be a logical expansion.

The practices in this report were submitted to the BMP Center of Excellence by Sullivan Graphics, Marengo, IA as an example of some of the latest developments in the environmental area. They are considered to be best practices or success stories, however, they were not validated by an on-site BMP survey team. Our goal is to help industry and government keep pace with the rapid changes taking place in the business, manufacturing, and environmental communities.

Sullivan Graphics is an international commercial printing company. It has 22 locations across the US and Canada. Sullivan's annual sales are in excess of $500 million and it employs over 2,200 people. The primary business product is newspaper advertising inserts, book publishing, and publications. In 1994 the Sullivan plant in Marengo, IA won the Iowa Governor's award for wast reduction in a non-manufacturing facility.

Background: In 1994 Sullivan Graphics - Marengo, Iowa was faced with serious capacity problems due to the seasonality of the newspaper insert printing market. Typically every fall the insert market swells over capacity with the holiday sale ads that fill everyone's Sunday paper. As a result customer/vendor relationships are often taxed to the limit by late deliveries, increased costs, and worker stress.

After a particularly difficult fall the previous year, Marengo was faced with losing several key accounts if its delivery performance did not improve. To improve deliveries, the company implemented an aggressive customer relation concept called 'Strategic Scheduling'. The initial step was to categorize customer accounts by their print frequency, ease of production, and profitability. The foundation of the job mix was the 63% of work that was produced on a weekly basis. These jobs were fit into fixed time slots along with bi-weekly preventative maintenance on each printing press. The remaining open time in the schedule was filled with national and regional work based primarily on profitability. In some cases to fit jobs into the schedule it required concessions on both the company's part and the customers. Since the impact of the resulting schedule affected other plants, the concept was proposed to corporate management along with a list of accounts it wanted to move, grow, shrink, and, or eliminate to make it work.

Description: The aggressive handling of the company's customer base was done primarily to increase production and reduce late deliveries. However, during the preparation of the 'sale' to the corporate office, they began to realize the real opportunities for waste reduction that the proposed schedule changes would allow.

10,872 # a year

   Reduced        Fountain Solution Mix         9,060 gals a yr.

   Reduced        Press Wash Solvents             4.6%

These improvements were realized without any capital improvements being made to the plant.

Results: Since the successful introduction of 'Strategic Scheduling' in 1995, the Marengo plant has added an additional press line, increasing its capacity by 22%. With this addition, the company is facing open time in its schedule which does not allow for the opportunity to fit work into schedules as was done in 1995. As a result, the company has seen 50% of the gains from its original efforts reversed. It anticipates that it will take almost a year to fill the plant to the previous capacity levels. At that time it will again apply 'Strategic Scheduling' concepts and anticipates that it will realize similar improvements. As customers and their needs change, this concept will have to be reapplied on a periodic basis.