5 Factors to Consider When Calculating the Real ROI of a DTS Digital Decorator

When purchasing any new system or machinery for your business, anticipated Return on Investment (ROI) is a key consideration. For an industrial digital printing solution specifically, you would generally calculate ROI by taking into account:

• Capital expenses
• Operational costs (such as running costs, servicing, raw materials, consumables, labor, and other overhead)
• Financial aspects such as interest and depreciation

In addition, you would need to predict your manufacturing capacities, sales revenues, and your ability to address new markets, charge for premium features, reduce lead times, and take jobs that were not previously profitable.

There are, however, additional key factors to consider when calculating the real ROI of a mass production, direct-to-shape digital decoration solution, such as the Velox IDS 250.

These factors are critical to ROI, and including them in your calculation is the only way to accurately predict the total cost of ownership (TCO).

1. Setup waste

The setup process of an analog press or decorator is extremely wasteful. Every job setup consumes hundreds if not thousands of blank containers for the calibration process, which are then scrapped. In addition, physical plates/clichés, cleaning solvents, master-batching pigments, and their related overhead are used for every job run, not to mention spot color mixing of the excess ink.

With Velox’s mass production digital decorator, the setup process is much shorter – and leaner. Eliminating the time-consuming and wasteful calibration process saves dozens of tons (!) of raw materials and consumables per year, per line.

2. Setup time

In addition to being wasteful of materials, analog press setup, which typically comprises some 40-60% of overall production time, simply put, wastes time. If we take into account the fact that average runs are becoming shorter, it is safe to assume that the actual time spent on setup is even higher.  And time of course, equals money.  Money that is spent on labor, electricity, and overhead.

Using the Velox IDS 250, the time that would have been used for setup is turned into net production time. This allows for higher machine utilization and a much more efficient production process.

3. Color handling

In analog production lines, there is a limited set of colors available. To achieve a desired PANTONE shade, color mixing is involved. This means constantly managing dozens of spot colors, along with the dedicated facility (kitchen), personnel, and inks inventory. Then there’s dealing with unused spot colors that go to waste.

The Velox decorator, on the other hand, includes 11 colors (CMYK, W, O, G, V, LC, LM, LK) reaching more than 95% of the PANTONE Plus book. This eliminates the need for spot color mixing and all the associated costs that impact the bottom line.

4. Line efficiency (from 2 lines to 1)

Maximizing line efficiency is central to your profitability. Depending on the average job length, a production line with the Velox IDS 250 is 1.5-2 times more efficient than a line with conventional direct-to-shape decoration technology.

By achieving almost double the capacity of a line with a conventional press, the Velox system allows you to maintain one production line instead of two, saving on floor space and manufacturing overhead.

5. Sustainability

In today’s business environment, sustainability is a key pillar that drives a positive contribution to the planet’s ecosystem, along with significant cost savings.

Part of the savings as mentioned above are in raw materials such as plastics, aluminum, inks, solvents, and more. The second large contributor is energy savings – over 1.2GWh per year for a single line. Beyond that, there is also the vast reduction in the significant costs associated with waste disposal and handling fees (for example, solvents disposal).

And finally, because digital mass production equals production agility, the ability to shorten time-to-market and manufacture on-demand is significantly increased. This in turn greatly reduces the associated overhead of inventory, warehousing, and trucking.

When building an ROI model for the acquisition of an industrial digital decorator like the Velox IDS 250, it is important to consider the above five factors. Individually and combined, they carry significant monetary value that make a huge bottom-line difference – making them essential for determining your true ROI.