When asked what sets the firm apart from those rivals, Malcolm Hackman considers a moment. “It’s what we do when something goes wrong,” he says. “That’s not to say that things go wrong as a matter of course – they don’t. But when it does, we pride ourselves on putting it right without quibble or delay.”

Print’s backbone
HSW – the name stands for Hackman South Wales – is one of the true family firms that make up the backbone of the UK’s print industry. Joint managing directors Malcolm and David Hackman are third-generation printers – their grandfather and father were pressmen beginning at the turn of the 19th century. When the brothers’ father returned from the Second World War, their mother and he bought The Electric Press, an old-fashioned print and stationery shop with a flat above, in Rhondda. The brothers grew up with metal type blocks and composing sticks for toys, and when they left school, joined their parents in the printshop. The business grew slowly, “with only the foggiest notion of direction,” says Malcolm.

Turning point
The turning-point came in 1975 when HSW ­– by then the proud owner of its first offset press, a B2 Heidelberg Kord that was “way too big for us to fill” says Malcolm – put in a tender of £100 for an HMSO job to print a medical card for every Welsh citizen. “£100 was a stupid price,” Malcolm recalls. “The job must have been worth £6,000. If you turned in a price like that now, you’d be laughed off the roster.”

But buying was less professional in those days. HMSO gave the job to the Hackmans, and although it made a big loss, the prestige of having HMSO as a customer led to other business – so much extra business that a few years later HSW moved out of The Electric Press’s premises and into a new phase of the firm’s life.

However, despite the upturn in business, some ill-advised acquisistions in 2000– a small design agency and a B1 print shop in Caerphilly – cost the firm dearly. HSW lost over a million pounds and, to return the business to the black, the brothers closed the Caerphilly site in 2001, moving the staff and kit to its own 2,500sqm factory in Tonypandy. “It was a painful time,” Malcolm says. “We couldn’t even get credit to buy a car.” They set about cutting costs, getting customers and strengthening the balance sheet: by 2006, in the firm’s annual report, Malcolm was proud to announce that “we are now standing on rock.”  

Solid rock, evidently, because last year HSW invested £2.5m on a ten-colour Heidelberg Speedmaster 102, a Stitchmaster ST-350 and a Stahlfolder Ti52. The kit joined an already impressive line-up, including a five-colour Speedmaster 102, a two-colour Speedmaster 52, a Muller Martini Acoro perfect binder and an Autobond laminator. And, as the new kit came in, the Hackmans realised that their old shift pattern was creaking under the strain.

Sweating assets
“For a few years now we’ve made a specialism of short-run work, because there’s more margin,” Malcolm says. “That means we have to invest in the latest technology, because it’s the automation that allows us to be competitive.” But investment means capital, and tying up capital in kit meant those assets “had to be sweated to get the best return”.

Before the latest round of investment, the Hackmans had sweated their assets by offering their staff plenty of overtime. “We were originally running just a day shift plus overtime, and the overtime level grew us into a double-day shift,” Malcolm says. After this, the firm moved to a treble shift pattern five years ago, installing a Tharstern MIS at the same time to keep track of site activity and production overnight.

The treble-shift pattern, plus the inevitable overtime, kept HSW on track until the end of last year, when the arrival of the new 10-colour press – replacing an old B1 machine – boosted capacity massively. “We’d been working nearly to capacity for quite a while, but the new press, which was much more automated than the old one, meant suddenly we had a lot of spare press time – and of course the press cost so much we had to turn that time into cash to pay for it,” Malcolm says.

Discontent
At the same time, the brothers realised that their staff were becoming increasingly discontented with the level of overtime they found themselves being asked to work. “While the money is always nice, they didn’t want to work four Saturdays in a row, and quite right too,” Malcolm says.

On January 2nd this year, the factory switched its press crews plus a B1 folder crew to a continental shift pattern: the crews now work three 12-hour days followed by four days off. The rota begins at 9pm on Sunday evening and finishes at 9pm on Saturday evening, leaving Sunday for work overflow and planned maintenance – which is worked as overtime.

It took three months to establish the continental shift proposition with workers. HSW’s production manager, Russell Jones, had led a similar project at a previous employer’s, and he used his experience to negotiate with Unite (then Amicus) reps; thrashing out the details, particularly the question of the level of shift premium versus the rate of overtime pay.

But one of HSW’s biggest assets – its mainly long-serving staff – proved to be one of its chief difficulties in implementing the new shift pattern. “A lot of our staff have grown up working alongside David and I,” says Malcolm. “But as the firm grows and demands change, some people are reluctant to change with it.” However, he says, all staff ultimately appreciated the need for change: “We never had to say to them – although it was the case – ‘look, if we don’t change, all our livelihoods are threatened’.”

HSW spent some time planning contingencies for sickness and holiday cover. Finding that this ultimately couldn’t be managed within its existing staff roster, it took on an additional eight staff to ease the general workload and allow a bigger pool for emergency planning.

The benefit of the continental shift pattern has not been a reduction in the wage bill, Malcolm points out. “The shift premium plus the wages isn’t much different from what we were paying in terms of wages plus overtime. But the big benefit has been that our direct labour costs, as a percentage of our output, have fallen by 3%.”

Indirect benefits
Other benefits are no less substantial, even if they are indirect. Staff are happier, says Malcolm: “They have much more certainty about working hours now.” HSW had previously dedicated no time to maintenance and machinery performance was beginning to suffer from the high throughput, “whereas now we have time to do all the deep cleaning stuff rather than just squirting oil at it from time to time.”  

Thanks to the changes, HSW may find itself moving to a new, larger factory in the near future. The firm is now so much more productive that its current site is struggling to accommodate all the pallets of work-in-progress. “We’re processing close on 300 tonnes of paper a month now,” Malcolm says, “and we’ve got our eye on a 3,700sqm factory in the next 18 months.”

INSPECTION LESSONS
Adapting to continental shift patterns
1 Overtime may be a short-term solution to an undercapacity problem, but it is rarely a long-term answer for the best use of assets

2 Before introducing full-time continental shifts, it may be advisable to introduce a treble shift pattern to acclimatise production methods and staff to working overnight

3 Take account of employees’ need for more settled working hours rather than impromptu overtime arranged on an ad hoc basis

4 Negotiate with unions or staff directly to establish a pay rate that satisfies all parties

5 Use spare time for planned preventative maintenance