Skip to main content
Log InSign Up

Makeready waste: material cost that does not scale with quantity

The sheets destroyed bringing a press up to color are a fixed cost wearing a variable cost's clothing. Where to put them on the sheet, and why that placement decides whether short runs are priced correctly.

Updated

Getting a press to print correctly consumes paper — registration, color, coating, everything settling down. Those sheets are bought, printed and thrown away, and the number of them depends on the press and the job, **not on how many good copies you need afterwards**.

That makes makeready waste a fixed cost that looks exactly like a variable one, because it is measured in sheets. It is the most common structural mistake in print costing, and it always points the same way.

Why the placement changes the answer

Suppose a job needs a certain number of sheets to reach color. On a long run that waste is spread thin and barely registers. On a short run of a few hundred copies it can be a large share of all the paper the job consumes.

If you cost paper as a simple per-copy figure, you have quietly assumed the waste scales with quantity. It does not — so **short runs are undercosted and long runs are overcosted**, by the same error, in opposite directions.

This is why some shops believe short runs are profitable and cannot explain why the year does not add up. The unit cost looks fine on every job individually.

Where it goes on the sheet

Total sheets consumed for the job — good copies plus makeready waste — divided by good copies delivered. That single division puts the fixed part where it belongs and keeps the arithmetic honest at any run length.

Do not put makeready waste in scrap. Scrap is meant to answer "is the process losing parts it should not", and the answer for makeready is no — it is expected, unavoidable and planned. Mixed into scrap it makes a healthy shop look defective and buries the one number you would want to act on.

Measuring it without new equipment

Press counter at the start of good production minus counter at the start of the job. Record it per job for a few weeks. Both numbers already exist; nobody usually writes them down together.

Expect it to vary by job type, and keep the variation rather than averaging it away. A job type with unusually high makeready is a finding — it usually means something about that setup is being rediscovered every time.

Where it actually improves

  1. Group similar jobs so one makeready serves several — normally the largest available gain, and it is scheduling rather than capital.
  2. Standardize setups and record them, so the same job does not get re-solved from scratch each run.
  3. Use cheaper stock for the first sheets where the process allows it.
  4. Question the run length itself: if reprints are frequent, one longer run may cost less in total than three short ones, even including the extra inventory.
Point four is a decision only the cost sheet can settle, because it trades a real inventory cost against a real makeready cost. Both are measurable, and arguing about it without both numbers is how the same discussion recurs every quarter.

Related guides

Makeready waste: material cost that does not scale with quantity | costdown.org