Make-Ready Is a Fixed Tax: Combining Small Jobs on One Sheet and the Saving From Gang Printing Common Sizes

This paper addresses a practical question in short runs: every print job pays a fixed tax before its first good sheet exists: the plate or master, the setting of ink and registration, and the sheets spoiled while those settings are found. Using a self-contained computation from stated assumptions, the study evaluates the options across the range a small operation ordinarily meets and identifies the point at which the balance of cost, quality and material use changes. The headline findings are that separate total 3 jobs usd is 49.62; gang total 3 jobs usd is 40.54; saving usd is 9.08; saving pct is 18.3; makeready sheets saved is 36. These figures come from a simulation study: the work is SIMULATED, NOT MEASURED, no physical trials were performed, and every number reported is taken from the deposited computation output so that any reader can reproduce or refute it with local values. The practical value of the result is a rule that can be applied at the point of work without further calculation, together with the tabulated cases from which the rule was derived and a statement of the assumptions on which it depends. Where the computation shows that a widely used practice wastes money or material, that finding is stated directly; where it shows that a popular economy is genuine, the size of the genuine saving is stated with equal directness, so that effort can be directed to the economies that are worth having.