The Decoration Cost Engineering Company

What’s burning up your decoration budget — changeover labor, plates, or ink?

The honest-advisor ROI — we build pad and digital, and profit either way

Changeover labor, plates, custom inks, cleanup on every new job — that’s where decoration budgets quietly burn. We build pad, multi-pass and single-pass, so the math we run is honest: send us the part that burns the most and we’ll show you the lowest-cost way to make it. If you’ve already nailed it, we’ll tell you — even if it costs us the sale.

Send us your most expensive part See how the math works
EPS integrated single-pass digital decoration cell — automated loading, print, UV cure and inspection in one line
An engineered automated decoration cell — load, decorate, cure & inspect in one line. The payback target.
What drives the number

Four factors decide the ROI.

Every analog-to-digital business case turns on the same handful of levers. Three cut cost out of every job; the fourth gives you back production you’re paying for but not using.

Changeover & setup labor

Every job change stops an analog line — mount tooling, mix ink, register each color, tear down. Digital changeover is loading a file.

The single biggest lever. More changeovers → faster payback.

Plates, clichés & screens

Physical tooling — one per color, per position — remade for every design and consumed per run. Digital carries zero plates.

A 3-logo job can mean 9 plates + 9 ink mixes.

Custom inks

Mixed and PMS-matched for every job, and often scrapped when the run ends. The matching labor and shelf-life waste both vanish when color is a print file.

Every SKU is a new ink mix on analog — a file on digital.

Freed-up capacity

Hours not spent on changeover are production hours back — absorb SKU growth without adding a shift, a machine, or floor space.

Often the biggest number, and the one calculators miss.

Also in the model: first-article scrap and rework (an engineered digital cell holds scrap under 1%), plus run length & SKU count — the crossover variable that decides how hard each lever pushes.

How the math works

Your return on a $600,000 system.

At 10 jobs a day across 240 production days — 2,400 jobs and 60,000 parts a year — this is what single-pass digital returns versus pad printing.

Annual ROI model: $619,830 a year in savings, ~12-month payback and 205% three-year ROI, with per-year cumulative savings and a full cost-driver breakdown — single-pass digital vs pad printing.
What single-pass takes off every job
−98%
Material & ink
$133 of pad ink & consumables → about $2.60 of jetted ink. No custom color to mix, match, or scrap.
−81%
Operator labor
289 minutes of setup, registration & running → 55. One operator loads a file instead of mounting tooling.
18 → 0
Plates & ink mixes
3 logos × 3 positions is 9 clichés + 9 ink mixes on pad. Single-pass prints all three from one file.
Know your incumbent

The key drivers change with the process you run today.

Pad, screen, and dry offset each lose money in a different place. The ROI comes from the levers that matter against your current process — and we’re honest about where analog still wins.

Replacing / augmenting

Pad printing

Multi-logo parts, short runs, many colors
Key ROI drivers
  • Cliché + ink mix per color, per position — remade every design
  • Heavy setup & teardown labor on every changeover
  • One color per hit — digital is genuinely faster on multi-color
  • Registration & first-article scrap between colors
Best case: 3+ colors, run lengths under ~5,000.
Where pad still wins: single-color, very long, unchanging runs where tooling amortizes.
Replacing / augmenting

Screen printing

Flat & cylindrical, opaque color, mid volumes
Key ROI drivers
  • One screen per color — burn, mount, register, reclaim
  • Ink mixing + drying/curing time between each color
  • Digital wins on color count (CMYK+W) & photoreal / variable data
  • No screens, no reclaim chemistry, no inter-color dry time
Best case: multi-color, photoreal, or variable artwork.
Where screen still wins: heavy ink lay-down / opacity and specialty effects on long single-design runs.
Replacing / augmenting

Dry offset

Plastic closures & cups, high volume
Key ROI drivers
  • Plate + blanket setup and ink mixing on every SKU change
  • Long changeovers — the ROI is changeover-driven, not speed
  • Late-stage variable data & versioning with no plates
  • SKU proliferation absorbed without added tooling cost
Best case: high SKU count, short-to-mid runs, frequent changes.
Where offset still wins: very long, stable, few-SKU runs — offset’s raw speed keeps per-part cost low.
Capabilities analog can’t match

Digital doesn’t just cost less. It gives you new capabilities to drive new revenue.

Pad, screen, and offset are spot-color processes — one flat color per plate. Digital is full-color and data-driven, so it opens work you simply can’t quote today. Every one of these adds to the ROI on top of the cost savings.

Variable data

Serialize every part — names, numbers, batch and lot codes — with no plate change and no slowdown. One file, a thousand different prints.

QR & 2D codes

Print unique, scannable QR / DataMatrix codes per unit for traceability, authentication, and connected-packaging campaigns. Impossible with a fixed plate.

Full process color

CMYK photoreal artwork — gradients, photographs, drop shadows, skin tones. Analog spot processes can’t render a continuous-tone image at all.

Extended-gamut color

CMYK plus orange, green, violet and white hits brand colors that pad, screen and offset can only match with a custom-mixed spot ink per job.

Build your business case

A generic calculator guesses. A cost engineer builds your number.

Send us the part that burns the most — with its run lengths, SKUs, color counts, changeover times, and labor rate — and an EPS cost engineer builds a custom ROI on your real production data, including the freed-up capacity a calculator can’t see.

  • Cost per part, today vs. digital
  • Annual savings & payback on the right EPS platform
  • Break-even run length for your part mix
Talk to a cost engineer Book a 30-min ROI call
87%
Lower cost / job
(vs pad printing)
<1%
Scrap in an
engineered cell
~12 mo
Typical
payback
◉ WPForms — entries saved to list “ROI”

Send us your most expensive part

Takes ~30 seconds. A cost engineer follows up within one business day.

Bring us your job mix.

Real run lengths, SKUs, and color counts — we’ll build your break-even and payback on your production data, not on averages.

Send us your most expensive part Take the Decoration Optimizer