Refinement of product sample card production

Sample cards are business card size nail wrap sheets; they are sold in a 50 pack, 25 each of 2 different design schemes. To be produced, they were printed and finished 2 rows across. At the end of the process, the samples would pass through a sheeting cylinder and come out on a conveyor as single sheets. The worker on the back end of the process would continuously scoop the loose samples off the belt, try to jog them and stack them in a box. Packaging would take them out of the box and turn them in the right direction and count out 25 of each design and then combine for a 50 pack. The 50 would be put into a clear poly sleeve. This process is very slow, messy, labor intensive and was never an ideal solution. I decided to try a perforation blade in the sheeter instead of a sheeting blade to eliminate the single samples coming off all jumbled up. I worked with several blade manufacturers to get the correct tooth and gap and blade angle. In conjunction with this change, I worked with manufacturing to solve some die cutting issues, which allowed us to print and finish 4 rows across. The 4 rows of sample cards were now being perforated between cards and I had prepress set up the two design schemes to alternate inline instead of coming off on their own row. These new perforated samples were now able to be rewound onto four individual cores and be taken to packaging that way. It freed up most of the time on the back of the machine, even though we were producing twice as much. Packaging could now put the rewound rolls on an un-winder and pull the sample cards off to a predetermined length marked on a table to designate a quantity of 50. Because of the inline alternating designs, the cards could then simply be torn at 50 and quickly accordion folded and put into poly sleeves. The efficiencies gained by the 4 wide printing & finishing, perforating, alternating designs and unwind at packaging allowed production to produce and package over twice as many sample packs per hour.