Eshuis | 55were without labels. So, they decided to buy locally – and for them, the price is less important than the assurance of continual supply,’ he says. ‘These brands have contracts with retailers, and it kills them if they don’t supply in time. No material is totally unacceptable.’It’s been nearly 20 years since Eshuis started its digital journey with HP. ‘It doesn’t work anymore to accept orders in the old-fashioned way and tell the customer they’ll have to wait two weeks for the work,’ Overbeek says. ‘You need to make sure you are prepared internally to deliver on demand. And this is why we have created fexibility in the routing of jobs through the company, and trained people to be exchangeable between processes, so we can use them on different machines.’There is plenty of work for Eshuis’s existing 6 Series HP Indigo presses – but again, it is not so simple to defne the job profle by run-lengths: ‘Normally we exchange many substrates between the 6 Series and 8 Series presses, but the small volumes of Eshuis runs jobs on a HP Indigo 8K rare substrates will stay on the HP Indigo 6800 and the faster lead times, transit risks and higher inventories. Brand variations jobs will go on the 8K for maximum effciency. Each time you are great for topline sales and consumer choice, but more, less change substrate you need to do calibrations, so the number of frequently selling products, raises make ready times, as well substrate changes is critical – and we schedule to limit these as as stocks. And while cutting frees up cash, it raises the risk of much as possible.’frefghting to close the service gap. Eshuis’s ability to maintain continuous 24/7 production for three All these vulnerabilities left suppliers exposed as post-pandemic months on its six-series presses – only stopping for maintenance demand exceeded expectations. Paper shortages in particular and hitting 86 percent uptime – helped prove the point.meant exposing frailties in the traditional supply chain model – and not many expect a return to pre-Covid normality anytime soon.In some ways, this has helped companies like Eshuis who see opportunities among the challenges.For more information on Eshuis, visit www.eshuis.nl‘We have three big new customers that purchased abroad but Jan - Mar 2023