Industrial printing units run flexo, gravure and screen lines on films, cartons, textiles and glass for factory customers. The trouble sits at the press: solvent smell, drying temperature and registration all rely on a few trained eyes.
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Share your requirementsAn industrial printing unit prints for other manufacturers on laminates, BOPP film, cartons, fabric, plastic tubs, glass and tin. Flexo, gravure, screen and pad printing are followed by drying tunnels, curing, rewinding, slitting and packing. Presses run two or three shifts on long orders. Ink viscosity, solvent evaporation, anilox condition and web tension decide whether a roll is saleable, and a senior operator judges them by eye, touch and smell. Trainees learn by standing beside that person. Owners have loyal long-service hands plus two or three senior operators who can take any job. See also HR for manufacturing.
These are the places the people side of this kind of business tends to give way. The rest of this page works through them.
HR here has to work for each of these groups, not only the office. The set-up below is written with all of them in mind.
GullyHR runs talent acquisition for permanent roles in industrial printing units. For each role we agree the job description with you, find and screen candidates against it, and support the offer through to joining. Tell us the role and the number of people, and we start there.
We recruit permanent employees. We do not supply contract or temporary staff.
Every business interviews, but few have a written process that works the same way for every role and every interviewer. GullyHR designs yours, from the role brief to the offer, trains your managers to run it, and can run it for you on the roles you hand us.
We agree what the role must deliver, the must-have and nice-to-have skills, and how each will be scored.
Screening call, assessment, interview rounds and decision points, sized to the role and the number of people you hire.
Structured questions for each role family and a rating guide, so two interviewers judge the same answer the same way.
A short briefing for your managers on what to ask, what to avoid and how to give a clear yes or no.
Who approves, how the offer is made, and how candidates are kept informed from first call to joining.
Ink kitchen staff match a customer's shade by eye and adjust viscosity by feel. If either of two people is absent, the press waits.
Crews breathe solvent vapour and stand near drying tunnels for whole shifts. Headaches and tiredness are put down to the job and nobody tracks them.
Colour-to-colour register drifts as the night goes on. Waste of printed film rises between two and five in the morning, when fewer seniors are on the floor.
Gravure cylinders and screen frames are heavy, and washing them with solvent leaves hands raw. Lifting is done by whoever is nearby, with no set method.
After days on one repeat order, the crew is slow to reset for a new design, wrong anilox, wrong ink, wrong repeat length, and startup waste climbs.
Long-service operators see a sign-off sheet as doubt about their skill, while newer recruits copy their shortcuts along with their good habits.
Start with the topics that matter most here: Health, Safety and Wellbeing; Learning and Development; Retention and Attrition Management. Then work through the rest. Each topic is written for manufacturing, not in general.
Induction, records, incident reporting and follow-through.
Training planned from need rather than from the calendar.
Who leaves, when, why, and which of them mattered.
How many people, in which roles, by when, and what they will cost.
Structure, reporting lines and who is allowed to decide what.
Requisition to joining, the same way every time.
A first day that is the same for the fifth joiner as the first.
Records, attendance, leave and the day-to-day HR that must simply work.
Salary structure, payroll inputs and a month that closes on time.
Goals, reviews and ratings that hold up in a conversation.
Named backups for the roles that cannot be vacant.
Communication, recognition and the conditions people actually work in.
Two routes, one for complaints, one for conduct, kept separate.
Policies a manager can apply, and obligations with owners and dates.
Resignation to relieving letter, in a defined order.
Records that survive people, and approvals that do not queue.
A short monthly pack management actually reads.
An HR function that runs the same way every month.
The pieces a industrial printing units business puts in place, in an order that makes each easier. Open any card for the detail.
Have the shade matcher note their steps for mixing, viscosity cup readings and top-ups, then check them with a second person.
Have the shade matcher note their steps for mixing, viscosity cup readings and top-ups, then check them with a second person. File them under the HR documentation process.
At each shift start, the supervisor looks at extraction fans and tunnel ventilation, and rotates people off the hottest posts.
At each shift start, the supervisor looks at extraction fans and tunnel ventilation, and rotates people off the hottest posts. See health, safety and wellbeing.
The in-charge signs a register check at set times, including at night, so drift is caught before a full roll is spoiled.
The in-charge signs a register check at set times, including at night, so drift is caught before a full roll is spoiled.
A short practical session with proper trolleys, gloves for solvent washing and a two-person rule for heavy cylinders.
A short practical session with proper trolleys, gloves for solvent washing and a two-person rule for heavy cylinders. The learning and development process can hold the record.
Show the senior operators the sheet first, ask what they would change, and let them brief the crew themselves.
Show the senior operators the sheet first, ask what they would change, and let them brief the crew themselves.
Before changing anything, find out what is true today. Work through the checks using a recent operating period. The time needed depends on the records you hold; note missing evidence and use the findings to choose a priority.
Share your requirementsConfirm with a qualified professional. What applies to you depends on your business, your state and your arrangements, and it changes. This page describes practice. It does not state a legal position.
The services below fit this kind of business best. Each starts by recording where you stand, and every later report compares against that. We do not promise outcomes.
Habits for solvent vapour, tunnel heat and heavy cylinder lifting on press floors.
Written ink kitchen and press set-up routines that stay when one operator leaves.
A staged route for helpers to learn shade, viscosity and registration.
Keeping senior operators when several nearby units will bid for them.
Start with a free conversation, or see the paid HR Diagnostic.
Understand the business, its workforce, current processes and HR challenges.
Find the missing, weak, inconsistent or person-dependent processes.
Create the structure, processes, policies, SOPs, dashboards and systems needed.
Help HR and department managers actually adopt the new system.
Digitise repetitive and approval-based workflows where it is worth doing.
Track hiring, attendance, employee cost, performance, training and attrition.
Strengthen the people-management system continuously, not once.
From the GullyHR blog: one on HR in manufacturing, and one on each of the topics this page points to.
Why the best operator can struggle as shift supervisor, what it costs the line, and a practical way to choose, prepare and back new supervisors in any kind of plant.
7 min readRead article
A shift, weekly and monthly safety routine for rubber plants that names who checks platen guards, mill trip bars, autoclave doors, burst-test cages and slings, and who acts on near misses.
7 min readRead article
A founder's guide to hiring freshers and running a first-year programme: campus or open drives, a screening round, a training plan by quarter, mentors and checkpoints.
6 min readRead article
What really keeps mobile app and web developers in a small firm: stay conversations, growth paths, fair release rules and a risk sheet an owner can use this month.
6 min readRead articleMore on the GullyHR blog.
Ask them to write their steps, put a named junior beside them for a set period, and show the role in grade and pay. People share knowledge when it is recognised.
Check extraction every shift, rotate people off the worst posts, and supply suitable masks and gloves. Ask a qualified professional what the rules require for your unit.
Fix registration checks at set hours, put a senior in charge and plan the breaks. Slippage at night comes from tiredness, not carelessness.
Involve them early, give the reason and try the new check on one press first. Veterans back changes they helped shape, not those announced afterwards.
Yes. The skills differ, so a scale for each process, or a skill matrix across them, gives fairer pay and clearer training.
We would ask who can match shades and set viscosity alone, walk the tunnel for heat and extraction, and plot waste against the hour of the shift. A useful opening task is a written ink routine with a trainee paired to the matcher. We put scope on paper only after we have talked.
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