In the past, commercial printing is merely the transferring of designs onto a paper and producing many copies of such. Now, printing is the publication of books, advertising materials, newspapers, vinyl stickers, tarpaulin backdrops and billboards.

The term can even apply to those that print on clothes and even on metal. The machines differ from offset printers to heat transferring machines. Commercial printing is such a big business that the industry needs so many employees—from white-collar executives to blue-collar production workers. Each task is highly specialized and needs special skills. Moreover, despite the big organization behind each printing company, they have to work like a well-oiled machine and come up with the printed material that is required by the client or the target audience.

The work at a commercial printer may be divided into three phases—the pre-press, the actual printing, and the finishing stage. Each phase has its own specific workers but in the production area, some of the work may overlap such among the operators. It really depends on the kind of printing operations you run and the amount of jobs that are done by the company.

Overlapping is accepted in most companies so that there is no redundancy and the company will maximize the salaries and benefits of their workers. If one worker is too specialized, the company will have to pay for their idle time at work. For example, you may have printing orders today and none tomorrow. The printer-operator can print the job today and then do the cutting tomorrow because that means he does not have work tomorrow. If there is a separate cutter in the press, this means the printer does not work on the second day but the cutter does not have work on the first day. That is the why the printing supervisor should keenly look out for these instances so that the company saves. Of course, things are different if the press has printing jobs every day, like if you work in a daily newspaper office. That means the presses run every day and all the tables are filled always. You cannot have a redundant position in this kind of operations.

Things may be different if you are running a tarpaulin printing business. If you have a big business with more than two machines running every day, you can have two printing operators with two assistants who will load the material, handle cutting, seaming, and the installation of eyelets. However, if you only have a small business with one printer, you can have one operator who can also do the cutting. It really depends on your operations, but if you do have an extra person, make sure that he is doing more than just one task because making their work too specialized is too expensive to maintain.

The business of commercial printing can be tricky because it is not so much as the costs of materials that will make you lose money but the work force salaries and benefits. If you hire people full-time, you have to pay them with minimum wage salaries and even benefits. So if you are a commercial printer with regular employees, make sure that you have printing jobs every day or else you will lose so much money on idle workers. If not, then hire part time workers instead. That is the only way to keep your business afloat.