From 32 to 14 months payback: manual to automatic

Two contradictory calculations existed for the same press: the vendor's 9 months and the accountant's 32. Both were arithmetically correct and answered different questions.

Case study engine

Figures derived from the shared calculation kernel

From 32 to 14 months payback: manual to automatic

A 14-person contract shop rebuilt its automation case on cash-effective labour and committed volume instead of released hours.

Business: Contract screen printing, B2B
Volume: 22,000 impressions / month
Employees: 14 (6 in printing)
Equipment: 2 manual carousels, 1 electric dryer
Country: Germany

Investment

118.000 €

Cash benefit / month

7.714 €

plus non-cash: 3.374 €

Payback

15.3 months

actual: 14 months

ROI (60 mo)

292%

NPV 281.011 €

Monetising released capacity as well would show a 10.6-month payback — that figure is not bankable.

Before / after

Metric	Before	After	Direction
Press labour hours / month	612 h	444 h	lower is better
Overtime hours / month	46 h	3 h	lower is better
Temp agency hours / month	22 h	0 h	lower is better
Impressions / month	22,000	31,600	higher is better
Output per labour hour	36	71	higher is better

Lessons learned

Never present released hours as savings to a lender — the follow-up questions are hard to answer.
Committed volume beats forecast volume in every credit conversation.
Automation moves the bottleneck; budget the follow-up project in advance.

Pitfalls

Monetising all 168 released hours produced a 9-month payback that no bank accepted.
Ignoring the €640/month extra energy and maintenance would have hidden a real cost.

Recreate this case with your own numbers

Prefills the seven-scenario labour model with the shop's overtime, temp and redeployment split plus the €118,000 investment.

Read the full write-up

Knowledge Center

From 32 to 14 months payback: manual to automatic