TL;DR
- The first model monetised all released hours and produced an unrealistic 9-month payback.
- The cash-only model produced 32 months and would have stopped the project.
- Committing two customers to the new capacity brought the honest case to 14 months.
A 14-person shop had two contradictory calculations for the same press: the vendor's 9 months and the accountant's 32. Both were arithmetically correct and both were answering different questions.
Background
| Attribute | Value |
|---|---|
| Business type | Contract screen printing, B2B |
| Volume | 22,000 impressions / month |
| Employees | 14 (6 in printing) |
| Current equipment | 2 manual carousels, 1 electric dryer |
| Investment | €118,000 (press, installation, compressor, exhaust) |
Challenge
Demand was growing but not guaranteed. The bank required a case that did not depend on unbooked orders.
Inputs
- Released press labour: 168 h / month
- Of which overtime: 46 h at €31 loaded incl. premium
- Of which temp agency: 22 h at €34
- Remaining 100 h: reassigned internally, no cash effect
- Additional energy and maintenance: €640 / month
- Contribution margin per additional impression: €0.42
Calculation
Three models
- Vendor model: 168 h × €31
- €5,208 → payback 9 months (not cash)
- Cash-only model: overtime + temp − extra cost
- €1,834 → payback 64 months
- Cash + committed volume: + 14,000 impressions × €0.42
- €7,714 → payback 15 months
- Signed commitments only (9,600 impressions)
- €5,866 → payback 20 months
The shop presented the signed-commitment case to the bank and used the growth case internally.
Result
- Actual payback after 14 months of operation, slightly better than the committed case.
- Overtime fell to near zero within two months.
- Setup time became the new constraint and triggered a pre-registration project.
Lessons learned
- Never present released hours as savings to a lender — the questions that follow are hard to answer.
- Committed volume beats forecast volume in every credit conversation.
- Automation moves the bottleneck; budget the follow-up project in advance.
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.
Interactive example
Investment, monthly benefit — payback, ROI and NPV
- Payback
- 11.8 months
- ROI over 36 months
- 206 %
- NPV
- € 171.250
Same calculation kernel as the full calculators. For a decision-grade result, open the matching calculator.
Run the numbers in a calculator
Turn your own numbers into a bank-ready PDF report.
Create a reportRelated reading
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