Manual feeding of flexo folder gluer/rotary diecutter (FFG/RDC) is a difficult, tedious job and has a high employee turnover rate. From a study of the difficulty of the job, it was concluded that the task requires a person to work at about 60% of his or her average capacity, while the upper limit a person can endure over a period of a shift is said to be in the 40-50% range.
The 60% requirement is roughly equivalent to a person feeding 200-lb C flute at 120 sheets per minute (average 8.7 ft 2 /sheet) for 60% of his shift (run time only). This equals 19 tons per 8-hr shift. See Table 1 for SI metric conversion units.
Sixteen tons per shift was the rule of thumb for coal mining. Given that the working conditions in a boxplant are better than those in a coal mine and that the actual work (load and distance) is less, it would be expected that the allowable tons per shift would be greater in a boxplant. If the flexo folder gluer/rotary diecutter ran full-time, in excess of 31 tons per shift might be expected. This seems quite high, but if a person's 40-50% capacity on this job is assumed to be between 16 and 31 tons per shift, an average full manual feeding capacity of 24 tons per shift seems reasonable.
