Seeking Print Shop Quality Measures/Survey

[Lawery]

I am looking for anyone who might share a Quality Control process in a small print shop. We do about 1.7 millon copies per month. I am having issues with the design work and the quality of product going to our customers. All customers are internal within our organization. Thanks in advance for any info provided.
lawery (at) adelphia (dot) net

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[WALLACE]

Originally Posted by Lawery

I am having issues with the design work and the quality of product going to our customers. All customers are internal within our organization.

Are you permitted to divulge the design work and quality of product issues you are experiencing?
Wallace

[Wes Bucey]

Originally Posted by Lawery

We do about 1.7 millon copies per month. I am having issues with the design work and the quality of product going to our customers. All customers are internal within our organization.

It seems to me you have two issues which need to be addressed separately.

By "quality of product going to our customers" I presume you mean factors having to do with delivery time, appearance (smudging, etc.), and mechanical errors (wrong size, quantity, paper, print quality.)

Normally, quality errors in a printshop milieu are handled by a type of FMEA (Failure Mode and Effects Analysis) where the emphasis is on identifying the factors that CAN go wrong, the probability they may occur, the "damage" (effect) the nonconformance will create, and finally, prioritizing potential failures by the probability of occurrence and the damage level when they occur. Once the FMEA is performed, processes can be created to "mistake proof" the operation.

"design work" is slightly confusing in your context. I normally think of design work in an organization being the primary process of the authors, while the actual production of printed copies is primarily a mechanical function (which machine, what paper, handling, and distributing), but I guess you may be referring to the kind of work traditional print shops used to do before desktop publishing - taking raw text and determining layout, typeface, paper size, binding method, etc. and producing a finished publication (think newspaper, book, newsletter versus whitepapers and sales brochures.)

Simply stated, the design work problems are a type of "contract review" problem wherein the customer and designer must have a mutual understanding of the requirements for the finished product. Often this means educating the customer as to the options he can choose from and helping him make a decision that will fit his needs within his budget. (Think Kinko's or any job shop printer - wedding invitations, announcements, advertising sheets - where the customer chooses color, page size, paper quality, type face, binding method, etc. from an array of choices, guided by the advice of the print shop.)

[Jim Wynne]

Nice response, Wes. This is a classic input-process-output situation, and each step should be considered separately (with customer requirements in mind, of course). As James Thurber described his process of writing short pieces, one starts at the beginning and reaches the end by way of the middle. Any other route is bound to cause confusion.

[Wes Bucey]

I have a hunch many organizations which do in-house centralized printing of various documents used within the organization (work instructions, data forms, reports, etc.) as well as those documents sent outside the organization (catalogs, sales correspondence, recruiting posters, etc.) share similar problems to Lawery's.

Essentially, the problem begins because the operation is not set up or run like a profit center which has to compete against an outside supplier for business. The point folks should keep in mind is that net cost of a conforming printed page in place may be much less expensive from an outside source simply because of the added costs due to in-house nonconformities. All the more reason to reduce in-house nonconformance to reduce net cost in place of a printed page. (there may also be factors concerning using the right equipment for a job which are beyond the scope of the current thread and, if pertinent, raised in a new thread.)

It behooves the in-house shop to model its business practices on a successful for-profit business which means creating processes which reduce and eliminate the causes of nonconforming products and services.

For example, customers should be provided with a uniform order sheet which mirrors the capabilities and capacity of the in-house shop. Samples of such sheets are readily available on the web. Capability and capacity are important considerations. Few in-house shops are capable of printing and binding hard cover books, for example, but they may be capable of producing stapled, wire or plastic spiral binding, "perfect" (glued - like note pads) binding. They may also be able to print up to 11 X 17 inch ledger sheets, but not tabloid or broadsheet newspaper sizes. If the capability or capacity is beyond in-house, it should recommend outsourcing for best value to the organization and customer.

In house and commercial shops both may maintain a variety of paper stocks and be willing to special order others.

Similarly, design considerations require proofs, galleys, proofreading and copy reading services. Typically, successful commercial shops deal with design considerations similarly to corporations dealing with engineering drawings. They start with

• a designer who confirms customer requirements (contract review),
• have one or more intermediate checkers who check copy content and mechanical considerations, and finally
• an approval signature (which may be the customer's.)

Once the design is approved, then a "job traveler" is created which follows the print project through all processes with checkoff points for each stage of the process up to delivery to end customer.

If it were my shop to "fix."
I'd pick up check lists from commercial shops which do work similar to the capability of my shop and borrow the concepts for dealing with customers to assure my shop has complete understanding of customer requirements.

For my in-house design consideration, I would make sure I had separate individuals doing design and checking against mechanical limitations and customer requirements, including proofreading. I would absolutely refuse to begin production of a print job until customer signed off on design proof.

I would institute a "job traveler" system which required sign off approval of each process step before accepting the job and beginning the next step.

If I encountered nonconformances in finished jobs, I would perform a root cause investigation to determine how the process failed and move to fix the process with some sort of mistake proofing.

[wallen]

I am involved with a digital print shop 250k images per day capability and have experienced difficulity in establishing a quality process. Bench marking efforts with other print shops have had little reward, everyone in the industry appears to have the attitude that defects and losses are expected as part of the process and just add a buffer amount to compensate. No efforts are made to quantify these losses never mind try and reduce them.
One of the areas I believe that we have progressed in is to establish operational definitions around what is a defect / reject. Using a sample library of defects based on customers feedback (the majority of our customers are also internal) we have attempted retrain our operators and inspectors to have the same opinion as each others. This has also improved R&R performance as initial trials were pitiful. Although the situation is not perfect .....it is a start

[Wes Bucey]

Originally Posted by wallen

I am involved with a digital print shop 250k images per day capability and have experienced difficulity in establishing a quality process. Bench marking efforts with other print shops have had little reward, everyone in the industry appears to have the attitude that defects and losses are expected as part of the process and just add a buffer amount to compensate. No efforts are made to quantify these losses never mind try and reduce them.
One of the areas I believe that we have progressed in is to establish operational definitions around what is a defect / reject. Using a sample library of defects based on customers feedback (the majority of our customers are also internal) we have attempted retrain our operators and inspectors to have the same opinion as each others. This has also improved R&R performance as initial trials were pitiful. Although the situation is not perfect .....it is a start

Good for you, Wallen, in not accepting the "status quo" of the other shops you attempted to benchmark!

I, however, have spent my entire career SETTING the benchmark for others to follow. It isn't easy at first, but it does get easier as you get more experience at the task.

One of the first things I do is sit down with the current or potential end users of my product or service (collectively [en masse] or individually) and "jawbone" with them about the likes and dislikes they've had with similar stuff from ANYONE in their own past. Then I ask each one, "If you had your choice, what's the ONE THING you'd value most about this product or service IF you could get it?"

(This interview process gets easier and more efficient the more times you do it. It helps if you can project an aura of "want to help" to your customers, internal or external. As an example that's really off the wall, the Willow Creek Association, (http://www.willowcreek.com/) one of the largest and most financially successful churches in America started from scratch not so long ago with exactly the same process - two recent seminary graduates chose a geographic area and went out and interviewed folks to derive the kind of operation that would give them the best platform to deliver their religious message. Today, the WCA has a consulting arm which charges 10,000 churches $250 per year each to get tips on duplicating the process - I'm giving it to you here for free!)

When I have compiled my list of "don't like," "do like," and "really, really want" I begin to formulate a PLAN to deliver the wants and eliminate the don't wants. Sometimes, I have partners or team members who help me do this.

With the plan in hand, I assemble the equipment and the personnel to help me implement the plan. (Sometimes I need another plan to FINANCE this stage.) I put ALL the personnel in the picture of the PLAN and how I derived the plan from the input of customers and potential customers. I emphasize constantly that pleasing the customer while making a profit is our most important goal. I am pragmatic enough to also say there are some customers we will be unable to please because we lack capability or capacity and those will have to be "fired" until we gain sufficient capability or capacity to serve them.

Once implemented, we (everybody from the CEO down to the janitor who sweeps the floor) continually evaluate our progress -

• first to decide if we are sticking to the plan (control)
• second to decide if the plan should be modified (improvement.)

There are no SECRETS. It takes time, effort, and continual vigilance to run a successful organization. Finding tips to avoid reinventing the wheel is a natural part of the process.

One thing that's crucial is CONTRACT REVIEW, comparing customer requirements with the organization's capabilities and capacities. Often, organizations take on projects which are beyond them and create frustration and discontent throughout the organization, most especially resulting in loss of respect for the leaders of the organization. Once a leader has lost the respect of his organization, it is nearly impossible to regain it and the organization begins to decline. The other route to loss of respect is by initiating shady or even illegal practices into the organization. There is absolutely no way to regain respect of the personnel of the organization once this is discovered.

All this does not deny an organization the right to plan for expansion to take on larger or more complicated projects, only to delay implementing such projects until the capability and capacity are in place.