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.
