Workflow Wizardry

Our NAPL research continues to show that while industry sales are on the mend and growing, profits are not. As a result, many leading companies are focusing more time and attention on workflow improvements that can reduce manufacturing costs, maintain or increase profitability and build new products and services that may generate new sales streams.

It’s a sensible approach, since a smooth workflow can work magic on enhancing profitability through a range of far reaching effects, including reducing bottlenecks, minimizing pain points, trimming waste and providing the infrastructure for new value-added offerings with higher profit margins.

Low Cost Solutions

Bottlenecks are places where work gets stuck. When we analyze workflows, we break bottlenecks into two categories: static and moving. A static bottleneck is one that is always in the same place. During workflow audits, we typically find static bottlenecks in estimating, customer service, prepress and finishing.

A moving bottleneck is the result of a large volume of work going through a plant all at once. For some companies, that means when the FedEx truck pulls up at 10 a.m., creating a pile of work that causes bottlenecks in every step of the process.

Either way, when work gets stuck somewhere, it starts to pile up and overall productivity declines. All workflows have bottlenecks, but leading companies address their bottlenecks to constantly increase productivity.

We are seeing a renewed interest in improving production workflow. In our NAPL Strategic Perspective 2011 report, for example, one of our panelists noted that his company is “reviewing and improving written procedures to reduce avoidable errors.” Another person said his company is “streamlining workflow and putting best practices in place to minimize waste.”

Working on process improvements is not as exciting as investing in new Web-to-print software, MIS systems or an automated PDF workflow. But it does minimize or even eliminate the need to make capital investments to help improve profits, since process improvements themselves increase profitability.

Pain Killers

As noted above, a good workflow reduces the pain points of manual, time consuming tasks such as film stripping. New workflow tools such as PDF workflows, computer-to- plate and digital printing overcome that pain point.

Pain points can also be found in redundant and error prone steps, such as writing the same information on several forms by hand or re-inputting specifications for a job into both the estimating and job ticketing systems. Automation from Web-to print and MIS systems overcome those pain points.

But identifying and overcoming bottlenecks and pain points does not always require investments in equipment or software. It does require a return to the fundamentals of production that are based on flowcharting or process mapping.

First created by Frank Gilbreth, the benefits of flowcharts started to became more popular in W. Edwards Deming’s books, in which he talked about how you need to flowchart a process “to see it, to understand it, to change it.” Deming was one of the first to emphasize the real-world application of flowcharts, which have grown in importance with current production philosophies (e.g.: Lean, Six Sigma).

He pointed out that flowcharts also help identify redundant steps and, as noted in more recent production philosophies, they can be used for process mapping to identify where value is added. Such mapping ideas are becoming popular again as our industry continues to suffer from competitive pricing.

Digital Streamlining

When we perform a workflow audit, we look at four options for increasing productivity, using the acronym, STEP: Staff, Training, Equipment and Procedures. Mapping and flowcharts can help identify enhancements to staff, training and procedures, but these solutions do not enhance your digital workflow.