From Concrete to Carpet: Rethinking How Work Gets Done

Face it, printers are experienced at attacking productivity, inefficiencies, and re-work on the production floor. Faster makereadies, throughput and automation as well as equipment utilization, lean and lights out production have become standard agenda items for all departments. As business leaders, they understand that those efforts help to drive positive results for the business. But wait, how about the carpeted areas of the business? How does and how can that work get done?

You’ve re-engineered the plant area, well done. But the carpeted areas, not so much. You know the drill, an email comes in, someone interprets it, then transfers the information into the estimating process. You send out the quote, it becomes an order and then the questions begin to fly about the specifics of the order. Once those get answered, some of that information get re-entered a second time. Files get organized and it all gets sent to pre-press for the games to begin. The job details for most orders have gotten more complex, and the average value of the individual orders has sometimes decreased.

• You would never design a manufacturing process this way, so why have you designed the work this way in the carpeted areas?

So, here’s my question, or challenge: If you were building a $5M, $20M or even a $100M printing company today, with all that you know, and all the tools available, would you still set up the estimating, customer service, order entry, biz dev, sales and accounting the same way you do it today? If the answer is no, why are you continuing to operate your company that way?

This isn’t solved by sprinkling some AI elixir over the existing configuration, hoping that it’ll be faster and better. While that may help in certain areas, this challenge is more than that. This begins with a thorough understanding of how the work gets done today vs. how it should get done today. Dissect it, analyze it. Turn it upside down. The current set up was designed for a time that once was – not is. The game has changed, the speed has changed and your tool set has changed. What does your preferred customer journey look like as their expectations have changed as well? Make sure that there is a good fit between your departments, and workflow and what the customer sees and feels.

• The opportunity is to reduce the touches and clerical intervention on low-value work

Once you’ve redesigned how work should get done in these areas, now you can ask, “how can the tools that I have access to make an impact?” In fact, before you reach for the AI lever, some areas will be aided by doing better at your current systems integration – flatten the various tech silos you have in your business.

When you find ways to re-design the work, your staff will have more time on their hands. What would be the impact to your business if your CSRs could speak to customers more frequently and estimators could think through a project to solve the big hairy problem they’ve presented? Could be pretty cool. Could be refreshing. And could make your customers say wow!

Mike Philie helps owners and CEOs in the Graphic communications industry validate what’s working, identify what needs to change, and create a practical path forward.

PhilieGroup | mphilie@philiegroup.com | Linkedin

The preceding content was provided by a contributor unaffiliated with Printing Impressions. The views expressed within may not directly reflect the thoughts or opinions of the staff of Printing Impressions. Artificial Intelligence may have been used in part to create or edit this content.