DOCUMENT Magazine - June 2008 - (Page 28) P D PRODUCTION & DELIVERY & a chieving production automation can begin in its workflow. However, implementing a truly cohesive process must take in account all the operations of the enterprise. The Glue to Your Workflow y Optimizing a cohesive production workflow for advanced throughput of your transactional documents | By John P. Baeseman The first step in creating your cohesive workflow is to develop a flowchart of your current operations, considering all potential flows. The beginning path does not typically start at the printers. In fact, it begins further upstream. Where is your data coming from — which business units, which customers? The workflow needs to consider what is done with data before it goes to your document composition team and then further downstream to your print operations and finishing and out through your dock. You also need to consider the flow of materials from your warehouse into your operations. By doing this, you will have created a web of flows and not just the typical straight flow that you may be familiar with. At the same time that you are mapping your flows, you should also note whether any of these steps are current bottlenecks in the operation as well as what each step’s anticipated production rates are. This should be readily available if production standards exist in your operation. If you’ve also done some activity-based costing in your operation, you may also be able to affix an estimated unit cost to each of these steps. Having this available is a benefit when justifying any process improvements to your flow. Now that you’ve completed mapping your current workflows, which is, in itself, a useful yet time-consuming task, you will have a complete pictorial representation of your entire operational flows. Take a look at your flows and the operations that you’ve mapped. Are there any that can be beneficially combined? After looking at the flow on paper, it may also become obvious that some legacy steps from past Your operational processes seem to flow step to step, from print to insert, to sort and so on. Work is moved from one step to the next in progression — a perfect workflow. Or is it? Is there communication between the operations? Does each operation fully understand what volumes need to be processed and what time they need to be completed on a weekly, daily or hourly basis? A seemingly ideal workflow may often not be as effective as it seems. This can be due to a number of reasons, including legacy methods and processes or simply due to the fact that a fresh perspective has not been considered. Often, “islands of automation” exist within your operation with no, or minimal, viable means to tie them together to create an overall operational system. Finding Cohesiveness in Your Workflow What is workflow? Simply put, it is the flow or progress of work through your operations. Having a workflow does not necessarily mean that it is streamlined or even correct. However, it is an influencer directly related to your operational throughput and costs. In addition, workflow does not necessarily mean only materials that can be physically moved around your production floor. It is also the data that is massaged and manipulated before it arrives at your printers and the production and process data (production intelligence) that flows between operations. 28 document june.08 www.DOCUMENTmedia.com http://www.DOCUMENTmedia.com
For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.