DOCUMENT Magazine - June 2008 - (Page 29) processes can be eliminated. This is a streamlining process to remove any unnecessary steps that inhibit production and may result in excess cost to your company. Consider standardizing, simplifying and potentially automating steps. While mapping out your new workflow, maintain a list of the anticipated throughputs, bottlenecks and costs of each of the steps. In addition, there are trends in the industry that must be considered. Are you anticipating that your customers, whether internal or external, will request TransPromo, for example? These potential requests should also be mapped out to give you a head start in preparing for a solution before the request is set forth. Build It, and Workflow Will Come After mapping out your “new” process workflow, it is time to design for the future. You may have the ideal workflow on paper for your current operations and volumes, but you may want to invest time in changing your processes to prepare yourself for what may be around the corner. Consider your potential growth in volume in the design of the new workflow. You will want to ensure that you are capable of adjusting to growth without requiring a complete overhaul of your operation. You have collected throughput rates for each of your current work steps and can determine what labor and equipment will be required for each task in the future. This process is very similar to assembly line balancing. The goal of most companies is to reduce or eliminate work in process, in essence, bottlenecks, and to move generally towards a just-in-time processing methodology. Keep in mind, however, that when it is time to implement your new workflow, you will need to plan for sufficient resources in terms of space, equipment, software and staff in your physical layout. When they do exist, they are often a manual process or software that considers only downstream processes from the print operations. They must be more comprehensive and robust. Any scheduling system that is implemented must consider your entire operation, from origination of data through the time a finished mailpiece leaves your facility, and in fact, it should go beyond that. Rules within your scheduling system are critical to ensuring a “smooth” and flexible workflow. These rules often include priorities, due dates (SLAs), equipment and labor options and processing types (e.g., FIFO (first-in-first-out), LIFO (last-in-first-out)). In addition, realistic inputs are required for operation throughputs (i.e., production standards), available processing hours and equipment and labor resources. Scheduling systems not only assist in optimizing your existing workflow and resources, they can also be valuable tools in forecasting unanticipated workloads through modeling “what if” scenarios and by running multiple iterations of scheduling options. To complete the comprehensive workflow, your inventory management system, scheduling system and other production software tools should be tied together, such as in an enterprise resource planning (ERP) software system, to provide a quick view of your entire operation from start to finish. In addition to software and hardware to improve your workflow, it is also critical to have scheduled meetings with all operations, preferably on a daily basis, to review workloads, schedules, resources and to discuss any factors that may contribute to the daily workflow and workload. Along with your tools already in place, this open communications process will assist in alleviating any unanticipated flow issues before they take place. Connecting the Dots Together Measure Against These Workflow Metrics 1 Actual volumes processed vs. anticipated volumes processed 2 Meeting scheduled due date (time) 3 Operator productivity (mailpieces per labor hour) 4 Reprint, scrap rates 5 Quality errors (wrong insert, envelopes, forms) At this point, you will have a partial workflow plan. The operational steps are in place, and the individual operations, present and future, are planned to handle prospective volumes from your customers. To complete the strategy, it is necessary to tie the entire workflow together. Therefore, communication, in one form or another, is the key to ensure your workflow is complete. This is often achieved through the use of software tools. Consider your inventory management system. Many companies have one in some form or another, either manual or a standalone software package. These systems assist in managing your warehouse inventory but do not necessarily assist in the production workflow itself. Inventory, whether paper stock, envelopes or inserts, needs to be distributed where and when it is required, as well as in the correct amount. To optimize this process, the inventory management system should encompass your workflow. Rather than having an inventory control team moving pallets of materials to your production floor on a daily or weekly basis, why not have your operators order materials on a shorter time basis by way of a handheld scanner and barcode system? Doing this will not only begin to assist in building a cohesive workflow but also will reduce required floor space (by replacing pallets with potentially smaller carts), ensuring that materials are delivered where they are needed, reducing the chance that an operator will retrieve the wrong materials and improving overall throughput. In addition, rather than manually delivering materials to operators, this process can be automated through the use of conveyor systems or automated guided vehicles (AGVs). Another crucial step in building and managing your cohesive workflow is to implement a scheduling system. Scheduling systems are not as commonplace in the document processing industry as they should be. Finally, early on in the mapping of your current workflow process, costs were tagged to each step. The costs can be utilized in the justification of new products and their estimated savings, or additional revenue potential, to your operation. Working It Out As in any project, workflow analyses included, the key to understanding how your operation is performing is metrics. The correct metrics must be in place. With this production workflow improvement methodology in hand, you should have the basis to begin your project in not only developing a cohesive workflow for your entire operation but have the knowledge to report on its performance. John P. Baeseman, PE, EDP, is manager of Pitney Bowes’ Workflow Solutions, a professional services group offering a variety of services to assist clients in improving document processing operations. For more information, email him at john.baeseman@pb.com or call 920-623-9470. ■ www.DOCUMENTmedia.com june.08 document 29 http://www.DOCUMENTmedia.com
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