Hi all! Recently, the responsibility of running an in-house print shop for a major corporation fell into my lap. Our current work flow is archaic and a mess to say the least. I receive work requests through two email accounts, interoffice mail and from our fax machine. I'm working on narrowing that down to just a single department email account which will help clean things up a bit. But, my question and concern is this. Does any one have any good ideas / solutions / systems for tracking a paper work flow through all areas of the print shop? I need an effective and somewhat simple method of tracking and displaying if the job is in the printing process (color/monochrome) or if it's in the finishing area or has all ready been shipped. We will be going to a total web-to-print solution in about 18 months but in the time being I need a solution for our paper work flow. Any advice or help is greatly appreciated. Regards, JW
jwood, I don't know if this will help you but, what we did while waiting for an actual workflow system. We created an Excel page on the in house system that all depts. leaders had access to, breaking it down from CSR data-entry, to Shipping (a tab for each dept.) when the job had been approved to move from stage to stage the dept. head or leadperson logged on entered the job# and title on the next stage tab where the job traveled to & the preceding stage just said "moved @9:20 a.m." or whatever applies. When job completed & shipped only the plant mgr. could remove it from all tabs. Then as we grew the project mgr. or csr's deleted it as the job billed, that was only after the job had been verified "invoiced". Each project mgr would submit their deletions to the plant mgr just so he could keep a handle on production. A little backwoodsy but it worked while the company prepared to spend a lot of money on an "out of the box" workflow system.
I have also used the backwoodsy Excel process, but however if you're looking at getting into something a little more sophisticated try EFI's Printsmith, I heard it has a good system for tracking the job from quoting to shipping. I do not have experience first hand with it. But maybe something to look into.
I have used Printsmith and it was great when used in the small shop setting but as we grew they couldn't grow with us at that time. It's my understanding that they have now expanded the capability of the system but each new module is expensive, I think that is the same case with any MIS workflow. It just depends on how much information you want the system to track for you.
jwood, Did you ever find what you were looking for. I am currently writing my own tracking software for my print company. If you are still needing to find a solution we should chat to see if my software will work for your application. Rkellogg
