How is your company organized? Does it flow smoothly? Need help in mine.

[gordo]

mr gordo,
since u r talking about companies who are or want to go for iso certifications, and following the standards, i would suggest you to give us more light on industry where there are not more than 30 employees,
thanks.

No. I am not talking about companies who are or want to go for iso certifications, and following the standards. When I wrote ISO 9000/9001 I was using it as an example of how to bring an organizational structure to the print shop. As an example it just gives the business some ideas as to how it could be organized. The printshop that I used to work for went through the ISO 9000/9001 certification process. The second year they did not apply for certification. Instead they learned from the ISO 9000/9001 process and then adapted it for their shop. Certification was not important for them. What was important was getting the knowledge about how to organize. It does not matter whether you are a 10 person shop or a 500 person shop - you need to have a clearly defined, documented, and understood process in order to maximize production.

This is even more important in a small shop because most of the employees will be doing more than one job. For example, the owner may also be the sales manager and estimator. In the case of the original poster, the shop has some 30 employees. That typically means that there are perhaps 2 or 3 employees in prepress. With only 2 or 3 people in prepress you're not going to have a prepress manager. If you extend that percentage to the whole company you'll end up with 30% of the employees being "managers" of one to 3 employees. Which makes no organizational sense.

best, gordo

[Greg_Firestone]

@Gordo

I purposely said managers or 'go-to-people' for that very reason. At the end of the day "manager" is just a title on someone's business card. You need someone who can make decisions whether you have 2 people in your company or 200. Most people wear multiple hats, even in larger companies as the number of employees has dwindled.

I do agree about the importance of documented processes, but it will be difficult to document what to do in every situation. Most issues are somewhat simple, e.g. Where's the invoice? But others can be substantially more complex and deal with specific variables at hand e.g. delaying a job on press for another.

Greg

[gordo]

I do agree about the importance of documented processes, but it will be difficult to document what to do in every situation. Most issues are somewhat simple, e.g. Where's the invoice? But others can be substantially more complex and deal with specific variables at hand e.g. delaying a job on press for another.

Yes, so one of the issues that the OP and the owner need to work on are systemic issues that result from a lack of documented structure and informational issues requiring the input of one or more "managerial" type people to solve.
As an example, using the one's that you used "Where's the invoice?" to me is likely a systemic structure problem that should not require a "managerial" type to solve. It's akin to me asking my wife "where's the car keys?" If I employ the system of always hanging them up on a dedicated hallway hook - then the system solves/prevents the problem and I needn't ask my wife. I.e. "Where's the invoice?" becomes "Where the invoices are always kept."

On the other hand, the other example "delaying a job on press for another" probably requires the input of one or more "managerial" type people to solve. In this case, daily 20 minute morning meetings, or job scheduling boards, are tools that can be used to proactively deal with issues. I.e. at the meeting the group can look at the job board and discuss things like job priorities, where bottlenecks are occurring, etc. That might eliminate the last minute panic of an employee trying to track down an authority to make the decision.

Ideally one is striving for a situation where the company is set up so that when key people are not available to make decisions (they're on holiday, hit by a bus, or been laid off, etc) the company can still function. Maybe not optimally at first, but within a very short period - carry on.

Sometimes it takes an outside person to come into the shop and with fresh eyes and no personal stake in the existing structure, do an audit and make recommendations. Sometimes looking at other systems (like ISO 9000/1) can provide ideas.

best, gordo

[BeauchampT]

BeauchampT, could you provide an example of a decision that the operator can make, one the manager can make (but the operator can't), and one the owner can make (but not the manager)?

This is not the best example, but it'll work..

Operator is dealing with a problem ink. Does he struggle with it forever or not?

Operator decides..dip it out. Get the job done with another lot, etc.
But...he would never reject an ink shipment. The owner would make that call.

On the other hand (I work on a web press so this will fit), lets say some paper rolls are causing downtime (webouts, etc.). Our operators have full latitude to reject the rolls outright. Management would be the ones to decide how to proceed with the supplier, and the owner leaves it to the manager (a system was already setup).

Hope that gives you some idea of what we do.