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I've uploaded a short white paper to Scribd.com that outlines the business case for online collateral management systems powered by web-to-print technologies. This white paper briefly explains how marketing collateral management systems work and discusses some of the benefits they provide. The...

I thought I would add a little more to the historical perspective offered by Hal Heindel. Several years ago, I was able to acquire two books by Spencer A. Tucker. I had been told that Tucker was, in many ways, the "father" of budgeted hourly rates. The first book was Cost-Estimating and...

pcmodem, I agree with Ritter's description of the lean approach. The objective is to continually reduce the amount of waste. There is no magic percentage that means you are now lean. I do believe that the first step is to accurately measure the amount of waste that your current processes are...

Salim, Welcome to PrintPlanet! As you said, a performance measurement system must be tailored to fit the needs of the individual company. However, in general, your performance measurement system should be derived from your business strategy, and it should be designed to measure how well your...

Thanks to everyone who has contributed to this discussion. My view is that, in general, printing company leaders and managers tend to equate process improvement with technology. Therefore, they tend to believe that significant improvements in efficiency or productivity will require the...

tdaisy, The PIA Continuous Improvement Conference is a really good event. I've presented at past conferences, but I was unable to attend this year. From your post, I'm assuming that you did attend this year. If so, could you estimate the attendance? Thanks.

Ritter - I don't really disagree with your view about the fear of emerging technologies, but I think it's important to make the point that technology is not always required to make significant improvements to business processes. In fact, many lean gurus argue that it is critical to understand...

For the past several months, the Lean Manufacturing forum has been relatively quiet. There are, of course, several possible explanations for this inactivity. Perhaps the recession has caused many printers to shift into "survival" mode and perceive that there are more urgent issues than process...

Bill Waddell, a well-known lean consultant and one of the principal authors at the Evolving Excellence lean blog, recently wrote a paper titled "The Hollow American Economy." This paper deals with the loss of manufacturing jobs in the US, and the implications of that loss. Waddell believes...

Welcome to the Lean Manufacturing forum and good luck with your lean program! Please feel free to ask any questions that may help you get started.

AmericanPrinter.com recently reported that Business Stationery, LLC had completed a Lean Kaizen event in March of this year. Business Stationery prints business cards, letterhead, envelopes, postcards, sell sheets, brochures, and other products. The Lean Kaizen event is part of a company wide...

Hello Everyone, One of my clients has asked me to make some recommendations regarding a new MIS. Since I know that the PrintPlanet forums are a great source of information, I am asking you to share some of your thoughts and ideas. I am not at liberty to disclose a great deal of information...

Last September, as the economic news was becoming very negative, I started a thread here titled, "Lean and Job Security." My main point there was that the surest way to kill a lean initiative is to use the improvements brought about by lean as the justification for eliminating jobs. Much has...

Mark, I completely agree with your view that lean can be "badly applied." An old adage says, "What is more dangerous than an untrained soldier with an unloaded weapon? An untrained soldier with a loaded weapon." Lean tools and techniques, such as 5S, quick changeover, and JIT, can be...

Over the past few weeks, one question that has received a great deal of attention in lean discussion forums such as this one is: Can lean improve sales? Clearly, the interest in this issue has been driven by the current global recession. In most cases, the real thrust of the question is...

beermonster, I'm not sure that I understand the point of your post. If you're saying that lean activities somehow undermine sales, then I would disagree. If you're saying that lean practices don't directly produce higher sales, then I can agree with you. Some people define "lean" so broadly...

Mr. White, I agree completely with mattf that 5S is the way to begin your lean efforts in prepress. I would suggest that you then begin to define standard work procedures for repetitive prepress processes such as preflighting, checking proofs, etc. I described standard work in an earlier...

You should also probably take a look at HP Dialogue (Hewlett Packard acquired the Dialogue product from Extream Software) and the product offered by Document Sciences. Both of these are "industrial strength" VDP applications, and I believe that both have a significant number of financial...

Hal, Great post! There are several serious problems with estimating and pricing systems that are based on traditional BHR's, and you touched on some of those problems. I wholeheartedly agree that value-based pricing is the best pricing model, and value-based pricing becomes even more...

If you want to get a more accurate view of job costs and job profitability, then you should not include most "overhead" expenses in your hourly cost rates for individual cost centers. When you include overhead expenses in base hourly cost rates, you are essentially assigning costs to jobs that...