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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...

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...

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...

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...

Six weeks ago, I started a thread here titled, "Lean Management for Lean Times?" That thread began after the credit markets had seized up and after the federal bailout of the financial markets had become law, but before the unemployment rate reached 6.5 percent, before the "Detroit 3" came hat...

Below is a portion of a post by Kevin Meyer that recently appeared at the Evolving Excellence blog. This post describes some of Mr. Meyer's impressions during a recent visit to a Toyota plant in Japan. I don't suggest that any printing company could completely copy what Meyer describes or that...

I suspect that many of you were at Graph Expo last week. Despite the economic turmoil we're experiencing, the show seemed to be fairly well attended. Lean was a significant topic of discussion at this year's Graph Expo. Several industry suppliers were positioning their products/technologies...

For the past several weeks, the economic news has been almost universally bad. Economic growth has declined significantly and appears to be poised to slow even more. Some prognosticators are saying that our economy is already in recession, and other say it soon will be. The financial crisis...

When I talk with managers about lean, one question that usually comes up in one form or another is, "What makes lean different from other business improvement methods?" Since the early 1980s, we've seen numerous business improvement techniques appear on the stage, including total quality...

A few days ago, we got into a brief discussion in another thread about the use of lean to reduce headcount. This issue is critical to success with lean, so I thought it deserved a separate thread. In the earlier thread, some members of the forum argued that if lean practices reduce waste and...

In a post that appeared yesterday at the Print CEO Blog, Adam Dewitz discussed a news story that appeared in the Small Business Times relating to declining employment numbers in Wisconsin's printing industry. According to the story, employment has declined about 16% since it peaked in 1999. In...

Last week over in the Prepress and Workflow forum, someone asked a question about how to prevent, reduce, or eliminate production mistakes. Another forum member responded by saying that the answer to this question begins with lean manufacturing and that Standard Work is an amazing tool. I...

Several days ago, a participant in one of the PrePress and Workflow forums here at PrintPlanet asked for advice on this idea: "My company would like to combine the prepress function with client services thus creating pods per client." This idea is very relevant to lean, so I wanted to restart...

The ultimate objective of lean is the avoidance or elimination of waste in all business operations. Lean defines waste as any activity or condition that consumes resources but creates no value for customers. If you're using a traditional print job costing system, you're probably not measuring...

One thing that characterizes virtually all lean organizations is their attention to detail. The managers and employees of a lean company usually understand the small details of their company's activities and processes. One reason for this level of understanding is standard work - sometimes...

The value of any management tool or system ultimately depends on whether it improves business performance. This is just as true for lean as for any other management methodology. Most of you reading this post will stay interested in our discussions here only if you believe that lean can improve...

When introducing the subject of "lean manufacturing," it can be difficult to know where to begin. But I can't think of a better place to start than with the topic of waste. Waste is the mortal enemy of lean. Lean experts often differ when it comes to the specific ways to implement and use...