Measure PrePress improvement and productivity

[shamelna]

As we all know that what can not be measured, can not be improved. How can I measure the productivity/efficiency of the prepress department. The variation of difficulties of designs makes it meaningless to set an average as a benchmark.

So how can we measure the efficiency of people working at prepress.


Thank you

 

[Deleted member 16349]

As we all know that what can not be measured, can not be improved. How can I measure the productivity/efficiency of the prepress department. The variation of difficulties of designs makes it meaningless to set an average as a benchmark.

So how can we measure the efficiency of people working at prepress.


Thank you

Shamelna, I keep hearing this phrase and it is totally wrong. Of course improvements can be made without measurement. The whole of history of mankind has shown improvements in every area without measurements. Even the last twenty years of prepress has had tremendous improvements without a lot of measurements.

Improvements come from seeing a problem and thinking of a better way to do it. Sorry but I just wanted to get the point over that finding problems is the path to improvements. Measurements help but do nothing on their own.

But of course I kind of know what you mean. You want some kind of measurements that will help show you where your problems are or whether your improvements have actually helped. With a process like prepress where there are seemingly many variations in activity it might seem difficult to place a number to it if you are looking at all the details.

I would suggest that you do not worry about the internal variations in activity but just work with some kind of simple metric and follow that. As a suggestion, maybe the: total prepress manhours/total plates produced. Do it for a period of a week. If you find the variation in activities will affect the weekly period, then change the period to a month. Or you might try total prepress expenses/total plates produced. It does not matter that much what exactly you choose as long as there is a reasonable relationship.

I would think that other forum members in the prepress area will be able to provide much better numbers to track that process. Good luck.

 

[seejay]

we track:
no plates/day & no plates/week - both measured against total hours worked.
rework as a % of total plates
we then break the rework down into categories i.e. press problems, bindery problems, imposition errors, RIP errors, DTP errors, etc. (This strips out factors that prepress are not in control of so giving a true picture of prepress quality)
pages processed per month
measure completed jobs against schedule

Once you have this info, after a period of time you can focus where your bottlenecks and issues are - then focus improvements in these areas - continue measuring to map progress on improvement.

 

[srawding]

"just work with some kind of simple metric and follow that.

The keep it simple suggestion is a good one. Try tracking catches and errors. A catch is anything that if ignored would have caused loss of material. Ex. Supplied PDf without bleed. Operators will tell you what they caught. Errors are wasted material. Ex. Proof out of calibration. Errors will find you! Count each page, each proof, each plate made, each is a touch point and equals one unit. Find the percent of catches or errors. You will find root causes of errors. You will encourage operators to "catch" instead of nagging them to "avoid errors".

 

[unoprint1]

I try to observe employees at work and make suggestions as to how to improve workflow. If it is a widespread problem, I put up a notice. Many small improvements across the entire operation make a big difference in productivity.