We are a mid size printing company that also offers fulfillment, composition design, technologies, etc.
I have been involved in the trade for over 25 years and have seen many of changes as the industry has evolved. For the most part I have been involved as a prepress operator but in recent years I have made the transition to a CSR position.
My heart has always been in the prepress field, I have always tried to stay on top of technology, PDF work flow, Color management, and have done some investigating into JDF.
Recently I have made it back into prepress as a prepress manager. We are a commercial printer that prints, UV coats, die cut, package and fulfill print projects, etc. We have an array of offset presses and we have two digital Indigo presses as well. So obviously we do an array of work.
Here comes the main point to my inquiry here. We have recently, in the past year adopted the POD concept, in which basically we are functioning as prepress and CSR's are together in groups. The CSR's then hand off work to other members in their given group.
I have only been with this company for 2 years now, but the one problem I see with this work flow here is that the prepress department was running still as an old school specialized shop. You had a guy mainly just doing color, another guy mainly just doing imposition, etc. My goal is to bring everyone up to speed to be well rounded enough to be able to function in the POD concept. When I was a prepress operator in the shop I was at prior, we were all well rounded enough to take a job from A to Z, so I get it.
The problem now comes in that the real big push by the company is now for me and the CSR manager to meld the two departments into one. They want the CSR's to learn prepress and the Prepress to be CSR's.
They want the CSR manager who has some basic understanding of prepress, to handle prepress issues with his assigned POD's and for me to handle prepress for my assigned POD's.
Right now I am doing both CSR duties while trying to manage the prepress department. I feel that we are way behind the times in automation, so that is also my goal as well. Our MIS system is not JDF compliant but there are rumors of looking at another MIS, but I also know this may or may not happen.
My main question is after describing our company is " How many other shops out there have done this work flow by integrating CSR's to be Prepress and Prepress to be CSR's. I know down the road with technology, it may come to this. But basically the training has to be done at the customer level. If the customers are not supplying the means to automate their work, this will never come down to this.
Also, is Offset printing going to die off that quick and be taken over by the digital presses that quick that there is that big of a push for this to happen? There is allot of work being done on the Indigo that just prints, cuts, and carton packs, out the door it goes, that I can see this as fesible.
But what about 6/C print jobs with metallics, that spot UV coats, die cuts, scores, stitches folds with cross overs, etc.
There is still enough of a craft to this job that if we pass off to a mere novis, we will have horrific results.
As I say, I have tried to keep up with the changes in the industry, but this is going way to fast, way too soon. Or is it me. Is this leading technology or bleeding technology. Just looking for some feed back here.
Do I fight the battle or go along for the ride.
Thanks in Advance for the help.
I have been involved in the trade for over 25 years and have seen many of changes as the industry has evolved. For the most part I have been involved as a prepress operator but in recent years I have made the transition to a CSR position.
My heart has always been in the prepress field, I have always tried to stay on top of technology, PDF work flow, Color management, and have done some investigating into JDF.
Recently I have made it back into prepress as a prepress manager. We are a commercial printer that prints, UV coats, die cut, package and fulfill print projects, etc. We have an array of offset presses and we have two digital Indigo presses as well. So obviously we do an array of work.
Here comes the main point to my inquiry here. We have recently, in the past year adopted the POD concept, in which basically we are functioning as prepress and CSR's are together in groups. The CSR's then hand off work to other members in their given group.
I have only been with this company for 2 years now, but the one problem I see with this work flow here is that the prepress department was running still as an old school specialized shop. You had a guy mainly just doing color, another guy mainly just doing imposition, etc. My goal is to bring everyone up to speed to be well rounded enough to be able to function in the POD concept. When I was a prepress operator in the shop I was at prior, we were all well rounded enough to take a job from A to Z, so I get it.
The problem now comes in that the real big push by the company is now for me and the CSR manager to meld the two departments into one. They want the CSR's to learn prepress and the Prepress to be CSR's.
They want the CSR manager who has some basic understanding of prepress, to handle prepress issues with his assigned POD's and for me to handle prepress for my assigned POD's.
Right now I am doing both CSR duties while trying to manage the prepress department. I feel that we are way behind the times in automation, so that is also my goal as well. Our MIS system is not JDF compliant but there are rumors of looking at another MIS, but I also know this may or may not happen.
My main question is after describing our company is " How many other shops out there have done this work flow by integrating CSR's to be Prepress and Prepress to be CSR's. I know down the road with technology, it may come to this. But basically the training has to be done at the customer level. If the customers are not supplying the means to automate their work, this will never come down to this.
Also, is Offset printing going to die off that quick and be taken over by the digital presses that quick that there is that big of a push for this to happen? There is allot of work being done on the Indigo that just prints, cuts, and carton packs, out the door it goes, that I can see this as fesible.
But what about 6/C print jobs with metallics, that spot UV coats, die cuts, scores, stitches folds with cross overs, etc.
There is still enough of a craft to this job that if we pass off to a mere novis, we will have horrific results.
As I say, I have tried to keep up with the changes in the industry, but this is going way to fast, way too soon. Or is it me. Is this leading technology or bleeding technology. Just looking for some feed back here.
Do I fight the battle or go along for the ride.
Thanks in Advance for the help.
