Prepress outsourcing to india

[Hairfarm]

Advice regarding India outsourcing:

The medium-sized publishing company (Action Pursuit Group) that I work for has recently been sold to investors that are intent on moving some of our jobs to India. They said so in the introductory company-wide meeting we had with them today.

Within our company of 120 employess, we have our own in-house Art and Prepress departments. I manage the Prepress department. We have roughly 20 magazine titles (each title is about 120 pages average). All titles are processed through my 4 man prepress department. We use EFI/Bestcolor and three Epson 7800 proofers. We create Distilled postscript from QX 7. We distill to PDFX/1a from Acrobat Distiller.

The new investors haven't specifically said they were going to outsource Prepress or Art...yet. But I'm looking for some good reasons to defend my department of four employees in case the new owners are considering outsourcing Prepress.

Can Prepress be effectively outsourced? I have not heard too much on this subject to be honest.

Can some of you on this forum please list some reasons why prepress cannot (or shouldn't) be moved to India. I'm trying to defend my department in case the put their cross hairs onto me. I want to make a good case to keep my department in the U.S.

stressed out,

Hairfarm

 

[Tech]

Unfortunately, outsourcing jobs oversea is always about saving money/reduce cost of operation. I don't see how you can defend yourself/dept if higher ups want to cut back. That said, I would suggest making a list of tasks that your dept performs daily that might be difficult to maintain if language barrier becomes an issue.

 

[Vee]

The advantage to keeping it in-house is upper management has complete control in-house. Upper management can manage you and your staff directly, the way THEY want to, when THEY want to. THEY don't have to manage another relationship (not to mention a language barrier / time difference), only their employees. Upper management may gain savings in the total dollars spent, but may also sacrifice quality in the long run and no customer will stand for that. Propose the value of keeping it in-house w/ the control it gives them, and the quality you will provide in return. As well as the delivery performance, and ease of doing business you can offer internally. Hope this helps.

 

[Mark]

List the mag titles so we can stop our subscriptions if they move to india!

 

[dcraig2122]

Although the national language of India is english, no one there speaks it as a first language. They all speak something else first, then learn english in school. There are something like five distinct languages with about a thousand different dialects (go figure; a billion people). I don't know about you guys, but it's easy for me to spot something written in english by a non-native speaker.

 

[RRudeski]

Emphasize Error Correction and Turn Around Times

Emphasize Error Correction and Turn Around Times

Determine how much time will be added to total production times due to changes, errors, approval cycles, etc by having to deal with an outsourced prepress department. Then multiply that by the average yearly numbers of each type of delay, and add it all up. Multiply that number by the hourly cost of prepress. That number will be how much they'll have to save by outsourcing just to break even.

Add to that the increased frustration on the part of your customers and your press and bindery folks, and it shouldn't be too difficult to show it's not as cost saving as it might appear at first.

Rob

 

[Gerhard]

Prepress outsourcing to india

Hi,
yes indeed it is possible to outsourcing the Prepress. Hey, we live in an international world! And there is Internet and FTP. So what's the problem?
The Indian workers own a fraction of your salary and they are used to work quite hard. A problem in India might be the color management. But this can be solved using the right ICC profiles.
I know European Publishers having the Prepress in Europe but they print in Singapore.
At the end it's just a question of money.

 

[NYC Color Dude]

Prepress outsourcing to India and China and other countries is already taking place by all the "BIG" Printers/Prepress companies in the states. Prepress pricing has been driven to such low figures that it is becoming the only option if you want to stay competitive and profitable. The best advice for you, is not to fight it, see how you can help create a plan that will welcome the outsourcing. Face it, if Upper Management has its mind set, you have very little choice. Your resistance will only drive you closer to unemployment. Offer to search out potential outsourcing vendors, create a "color/retouch" test for these vendors, etc.
I remember years ago, when table stripping was replaced by higher-end assembly machines and eventually Macs using Quark. There were plenty of Strippers that had great craft and experience, and they would all say, that it would never change, that the clients would never allow it to happen etc. How many table strippers do you employ today?
My point is be open to change dont resist it, because if you do, this filed will speed right past you!

 

[J]

You might also try and rent the wonderful movie "Outsourced" for an interesting perspective on the subject:

Outsourced (2006)

J

 

[Tenacious P]

Greetings Hairfarm,

Well, my bias is hard to disguise, as I'm hitched to a pre-press guru.

Granted it is a given that our "global economy" takes on new meaning when it
applies to the paycheck that keeps the wolf from the door.
It's a sticky predicament, as we'd like to applaud a better standard of living for everyone.

My question is:

When outsourcing prevails, with the underlying motivation being cost cutting, are
the end consumers seeing that equation?
Will the magazines that your company produces drop in newstand and subscription rates?

Ack, I miss my rubylith and t-square.

Peace,
Tenacious P

 

[Hairfarm]

Thanks...

Thanks...

Great input from everyone.

I've written down some of the suggestions many of you have offered in this thread. It's important to keep in mind that I'm not losing my job because I'm not keeping up with technology, but because my job is being shipped over seas. No amount of skill or proficiency is going to prevent that. I have been in prepress for 25 years now, and have a wide understanding of the field. But when it comes down to dollars and cents, there's no fighting the bottom line.

Yesterday, I've decided that I'm going into another profession, and that I'm not going to worry about losing my job to India. In fact, I've decided to study to get a county job at the Orange County Water District. I have a friend there who can hook me up. I don't feel like going "down with the ship".

So long prepress, hello OC Water District! The only constant is change, right?



thanks again for all the great feedback,

Hairfarm

 

[LoweringTheBar]

I hope you like Curry, because it's just a matter of time until they figure out how to outsource water. hehe

I think it's great that you're getting out of prepress. It's a doomed industry. Speaking of doom, I've always thought a Funeral Director would be a good career choice for most prepress operators because we're so used to pain, suffering and loss. Best of luck!

 

[Vee]

Awesome! I'm feeling the positive energy.......

 

[Hairfarm]

Doom...

Doom...

Quote: "Speaking of doom, I've always thought a Funeral Director would be a good career choice for most prepress operators because we're so used to pain, suffering and loss."

Too funny!

 

[pcmodem]

Something else to consider about outsourcing PrePress. The transfer time of large files across the internet can be great. How long will it take to transfer the Gigabytes of files to India. If they want the files transferred faster they would have to spend more money on a faster Internet connection. In the long run it would be best to keep the jobs here because of time wasted transferring files and lost production time.

 

[aprilmarie]

lost mine

lost mine

the newspaper i worked for sent the entire art & prepress area to India.
90 of us lost jobs. I refuse to even look at the newspaper. Those local advertisers are getting ads from India.
Its ridiculous, but business savvy i understand. The whole country is owned by Walmart (China)
Don't shop there either.

 

[offsetguy]

Just a thought

Just a thought

The days of USA loyalty and jobs are over. The big push into Digital printing and Green printing have laid waste to many jobs in the USA. Now I see it has hit the pre press people also.
You drive to work in your Honda Accord, built in the USA money goes to Japan, stop by a Dunkin Donuts for coffee, owned by Indians, Fill up with gas at Exxon, station owned by Indians. With your clothes bought at Wal-Mart made in China. Your grass is being cut by Mexicans and the Muslims want a holiday for Ramadan and Eid al-Adha so you must find a baby sitter to watch your kids while you earn a living.

You get to work and fire up the MAC, built in China and output to a CTP or DI Press built in Japan. Your MAC has a glitch so you call tech support and get India and you cannot understand the words he speaks.
Your pressman fires the press up with ink made in Japan ready to print on paper from China on a press built in Japan from a job you received on a web2print site with software from India.
IMHO the global economy is not working. It seems not to benefit the USA but others.
Thoughts?
OG

 

[gordo]

The days of USA loyalty and jobs are over. [SNIP]
IMHO the global economy is not working. It seems not to benefit the USA but others.
Thoughts?
OG

So, a global economy only works if it benefits the USA?
No one forces you to buy at Walmart, drive a Honda, eat at Dunkin Dounuts, or whatever. You make your choices. You vote with your dollars.
"'flag-waving' has become a synonym for the type of patriotism that Samuel Johnson defined as "the last resort of a scoundrel" and that Ambrose Bierce maintained was a jingoist's first resort"

gordo (not affiliated with Kodak)

 

[meddington]

So, a global economy only works if it benefits the USA?
No one forces you to buy at Walmart, drive a Honda, eat at Dunkin Dounuts, or whatever. You make your choices. You vote with your dollars.
"'flag-waving' has become a synonym for the type of patriotism that Samuel Johnson defined as "the last resort of a scoundrel" and that Ambrose Bierce maintained was a jingoist's first resort"

gordo (not affiliated with Kodak)

Well said gordo...hey wait a minute...you're Canadian aren't you?

I frankly don't feel that the "love it or leave it "attitude has been all that helpful...serving more to maintain the status quo while attempting to silence legitimate criticism. "Buy American" only benefits us when there is a superior product or service (at a competetive price...or available at all) to be had.

 

[rbailleu]

there is no/ very little labor in a skid of paper. how can I get paper cheaper from china than wisconsin. or france for that matter. luckily you can't ship a news paper from china, but why should we make anything else in the USA