Who do they report to?

[johnnyba]

Just curious as to what department your platemakers (CTP) report to. Recently, it was suggested to me that they should report and be part of the press department.

At least here, these people check impo's on screen, release jobs to the platesetter, inspect, stack and label jobs for their respective presses. Here they have always been part of the prepress department.

 

[oxburger]

We have prepress operators who prep the jobs to the point of pdfs. Then, our impose guy takes over and gets it ready to plate (creates template, imposes, checks trap, bleeds, color usage, etc.). Third, we have a guy who checks the inkjet that the impose guy creates by double checking bleeds, making sure corrections were made, pagination against the layout, etc. and then generates the plates. He takes them out to the pressroom and after the pressman gets the job up and running, the supervisor checks everything all over again and approves the job to print. The platemaker doesn't really report to anyone here, it's more or less a team effort.

 

[rath307]

At our shop we handle it a little different. Prepress desktop is responsible for creating there own impositions making a two sided spinjet proof ruled up which
is sent to the pressroom foreman and bindery supervisor's for there ok. When
approved a platemaker drops the plates and checks them, he reports to prepress.

 

[Internal_R&D_Analyst]

Doing the same things your prepress does ours report to prepress. These steps all happen prior to going on the press hence they fall into prepress. Now they do need to work closely with and get along with the press department and people. So if this is an attempt to make everyone work together as a team I don't think it matters if it reduces finger pointing when the rare situation occurs and things don't run as planned. (I know press departments never blame prepress/plating and prepress/platting never blame anything on the press.)

 

[plategirl]

That's a great question and one that confuses the heck outta probably a LOT of platemakers. Who DO we report to?? As a platemaker, I'm not always really sure who the he!! I report to, because I feel like I have to report to EVERYONE. Doesn't help that we have only one platemaker here at a time...can you even have a "department" made up of only one person??? I use Quark and send some of my own pages out, so sometimes I'm pre-press, but other times all I do is the impo from pdf's sent by others. Basically I report to the production manager for the entire pressroom. Everybody else take a ticket for the donkey ride.

Obviously there's a great deal of communication between me and the pressmen, but I don't feel quite right saying I'm from their department, as our jobs are completely different. I don't report to the composing department, although they do a lot of stuff that could be termed pre-press. I get most of my pdf's from the copy desk, but I don't report to them either.

No, seriously, I report to Bugs, unless he's on vacation and then I report to Homer Simpson. Doh! What was the question again!?

 

[DavidMa]

Our Prepress Dept consist of:
Color Retouchers
Scanner Operators
Mac/PC Esko Operators
Digital Platemakers
Digital Proofers

all report to the Prepress Manager or Prepress Supervisors (of which I'm one).

HTH,
David

 

[nhprinter]

Platemaking is included in our Prepress department. The same person that preflights, imposes and proofs the job is the same person that plates it. We not only do this to use fewer people, but because we feel that the more familiar a person is with the job, the more likely he or she will catch a mistake before it gets down to the pressroom.

Years ago when we stripped with film we had a guy that just made plates. We could have an entire page on backward and he wouldn't catch it because he wasn't familiar with the job. ( "I just make plates").

I like hearing how other shops do things though. Since I've been working here 23 years I don't see too many other operations. I just wish there was some way to know what size all your shops are. We're just a 20 person (total company) operation. I'm sure we do things a lot different because of our size.



Dave

 

[DavidMa]

Back in the day, we had about 450 employees in the whole plant, 3 shifts.
Now we are down to about 300 in the plant, running 2 shifts.

When I first started here, we had 29 table strippers, plus 3 camera ops, 12 platemakers, 4 proofers, 4 contact ops, 3 shifts, 7 days a week.

The prepress dept has now about 16, total.

 

[johnnyba]

Thanks for the feedback!

Thanks for the feedback!

Thank you to all who answered, I thought as much. I agree that plate is before press therefore prepress is who they should report to and as automated as the process is, the plate person is still in closer contact with the prepress department than the press department.

Thank again,
John

 

[motormount]

I'm on a 15 employees-(owners included) shop.
I check the pdf's,proof them,impose them,print and check mockups for pagination and make the plates.
I'd really like to work in a place like oburger's -what can possibly go wrong in a place like that-but on the other hand it is very boring to do the same thing again and again!

 

[leetaylor]

When I first started here, we had 29 table strippers, plus 3 camera ops, 12 platemakers, 4 proofers, 4 contact ops, 3 shifts, 7 days a week.

...................and we all made good money!

If only we realised then how lucky we were!!

 

[plategirl]

As of 5 hours ago i report to the bucket brigade. The general manager put a pressman in my job...after he is trained. The claim is, they want somebody who knows press and prepress. But they made no offer to train me on the press, which I would have (and been good at)...they offered only to train the one, the man, for my job. And then told me I was "lucky" to even be offered the job as a JANITOR. YUP--As of Feb, I will be the company JANITOR. THAT'S how much repect they have for the prepress people here, or women as a whole... BUT when the man needs a break, well who they gonna call...me or the other former prespress woman in the department, also relegated to a menial and humilating non-professional position. By the way the pressman getting my job is the same one me and a former female prepress worker filed NUMEROUS sexual harrassment complaints on. And been written up for poor quality work. And the same one who came up with the principle of magical jumping pdf files, discuseed here on PrintPlanet. My company is run by PIGS. By the way another excuse for cutting expenses was that quality has been bed, and it has--enough to cost us 3 commercial jobs----BECAUSE THE PRESSMEN COME IN DRUNK, HIGH, OR BOTH. But it's MY job that's cut, and replaced with...the guys from the same department who are behind THE reason for the bad quality and loss of company income!!!????!!!!!!!! See ya. If this is printing I must be in hell.

 

[emanprinting]

Just curious as to what department your platemakers (CTP) report to. Recently, it was suggested to me that they should report and be part of the press department.

At least here, these people check impo's on screen, release jobs to the platesetter, inspect, stack and label jobs for their respective presses. Here they have always been part of the prepress department.

Part of Dopaco's success in implementing its digital platemaking and workflow is the team behind its flexo prepress department. there are complete information and suggestion about what department your platemakers (CTP) report to.

Dopaco Invests in CTP Capability with Esko-Graphics and DuPont Cyrel Technologies

 

[Kristian]

We are quite a small department so all we consist of is Pre-Press Operators. Each operator will do origination, imposing and platemaking for litho and flexo.

We all check each others work before anything leave the room. The 3 operators report to the pre-press manager (me).

Since CTP we've always considered platemaking to be part of prepress rather than the press room.