There is a lot behind the question “Do you know your print shop.” Every owner and production manager knows how the place functions, but that is not the question. Knowing your print shop involves understanding the big processes, but also the small processes. Let’s start the journey.

The Walk the Line series opened with a simple idea: You don’t know what you don’t know. For most shops, strategies, roadmaps, and near-term tactics tend to focus on the things you can see such as:

• How does work arrive in the shop?
• Who does the interaction with clients?
• When do the prepress people get involved?
• Who is responsible for color management?
• What happens if there is a problem with the print?
• Where is print work staged for finishing?
• What happens if there is a problem with the finishing?
• Where is finished work staged for mailing or delivery?
• Where does kitting and fulfillment happen?
• When is a job invoiced?

There are also less obvious, virtually invisible, touchpoints that affect delivery. They may impact every process and if you don’t know about them you can’t optimize them.

What Should You Know?

Taking a high-level view of your workflow, most shops fall into one of two camps. They are either leveraging a PrintMIS as part of a workflow that is architected or there is a series of discrete processes that surround specific activities. In both cases there are team members you turn to for information about work as it moves through the shop. There are official and unofficial experts who solve problems daily. They are busy people. This is where a bit of technology can help you build the prevailing understanding of what happens in your shop each day without it becoming an overwhelming task.

Start by identifying who understands how work moves through your shop. The number of people will vary based on how you divide activities. Think about who knows the processes, not just who has the job title. Take a few jobs that are typical for your shop and make a rough list of how you think those jobs move through your workflow. At the end of this step, you have identified subject matter experts and a framework.

Here is where the technology comes in. Many online conference call tools now have great AI notetaking and transcription tools. Take Zoom as an example. It has several options for AI-enabled transcription tools, including READ.AI, AI Notetaker by Fathom, and Colibri.AI. Add one of these apps to your Zoom account and get everyone together on a Zoom call. The goal is to talk through each of the workflows for the target jobs you identified. Your starting point is what you think happens.

Finding How Your Work Flows

That rough list you made is likely to be directionally correct, but missing some loops and turns. Have the team at the table walk through what they do. You will need a facilitator to manage the process, so consider appointing the person most likely to be able to keep everyone on track. There may be some rabbit holes to dive into along the way, and that is ok as long as they add value to understanding what happens to a job as it moves from station to station and department to department. There is a critical rule in Improv Sketch Comedy that requires your improv partner to respond and build using the “Yes, and…” technique. It’s a great way to move your meeting along.

Start with the first person to touch a job. Have them describe what they do. Ask them to keep it short but keep nudging by asking them what comes next. When they get to the point of handing it off to the next person, move on. Remember, the notetaker is capturing everything so you will have something to review.

You might be able to do this in a single meeting, but usually it’s a series of information capture events so that the primary types of work and their respective workflows are captured. Once you have completed the meetings, pull the transcripts together. This is where there is some grunt work.

Create a single document for each type of product or service and give it a quick spellcheck. It doesn’t need to be a polished document, but that check will capture the things that make the transcript hard to read (like ah, um, you know, and other verbal tics.)

Now give the transcript to the participants and ask them to have their teams review it to add in anything missing. Editing is much faster than writing from a blank sheet. Once everyone has had their say, bring the documents back to the original group.

Often, the results expose the loops, backtracks, stalls, and turns jobs take that may not have been obvious. These are the processes you have today, but the work is not done yet. Come back next time to do some workflow sleuthing!