Workflow: A Soft Way to Win Hard Results

By all accounts, printing managers must feel they're in a queer position right now. They're confused by hype about the real importance and projected acceptance of JDF and computer-integrated manufacturing, but they recognize the inevitable necessity of the industry's final shift from craft-based manufacturing to a versatile system of integrated processes that can interactively create products and services, all tied together in a numeric-based network.

In this coming model, it should be clear, that workflow is absolutely essential, with software its very DNA, so to speak. But the concept of workflow continues to be vague and a little difficult for printing managers to understand, accept and adopt. Why? Because to most printers, workflow is not yet a product, not a piece of hardware that has dimensions, performance specifications, production capabilities and capacities, and, most important of all, a projectable return on investment.

The thing is, most printers are quite adept at sizing up production equipment, laying it out for maximum efficiency, developing operator skills, then selling the resulting product or process at a fair return. But workflow consists mainly of software, and printers are not yet accustomed to relying on computer programs rather than production hardware to create salable, buyer-pleasing results.

In fact, judging from a sampling of recent conversations, more than a few printers apparently are still wrestling with what to make of workflow and how to categorize it; typical queries, from "It's prepress, right?" to "How hard can connectivity be?" and "Why do I need another press management system?" indicate their lack of understanding. In the ideal workflow, which operates far beyond prepress and press control, interactivity trumps connectivity.

Adopting a numeric-based workflow makes perfect sense for printers since everything else is going in the digital direction, from origination of documents to communications with customers to process controls, even to production and business information about the work performed.

Digital automation continues to be a necessity because it permits printers to do more with less, even in a field that continues to be laden with overcapacity despite severe shrinkage in the number of printing establishments. By improving time management for printers, automation offers the promise of real benefits, from higher productivity and lower overhead to an extension of capabilities, ease of communications, and reports for managers and customers.

These many gains are what drive the quest for systems compliance to industry standards and open-architecture design.

The issue of workflow is not a minor matter today, contend many industry observers and vendors, some of whom already are promoting the need for hybrid workflows to handle a wider range of work. For a number of reasons, production technology has become less important to printers today than it once was.

Now it looks like the focus is on integrated systems, services and differentiating capabilities, topped, of course, by workflow—simple as that, both because software can provide big benefits to printers and because it meets the business needs of their customers.

Printing managers, whatever their long-developed nature, must get their minds around the value of software and accept that, when it comes to hardware and software, it's not an either/or question but a complementary issue filled with opportunity.

Readers may have an inkling of changes coming to this magazine. With November we welcomed new editorial staffers Bill Esler, Editor in Chief, and Mark Vruno, Senior Editor. Also, Graphic Arts Monthly has returned to its home base in Chicago, after 25 years in New York. (You may continue to reach me there.) And as this movement suggests, something special will appear in these pages next month.

rynostroza@reedbusiness.com