What's new in the Print Shop

Written 10/24/08

Hello Everyone,

Again, another busy week with a lot of the finishing work being done by committee. You have all excelled this week in the production of the jobs and I want to let you know I appreciate the above and beyond each person is doing.

This week I want to focus on the quality control steps that we have in place and to ensure that were all doing them for each job. As we multitask, we might feel the urge to skip a step and this is where quality and collisions happen. We must with out fail follow our processes.

When we follow our workflow process, it is evident that they work for many reasons. I have put in place the QC Checklist for us to begin to use. It is my intention that we will receive written comments on these for me to review and to share our findings. It is through a simple process like this that will give us the tool to sharpen how we do things. I am not for redundant processes and if we can clean up a step, we will. I do not believe in change for change sake but I fully believe in the constant approach of quality improvement. We need to ensure that we are maintaining our operating norms and not making exceptions to the rule just to hurry a job along.

This week we had Mike Clausen and Paul Brodie from the Retirement Office visit the Print Shop to view their job in process. I want to thank Carla, Andy, Tim, and John directly for their help in showing and explaining the different quality control step we are using. It is imperative that we do this for our customers and as we move forward, I will be inviting more customers to visit us.

On Wednesday of this week, we held the Bidder’s Conference for the replacement of the equipment and workflow software we are currently using. It went very well and the next step is to answer the questions sent to us before the submission of the proposed bids.

I also want to highlight a job that we did this week; this job was for a customer that was trying to print, stuff, label, and mail 1000 pieces. They realized that they could not meet their timeframe and called to ask for assistance. Again, this customer heard that we now have an inserter. With our combined efforts of Tim receiving the job, Richard doing the printing, and Andy doing the inserting. We produced the job in less than a day. Again showing the incredible teamwork, we have in place.

My travels in the production world have shown me many things but the one thing that stands out here in the Print Shop is the combined ability and desire to work together to get things done. It will always be our cornerstone to stand by and to show that together we have what it takes to succeed.

Sincerely,

Kevin