Workflow efficiencies: a route to lower costs?

At a time of economic downturn, publishing along with other industries will be looking to see where new efficiencies and savings can be found.

For a number of years, publishers have been able to achieve cost savings through reductions in price from printers or by negotiating advantageous paper deals; this now seems to be reaching a natural end and new ways to reduce costs are being sought.

What may still offer opportunities for saving is publishers’ internal production workflows and practices. Where are time and cost savings to be found? The following are some ideas that could merit consideration.

Editorial Page Production

An area of continuing debate in publishing is editorial page production, for while many publishers have successfully moved away from using outside reprographic services and are now producing print ready files internally, not all publishers have made this step. This could be the time to re-visit the opportunities for taking on more of the page production tasks and reducing spend on outside resources.

Where publishers have internalised page production, this has meant taking on not only added responsibilities but in some cases people and technology as well. It has also meant that designers can no longer rely on the repro house to catch and correct problems with page files and as printers (in an effort to become more efficient) are using more and more automated systems (and struggle to justify having resources to correct poorly supplied material), the publisher needs to take full responsibility for the production of good page files.

So, while taking repro in-house may deliver savings, there are still areas where further efficiencies can be found. The recent PPA Printers Survey 2008 revealed that there was still a high percentage of bad files and out-of-tolerance proofs being delivered to printers. Bad files cost either in monetary terms or in time and need to be fixed by someone in the production chain; the question is how many publishers actually know how many of the files and proofs they send to the printer are good or bad and is it causing errors, rework and a cost to the business.

Those who produce good page files are usually the publishers who not only put in the technology but also invest in training for the designers and creative. They are the ones who reap the rewards of efficient and trouble free production, so education is an important ingredient for success.

The message with page production is, if you are using outside resources, are you getting value for money, or would bringing the operation in-house bring benefits. And, if you are using external repro, are you using the production tools generally available (usually internet based) to share the page production processes and bring down page costs.

Advert handling

Advert handling is an area where many publishers still use relatively high numbers of people and struggle to automate and streamline processes, due to its sometimes diverse nature and dissipated production. How a publishing operation books and handles advertising can impact on other areas of production as, in many cases, the advert booking systems and the editorial systems are not fully integrated leading to additional manual intervention and, on occasion, errors and confusion over booking pages.

Many people are looking for ways to streamline the submission, checking and delivery of advertising and solutions do exist for automated copy chasing, audit trails, pre-flighting and automatic reporting back to the advert supplier.

The electronic job ticket and JDF (more on JDF below) have been with us for many years but have not really yet made the impact many predicted. This could be about to change, so the question is, can we utilise ways of tagging incoming adverts to automate the pre-flight checking and booking reporting procedures all the way through to delivery to the printer.

It is well worth taking the time for a fresh look at what is available out there.

In common with other industries, automation is the key to saving costs, errors and time and publishing is not immune from the need to build processes which eliminate unnecessary manual intervention.

A further finding of the 2008 PPA Printers Survey was that, after years of promise and not a lot of action, JDF (Job Description Format) is beginning to be used by printers to automate some of their internal process such as linking pre-press, MIS and press systems.

For those not familiar with JDF, JDF is a special form of the Extensible Markup Language (XML), a non proprietary information carrier that can link and refer files to multiple production devices.

Using JDF, you can describe the route of a printed job, as well as defining each process step required. JDF is a smart, self-directed electronic job jacket that holds not only the job content, but also instructions to interact with other JDF-enabled devices, automatically routing the job through each workflow step, from creation to final print production.

The question for publishers is, can JDF deliver benefits to their business; are there opportunities to eliminate re-keying of information; of improving tracking of products and pages and streamlining. The-end-to-end production process.

Businesses rely more and more on not just computerised systems but on the integration of internal ad sales, production and business systems. But now there needs to be integration with external advert supplier systems and to external printers’ systems to complete the chain.

Integrating print & web production

Many publishers now produce content for media other than print and in many cases there are separate teams of people producing one version of a magazine for the internet and another for print. It would seem inevitable that, in the future, these teams need to be merged for efficiency and to simplify the workflow.

One complicating factor in bringing diverse media workflows together is that print is unique in needing to have the page data supplied in CMYK form, while all other media use RGB or a derivative.

It has long been custom and practice for publishers to supply printers with page files which are already converted to CMYK, but need this always be the case?

New standards such as PDF-X 4 allow for the use of non CMYK colours in files and the latest rip technologies, such as the Adobe Print Engine (or equivalent), allow what is termed "late binding" workflows, where the publisher could supply non CMYK page data to the printer. It would then be the printer who undertook the conversion to CMYK (as appropriate for the press, ink and paper to be used) to produce the final printed product.

While late binding workflows are yet to be proven in practice, in theory they can open opportunities for publishers to rationalise the number of workflows they need to support and it could even simplify the supply of advertising material, which could help print compete with other media for revenue.

A linked area of debate is around what format should images be held in publishers’ image libraries. Some hold both a CMYK version and an RGB version, but in the late binding workflow, such dilemmas become redundant.

This is an area which deserves careful research and consideration as it will be a sea change in the traditional methods of supplying data and begs questions not only of the technology but of where the responsibility for good and accurate colour will lie. The existing clear demarcation lines between publisher and printer could well disappear in this scenario.

The Digital Ad Lab (www.digitaladlab.co.uk - an independent and open forum for all concerned with digital workflows) is conducting a trial of a late binding workflow all the way from design to print and will compare the results against a conventional workflow. The results will be of great interest to publishers.

Monitor Proofing

Recent developments in monitor proofing have now made colour accurate and reliable assessment of pages and images a realistic option for publishers.

Using monitors can potentially reduce or eliminate hard copy proofing from the workflow and save the associated costs.

There are now a number of monitors on the market which can display the full CMYK printing gamut and at a price which is affordable.

At a time when all business are looking for ways to reduce their carbon footprint, colour accurate monitor proofing can eliminate the need for couriers delivering hard copy proofs and reduce / eliminate the paper usage and cost of hard copy proofing during the creative process.

While many of the UK’s printers are yet to install monitors on their presses, there are major publishers who are committed to this route. It seems inevitable that, in a world where digital page files can be transmitted hundreds of miles in seconds, sending a courier on a motorbike tearing up the motorway with a bag full of paper proofs may not be with us for too much longer.

Publishers considering this route would be well advised to investigate not only the monitor technology itself but the ambient lighting conditions needed to deliver consistent viewing of colour.

It is worthwhile looking at what monitor proofing can do for a business; it may not be suitable for all products but for some it can deliver significant savings.

Offset printing in the UK has undertaken a quiet revolution over the past three or four years with the adoption of ISO 12647-2 as the printing standard / target, the use of ECI (European Colour Initiative ) profiles and of FOGRA certified proofing (ISO 12647-7) taking over from the ubiquitous glossy digital cromalin proof and the secret black arts of the repro house and printer.

Many publishers who are working with the new standards are getting the benefits of a predictable and measurable process and a simplified workflow and, through the adoption of the specifications by their advertisers are enjoying a closer proof to print match, reducing any disappointments or claims over poor colour.

Anyone who is not on board with these developments would be well advised to investigate the benefits of working (with your printer) to appropriate international standards.

There are many beguiling workflow options open to publishers either to use internally or supplied through an outside resource via the internet - services such as:

Flat-planning and imposition, automated planning of classified advertising material, turning fractional pages into complete pages, systems that track the progress of pages and their components from birth to final delivery to the printer, online and web based pre-flighting, colour conversion, RSS (Really Simple Syndication) and remote PDF creation to name a few.

It seems there is a solution for most requirements. It is a question of finding what is going to work for your business, not just for today but for the future path you choose to follow. Take a fresh look at your internal workflows, you may be surprised what you find!