Sorting & Prioritizing Jobs

[Tracy]

 :laugh: Only thing I won't do is shrink wrap and they know it!!
the smell is toxic

[Ear]

No burnt plastic fumes, Tracy?

You'd really hate it in our pressroom when they run 2 webs of gloss, with heat, on the news web. The incinerator can't quite handle the volume from 2 ovens, so it spills into the building. Smells like someone is burning a Lego™ slash-pile. 

[Tracy]

ewww! Nope couldn't work there
maybe in the office with you, and you could handle all the shop stuff :laugh:

[Joe]

Agree with Slappy. You're too good at too many things. For instance, I am really quick and safe at changing the 64" guillotine cutter blade. So guess who gets to change the blade every couple weeks. Lesson learned.

As far as anyone knows, I'm not very good at much else. I really suck at the folder and stitcher.

My stock answer to any any press or bindery questions is 'I don't know'. I don't do either. Or shipping, delivery, or receptionist. Or cutting.

[Ear]

The cutter thing started when I was younger and knew everything. Now I'm older and don't know anything. :smiley:

[Joe]

The cutter thing started when I was younger and knew everything. Now I'm older and don't know anything. :smiley:

The older I get the less I want to know.

[Ear]

We get better at trivia and scrabble, worse at everything else.

[Farabomb]

I was always good at jeopardy.

The boss prides himself at being able to do everything. Overall, he mostly can, eventually. One of the exceptions is anything computer related. That's automatically me. It's now to the point of he won't even open an attachment (unless it's fucking virus) or put a disk into his computer. It's good to be able to help out but his problem is he thinks he's the best at everything and he'll let you know. One of his best lines was "I'm 20% better than most people at everything". If you have to make that statement, then you're not.

[Nate]

Well I was hoping to gather some evidence that this is not the way things are supposed to be done but it sounds like my situation is sadly rather typical.

My first attempt to improve things was to replace our singular incoming job bin with 6 different bins to help organize jobs by what requires the most prepress work but still allow rush jobs to cut in line. This way we can knock out all of the quick stuff first so production keeps a steady flow of work and the most time-consuming jobs go to the end of the line so they don't hold up production on other jobs.

#1 RUSH
#2 Reorder NO Changes
#3 Print-ready Art
#4 Reorder WITH Changes
#5 Adjust Supplied Art
#6 Typesetting

So far the system's working pretty well, but it's only been in place for a day. Hopefully the RUSH bin doesn't get abused too badly.

[Farabomb]

Good luck with the rush bin not getting like a hooker on payday. At one place I was at, sales was banned from entering prepress. They would sneak in, we'd act like we didn't see and tell the PM as soon as he walked in. That job would get pushed to the back. If the sales slime kept doing it all their jobs would be banished to the back or "lost".

That little list you have should serve you well, providing your manager has the testicular fortitude to keep to it. Exact reprints can almost be done while things are ripping, Print-ready art?  that's cute but if you have decent designers it shouldn't be too bad. The rest can be a real mixed bag.

[Just_A_Mac_Guy]

Printers are always expected to make up somebody else's lost time.

I always counter that statement by saying:

While it has been a few years since I ran a printer's Prepress Dept. I am still fairly certain that the press is still an inanimate machine that does not care how late you are. Ink will dry at a fairly constant rate regardless of your deadline. Plate making is fairly consistant too, so the only way the printer can save you time it by bumping other jobs to move your press time forward... Unless the print shop is truly desperate for work, you can expect to pay a hefty additional fee to make that happen.

[Diddler]

I posted in Curves and linearisation the other week for some help and thankfully received the advice I needed. Now time to put my sore head back into the "Oracle of knowledge" which is B4.

For the last few months my company has been undertaking a major upgrade across all sites. Its almost time to flick the switch so to speak.  It looks in theory that it is all working. I am able to output plates to the other States offices. We haven't put any plates on the press as of yet, but I envisage running a test job at the sites next week. 
I am sure we have checked and double-check all the specs so I'm pretty confident of this being a success.

So my attention can now focus on the next few and remaining and probably biggest hurdle to overcome "Production Scheduling"

We have a system in place that updates each job on each states production schedule but is not a "real time" thing. I'm worried that if if a job in a different state is running a few hours behind with problems, or ahead of schedule (unimaginable I know) how everyone involved be informed (apart from phone calls). 
Is there any software that is currently available or you are running to do such a schedule of multiple presses/bindery etc across multiple locations. I am thinking of a barcode system at each and every process/location along the way to update in real time but looking for any solution that could help.

Cheers

[G_Town]

As far as prep goes its typically FIFO there are obviously some jobs that go to the front because of sales etc...

As far as actually scheduling print jobs we use the schizophrenic method. Nothing makes sense, jobs are moved up and back and from press to press all day long. There is no optimizing of the schedule to make the presses more efficient and the schedulers have free reign to do whatever they want.

Yes schedulers, as in two. We have two schedulers. Never have seen his before.

Honestly I could probably drop 2 to 3 people in the department if we had a schedule that didn't change every 5 minutes.

 

[Possum]

Drop one of the schedulers. I can see them playing dueling schedules all day long.

[G_Town]

Drop one of the schedulers. I can see them playing dueling schedules all day long.

I'd like to drop both seeing that they are both douche bags.