This kind of goes along with the Preflighting for Dummies (https://www.b4print.com/index.php?topic=4196.0) thread, but I'm curious to hear what others are doing.
We're in the midst of setting up a new workstation specifically to take in customer artwork and for the CSRs to send out proofs. We're also going to set up a new email account to be used only for art coming in and proofs going out at that workstation only. The plan is that it'll be a community workstation so all the CSRs have access to it and can see what the status of incoming/outgoing jobs are.
The problem we've been having is orders/files coming in to one CSR, then say they're out sick for a few days and nobody knows what's going on. Another problem is files coming in from customers, the job ends up sitting on someone's desk for two days, then another two days in my rack back in prepress before I even look at it and say something like "This is crap" and kick it back up front. Our goal is for prepress to check or preflight all incoming files within 24 hours whether they are actually a real job or not. (Sometimes we get files along with estimate requests). Initially my Bossman wanted to see if there was a way for our CSRs to "preflight" all incoming files on the spot so I don't have to be interrupted. I immediately saw the difficulty in this as is described in the Dummies thread. I mean, that's what prepress is for.
I work in a very small shop so we're not in the market for any elaborate sort of set up. Just looking for ideas on what others are doing to make jobs flow through efficiently and keep the goddamn customers happy. Thanks.
Am :tongue: I expected to read all that? You sure have gotten wordy on your return.
Basically, we all have certain jobs assigned that we do each week, month, etc so we pretty much know when jobs are supposed to come in. We discourage using email We either direct them to use our FTP and for the last year have been trying to get them to use Kodak Insite for job submission. The person doing the job in prepress also preflights it. We do not have CSR's per say...the prepress person is the CSR. We rarely bounce a job back to the customer. We usually fix anything that comes along. If it is an extensive fix that is going to take awhile and incur extra charges we give them the choice of fixing it themselves or paying us to do it. Usually they want us to fix it. Salesman usually forward job info to who ever is doing the job or our scheduler forwards the info. Of course there are times when no one forwards anything. So do we have a preflighting workflow/schedule. Not really.
Short answer, not really a set schedule.
We have the new guy (here about 2.5 years) who does our administrative stuff. Downloads from the FTP site, prints out customer supplied files, passes them to the CSRs, prints out the Art Requests from CSRs, sets up folders on the server, pulls previously printed samples if a re-run. It's not really a set schedule, but it's the first thing he does when he gets in.
Still hammering on him to do a proper preflight - don't just drop it in the Preflight workflow and print the report, but actually open it and look into it. Bossman does nothing about it, so I re-preflight every job I get from him. When bossman asks why, I say he doesn't do it, so I will.
beck
The same thought about the CSR's doing their own preflight occurred here several years ago.
It never panned out due to the difficulty in teaching them ALL the software you need to be aware of in order to do a complete Preflight.
We have a dedicated area that has two Macs and one PC for preflighting. The two Macs have all the software that you would need (Quark 6, 7, 8; Indesign 2, 3, 4, etc).
We used to have two dedicated preflight operators, but due to the economy and cutbacks, we no longer have that luxury. It is currently manned by any of the prepress operators who isn't currently working on a job (or myself if everybody else is busy). We try to preflight the jobs as quickly as possible (so we don't run into your situation Gnub, jobs sitting there while someone is waiting to hear they are all wrong).
We don't have a set schedule for when we do the preflight, it's just done ASAP, as soon as the FTP/Disk/Email arrives and we are made aware of it.
HTH,
David
I made these forms up once. I don't really use them any more, but I have them as a "procedure."
Thanks for those, Digital Sig. I've been wanting to have some sort of prepress checklist deal set up after our recent slew of reruns.
Quote from: DigitalCrapShoveler on June 02, 2010, 11:20:09 PMAm :tongue: I expected to read all that? You sure have gotten wordy on your return.
There are members here wordier than me.
So.
FWIW Gnub it all has to start with communications. We had one multi email account that went to about 6 of us that needed to know (CSR, Supervisors, and commercial prepress operators). All customers were urged to use this account when sending files, corrections or general info about the job. Worked well except when the customer would send stuff to one CSR's personal email account and she was away enabling one of her kids.
I have set up procedures before but even though management asked me to make them they also ask me to sidestep it constantly because it makes them miss their hockey game or something. I have a pattern that I follow and it seems to work. Unless I get a huge multi-page clusterfuck I'm at most a day behind. Problem with that is one of the salesman is notorious for sitting on jobs for days and making halfassed job bags. I get blamed that I'm not getting his jobs through so I have to bounce it, write an email and CC everyone just to cover my ass. He's the main reason I end up staying late here.
Quote from: gnubler on June 03, 2010, 08:40:09 AMThanks for those, Digital Sig. I've been wanting to have some sort of prepress checklist deal set up after our recent slew of reruns.
I have pdf and ID if you want...
Quote from: Farabomb on June 03, 2010, 09:21:57 AMHe's the main reason I end up staying late here.
Lots of salesmen aren't worth the sausage they are printed on.
Quote from: digital@sig-1.com on June 03, 2010, 09:22:38 AMQuote from: gnubler on June 03, 2010, 08:40:09 AMThanks for those, Digital Sig. I've been wanting to have some sort of prepress checklist deal set up after our recent slew of reruns.
I have pdf and ID if you want...
We actually talked about this at a meeting today, where I showed them your checklists as an idea for what we should be doing. We discussed the possibliity of me setting up an email template including all the preflight info we need. Gotta save those trees, you know. I'm going to look into it. For internal use it might work. Job comes into CSR email, it gets forwarded to me. I prep the file and send an email back to the CSR with the checklist filled out in the body of the email and any problems noted, PDF proof attached if all is good. CSR then sends PDF proof to customer. As long as all emails are titled with a job # it's a good way to keep a record of all prepress/proofing time. Our goal is to set up the most efficient system we can.
I can make the pdf into a form you can electronically fill out
I can do that, too. What we were thinking of is creating a small HTML form to put in an email template for internal use rather than have a PDF attachment. I'd give it one week until a preflighting PDF accidentally got sent to a customer instead of the PDF proof. This is almost getting too complicated and I'm wondering about the usefulness of a preflight checklist. I mean, if a file has major issues I'm going to know right away and it will get kicked back to the CSR until I'm either asked to fix it or have the customer fix it.
I think it would be easier/faster to just staple a mini preflight checklist to the back of each job ticket. A 4.25x5.5 piece of paper would be big enough. Our CSRs are not technologically advanced so I'm leery about this whole email system they want to set up.
I once proposed this "ticket" idea to my old boss, but I never really sold him on the idea.
Tried to remove the old one (low res - can' really read it) and upload a new one, but my browser just spun and spun... here's the pdf for better review
We used to have a separate preflight person but we found that in a lot of cases it was redundant to preflight the job, then pass it on to someone else. So now our workflow works like this:
Docket goes into the prepress lineup and is preflighted AND ripped if it passes. At this stage we also generate a proof pdf from Prinergy for the client. If the job passes preflight it goes to planning, then when it is planned it comes back to prepress to be proofed. Digital work is pretty much planned in Prepress unless it is some kind of custom stock.
So we actually have 2 lineups, one for preflight/prepping files and another for proofing.
If the job fails preflight we fill in the pdf form and email to the CSR who then passes it onto the client. We have a limit of edits that we do and that is 2 units (12 minutes). Anything more than that and the job gets bounced back to the CSR and they contact the client to decide whether we will do the fixes for extra $$ or if they want to do the fixes and send us new files.
We used to have the jobs go into planning but if they are busy and we are two we sometimes ended up failing a preflighted job 3 or 4 days after the customer sent the job in.
The problems I see having one workstation is:
1) What if you have more than one person who need access to that workstation NOW?
2) If you have clients like we do, then you have ones that insist on sending the files to the boss himself (or the salesman) and no one else. In other words, there are people who want to do it their way. Period.
Thanks, Rabid, for the info. I will look at your PDF on Monday.
Quote from: Syphon on June 04, 2010, 06:30:00 PMThe problems I see having one workstation is:
1) What if you have more than one person who need access to that workstation NOW?
2) If you have clients like we do, then you have ones that insist on sending the files to the boss himself (or the salesman) and no one else. In other words, there are people who want to do it their way. Period.
Syphon,
We have a small shop and there are only two CSRs, and only one of them does the bulk of orders/proofs. And it's not like one person can be hogging the one workstation for long. It's mainly for email exchange, downloading files, or sending off a proof to a customer.
Yes, we have clients exactly like your #2. My Bossman is not an email person and only checks his email if someone calls to tell him they sent him something. Otherwise it could sit for days unread. He has asked them to send mail directly to prepress, but you know how that goes.