Presses Rolling on Print Shop Improvements
By Dennis Van Patter, CDOT Communications Office
August 21, 2014
Print Shop Lean Team
Nearly one year ago, an article printed on the Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT) Intranet told the story of how five state print shops got together for the first time ever to discuss how they might work cooperatively and better serve their customer bases. Click here to read that article, entitled “Print Shop Lean Process Breaks New Ground.”
Progress has been made since that article was printed. The 11-member process team came up with the following three major recommendations:
Purchase new printing equipment for the three remaining state print shops;
Implement an automated work order system for print shop customers; and
Implement a print management system for the three shops combined.
The state’s central print shop is located at the Department of Personnel & Administration’s Integrated Document Solutions (IDS) North Campus. The other two shops are located at CDOT and at the Colorado Department of Public Health & Environment (CDPHE).
CDOT's Cheryl Wright, project leader for this Lean effort, said great progress has been made in all three of the recommended areas.
“All three of the shops now have a new state of the art equipment,” Wright said. CDOT recently received and installed a new digital imaging four-color press, which allows four-color print jobs to be completed in one press run, essentially cutting production time in half.
Alvaro Duran, CDOT Print Center manager, said the new press had been in the works for some time. “The Lean process got all of the shops communicating better, and the recommendation that we would all get new equipment cleared the way for the new press,” he explained.
Steve Wilkerson, DPA/IDA Print Operations manager, said IDS Print and Mail Operations is underway using the new equipment that will “enhance start-to-finish capabilities. We’re also excited to bring in a new inkjet machine that will broaden our menu and open the door to many new cost-saving offerings for our customers.”
Wilkerson and some of his staff visited both the CDOT and CDPHE print facilities, and he said he looks forward to working with both to provide even better customer service.
DPA/IDA rolled out business card production for about eight different departments in May. The remaining departments are expected to follow with the new online ordering system, which has been named IDS Storefront.
Wright said that beginning on or about August 1, the CDOT print shop began accepting online orders at their website for business cards featuring the approved new state branding format. If all goes well with this first task for IDS Storefront, it will be expanded to include many additional products later this year and into 2015.
Gilbert Gomez, DPA/IDS Customer Service representative and a member of the Print Shop Lean team, was responsible for organizing training on the new IDS software. “All the teams agreed that in order to have the Lean print process run smoothly, we all needed to be on the same software and platforms,” he said. He conducted training with CDOT print center employees in May, then in June, he worked with some individual CDOT customers on the initial soft launch of the new ordering system in order to test the system and take feedback.
“I’ve been a part of this project since the beginning. It’s been a pleasure to see three different departments work together with the way this group has,” Gomez added. “Between implementing a new management information system (MIS), adding a storefront that customers can use to submit orders, and setting up procedures for shops to work together, everyone involved has done a great job. It will be a proud day once we can do a full launch,” Gomez said.
Implementation of the third recommendation, a print management system that moves orders around from center to center depending upon workload and availability in order to best meet customer needs and deadlines, is currently underway. More training by the specialized software company that developed the system is being scheduled. Challenges related to billing, where CDOT uses SAP and all other state agencies fall under the new CORE system that replaces COFRS, are being worked out.
“These three shops didn’t have much communication or collaboration before the Lean process, so that’s a historic achievement,” Wright said. “It’s a bit amazing to get where we are today."
Duran agreed. “There’s more communication now than ever before, and we begin job sharing in October,” he noted. “This Lean process was a bigger endeavor that anyone could have imagined. Our approach to implementing in smaller steps makes sense.”
Gary Vansuch, CDOT Process Improvement Director, said that great credit is due to the team members who took the chance that becoming involved with the Lean process would lead to substantive improvements. “I agree with what Alvaro Duran had to say; this Lean process was bigger than anyone could have imagined. The folks working on this have made major progress and more is on the way this fall. For printing services personnel across the different Departments, the improvement will enable us to share work across Departments, which will improve efficiency and lower costs, truly making this process more effective, efficient, and elegant when fully implemented. I thank everyone who has been engaged to make this happen.”