The vast majority of commercial printers are using machines that are in essence very similar to those used by rival operators, which means that anyone is potentially capable of consistently producing a piece of print to the same standard.
As a result, printers are increasingly looking for some form of differentation, an edge. That secret ingredient that will give them the all-important advantage over their competitors. For the reasons stated above, it’s unlikely that this edge will be delivered by a piece of hardware, but where it could be delivered is through organisations taking a closer look at their business processes – from job estimates through to the delivery of finished work – to explore if there are any areas where improvements can be made.
According to industry experts, there’s a significant opportunity for printers to make themselves, leaner, meaner and more efficient by using some of the production methodologies that other manufacturing sectors have readily embraced.
Charles Jarrold, chief executive of the BPIF, readily admits that while other industries have been quick on the uptake when it comes to business process improvement methodologies, printers have lagged behind.
“The print sector has been terribly slow to look outside of the industry and to learn from other industries such as car manufacturing,” says Jarrold. “One of the challenges we face is an attitude of ‘that won’t work here,’ but if you can deliver improvement processes they’re a fantastic way of involving employees in a business and creating a much better business environment.”
In addition to creating a happier and more efficient workforce, the implementation of business improvement methodologies also gives printers an advantage over rivals, adds Jarrold, who believes that some initial industry cynicism towards these techniques is waning as printers start to see the benefits of going down this route.
“You’ve got to invest the time to make these things work because this is a journey that will give you year in, year out improvements, but in an industry where we all use the same equipment, if you can improve your processes even by a few per cent each year it’s very difficult for your competitors to copy because it’s incremental by its nature.”
So which business improvement methodologies would work best in the printing industry, what are the pros and cons of each approach and what business books and manuals should printers gen up on?
Lean
What is it and how does it work?
The term ‘lean’ was coined in the 1990s to describe a methodology to achieve continuous improvement through the use of a “coherent set of philosophies, principles and intellectual tools based on the Toyota production system,” says Matthew Peacock, a lean business process improvement coach at Active PPP.
It’s essentially a “business-wide philosophy aimed at reducing the waste inherent in the business and improving the lead time for manufacturing and delivering products in shorter lead times,” adds Phil Tugwell, associate director at the lean and business improvement consultancy MCP Consulting & Training.
Peacock argues that some of the ideas embedded in lean stretch back centuries – “quite probably lean principles were unconsciously applied by cavemen chipping away to make tools in the stone-age,” he jokes. In more modern times what distinguishes the process from many preceding business improvement methodologies is the emphasis on engaging the participation of people who work in the process itself to achieve continuous improvement rather than imposing solutions from a few external experts.
“If you want to improve your business you need to get frontline employees involved in the process and give them the training and skills that they need to create a new workplace culture,” explains Jarrold.
Lean also incorporates business process improvement techniques such as Six Sigma and Kaizen. Whereas lean is a long-term strategy which “needs to be driven across the whole business rather than at improving individual processes, Six Sigma is an improvement tool aimed at reducing variability in processes,” says Tugwell.
Kaizen generally refers to a single project that involves a team of people to improve a process in their own work area – “lean projects can often consist of a coordinated series of Kaizen ‘events’,” explains Peacock.
Pros Cuts down on waste and cost. Creates a culture of customer service and continuous improvement and makes for a more fulfilling work environment for employees.
Cons Not every lean event is successful. “Some organisations have a go without real commitment with no sustained improvement,” says Peacock.
PDCA
What is it and how does it work?
In simplistic terms ‘plan, do, check, act’ – or PDCA as it’s more commonly referred to – drives a business’s improvement cycle (it’s also known as ‘plan, do, check, adjust’ and the Deming Learning Cycle, after the founder of PDCA, American consultant Williams Edwards Deming).
“PDCA forces a systematic approach to improvement project management where activities are planned, executed, checked and then any deficiency is acted upon,” says Tugwell.
Peacock breaks it down even further. “Basically it’s there to make sure that when you do something you learn from it and if it works, you do the same thing the next time around, but if it doesn’t work you do it differently,” he explains.
PDCA also overlaps with some lean methodologies, such as Six Sigma, which is why Peacock says that it is “difficult to compare the pros and cons of PDCA with the pros and cons of lean because it’s a bit like saying ‘what are the pros and cons of a particular part of a car engine versus the car itself?’ That’s because PDCA underpins continuous improvement”.
That’s also why PDCA is prevalent in the printing industry – not that many people are aware of that fact. “Any organisation that holds any ISO certification will have followed the PDCA cycle,” says Wayne Pearce, director at Eaglet Business systems, a consultancy company that specialises in the training and auditing of international business standards.
“All international standards such as ISO 9001 quality management, ISO 14001 environmental management, OHSA S18001 health and safety management, ISO 22301 business continuity management and ISO 27001 information security management, which are the five most common standards an organisation could get certified to, are based on the PDCA cycle at their core.”
Pros According to Tugwell PDCA is the simplest of the business process improvement tools to use.
Cons However, Tugwell adds that it’s rarely used correctly. “Generally most companies focus on the ‘Do’ part and seldom are projects checked and discrepancies acted upon,” he explains.
Theory of constraints
What is it and how does it work?
There are two basic problems manufacturing companies commonly face: not enough work or too much work.
The first scenario is probably more commonplace in the printing industry, but for those companies fortunate enough to fall into the latter category the ‘theory of constraints’ (TOC) is a godsend. That’s because if a company has too much work on its books, capacity needs to be increased and TOC is a useful technique for prioritising bottlenecks in production where capacity can be increased.
“The most useful TOC principle is that the total throughput in a process is almost always held back by one main constraint,” says Peacock. “So if you want to increase the process capacity you need to identify the constraint and unblock it.”
TOC was devised by an Israeli physicist called Eli Goldratt who wrote a seminal book called The Goal. This business bible tells the story of a manufacturing plant manager who turns around the fortunes of a business by using a series of “holistic processes and rules... that exploit the inherent simplicity within complex systems through focusing on the few ‘leverage points’ as a way to synchronise the parts to achieve ongoing improvement in the performance of the system as a whole,” according to Goldratt.
TOC also espouses some other useful ideas such as the use of ‘buffer stocks’ and ‘regular production’ – known as ‘drum buffer rope’ – to “protect the bottleneck operation from fluctuating upstream supply and downstream demand,” says Peacock.
Pros “It works well when there is a single bottleneck in the process and then uses the other business improvement tools to actually make the improvements,” says Tugwell.
Cons When used in isolation TOC is often not applied successfully, according to Peacock, who says that it works better when it’s rolled out as part of a business process methodologies package.
Leading KPIs
What is it and how does it work?
Leading key performance indicators (KPIs) are “input based, hard to measure and easy to influence as opposed to the lagging indicators that are backward looking – for instance, revenue or budget compliance,” explains Tugwell.
In a business a KPI is something that essentially tells you whether or not you’re performing as expected and it gives you an indication of trends. However, Peacock says that it’s easy for businesses to choose the wrong KPIs, which can have a negative impact on the bottom line.
“It’s important that firms choose KPIs that line up with what the business is trying to do strategically,” explains Peacock. “And it’s important that you get ownership of the KPIs from the people who are actually doing the work so that they understand them and feel responsible for them.”
One useful KPI that Peacock often gets his print clients to measure is whether or not they’re delivering jobs on time to customers. “Most printers think they’re pretty good at getting jobs out on time, but whenever you put a measure in place most of them find out that they’re actually pretty poor and there is plenty of room for improvement,” he adds.
Like all of the aforementioned business improvement methodologies detailed above Peacock says that just because a business leader has these ‘tools’ at their disposal it “doesn’t necessarily make them a mechanic”.
“It’s more about how these tools are used than blindly following a particular methodology, because at the end of the day the key thing that makes these tools work is leadership from the management and effective facilitating for the people who are doing these improvement projects,” says Peacock.
Pros Leading KPIs give business owners a clearer idea of how their business is performing.
Cons If you choose the wrong KPIs and set yourself wrong targets – in other words ones that are not aligned with the company’s intended strategic direction – the business will ultimately end up going down the wrong path.
BUSINESS BIBLES
Top five Amazon business bestsellers
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal ChangeBy Stephen R Covey
Review “When Stephen Covey talks, executives listen”
Dun’s Business Month
Mindset: The New Psychology of SuccessBy Carol Dweck
Review “A serious, practical book. Dweck’s overall assertion that rigid thinking benefits no one, least of all yourself, and that a change of mind is always possible”
Publishers Weekly
Outliers: The Story of SuccessBy Malcolm Gladwell
Review “Outliers is riveting science, self-help, and entertainment, all in one book”
Entertainment Weekly
The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and BusinessBy Charles Duhigg
Review “Few [books] become essential manuals for business and living. The Power of Habit is an exception. Charles Duhigg not only explains how habits are formed, but how to kick bad ones and hang on to the good”
Financial Times
Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving InBy Roger Fisher, William L Ury and Bruce Patton
Review “Simple but powerful ideas that have already made a contribution at the international level are here made available to all. Excellent advice on how to approach a negotiation problem”
Cyrus Vance
INDUSTRY TIPS FOR BEDTIME BUSINESS READS
Matthew Peacock recommends
The Lean ToolboxThe Essential Guide to Lean Transformation by John Bicheno and Matthias Holweg
“This is probably the most comprehensive book on the concept of lean. It’s basically a compendium of all of the different lean techniques and gives you a paragraph or so on each”
The Machine that Changed the Worldby James Womack, Daniel Jones and Daniel Roos
“This is a classic lean book that details a series of case studies on companies that have introduced lean”
The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Lean Six Sigmaby Neil DeCarlo
“A layman’s guide to lean”
Charles Jarrold recommends:
Out of the Crisisby William Edwards Deming
“He makes 14 points that are about creating a culture and environment where operators are not blamed for their mistakes and where managers help operators to identify problems and offer solutions. One line in particular from the book that struck a chord with me is ‘drive out fear’”
World Class Manufacturingby Richard Schonberger
“He builds on Deming’s 14 points – he takes the principles and applies them to industry”
Lean Thinking: Banish Waste and Create Wealth in Your Corporationby James Womack and Daniel Jones
“This is another bible. It’s a pretty easy read. If you’re involved in operations and you haven’t read this then it’s well worth it”
Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Marketsby Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“Taleb’s book is about how we try and fool ourselves that the world is less random than it is. It has a significance to the manufacturing industry and it’s a really interesting, thought provoking read”
Thinking, Fast and Slowby Daniel Kahneman
“There are certain aspects of modern life where our brains are consistently wrong because we haven’t evolved to think in certain ways – statistics for example. In Thinking, Fast and Slow, Kahneman talks about the mental shortcuts our brains use because they have to. It’s fascinating stuff”
Nick Devine, founder of print consultancy The Print Coach, recommends:
One Small Step Can Change Your Life: The Kaizen Wayby Robert Maurer
“Short, simple to read and a very practical guide to Kaizen”
The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvementby Eliyahu Goldratt
“This is written as a novel so the ideas are easy to grasp”
The Four Steps to the Epiphanyby Steve Blank
“It’s not a traditional book about lean, but is more focused on how lean can be applied to the business growth aspect of a company”
The Gold Mine: A Novel of Lean TurnaroundFreddy and Michael Balle
“This is written in a novel format and discusses the operational and people issues associated with lean”
