As you might expect, since printing is a complicated manufacturing process,
there's a lot of planning, that goes into printing your job.
One of the first people that might look
at your job is somebody who's called an estimator.
An estimator ,estimates the amount of stock
that's needed for a job, including overruns.
And ,he also estimates the ink needed for a job.
He also has to estimate for any specialty finishing for a job.
For example, if you're having the job
die cut or performing foil stamping.
And of course, he has to estimate the time needed to run the job.
And once that's been established, someone who's
called a planner or scheduler takes over.
Now sometimes the estimator, and the planner, scheduler
are all the same person, but not always.
But it's the planner or scheduler's job to schedule prepress time, for example.
And those are usually the first people to touch your job.
To perhaps make some changes
to it if there are problems.
Or if I need to modify the file ,in order to accommodate
the kind of printing process that's going to be used on your job.
Of course, that scheduler has to schedule the press time to print your job.
And again if there's any kind of specialty finishing, if it needs to be worked
on in the bindery for trimming or binding, he has to schedule that as well.
And ,if they're going to be performing shipping
or any kind of fulfillment or kitting is
to plan that as well.
So now you start to get an idea of just
how many things the scheduler or planner has to accommodate.
And all of these different departments, all of these different machines that touch
your job, have to be scheduled in the proper order and with adequate time.
And each one of these processes, affects the others.
If there is a problem in prepress that may change the schedule.
It there's a problem on the press, another job sort of kicks back.
Or there's
a problem with your job that requires replating.
That's going to effect the others as well.
Now, this is an old-fashioned physical job board.
More and more you'll find that printers are actually
using a digital version of this, but I think
this is a good visual to give you a
quick idea of how these schedules have to be juggled.
When you look at these individual columns those are individual processess or
departments or machines and you can see how full these days are.
So ,as you can imagine
if something goes wrong with one job ,it
can affect all the jobs that were scheduled afterwards.
How do they keep track of what's going on or what's required of a job?
Well, a job ticket, whether its digital or a physical paper
ticket, follows that job all the way through all of these processes.
And that job ticket is going to include information such as
customer contact information, and of course information about the job itself.
For example the production requirements.
What kind of stock is going to be used? How many inks are going to be used?
And then every job stage that's going to touch that job.
Printing, and folding, bindery, fulfillment.
And this is a look at a a typical job ticket.
There's an awful lot of information on this one page.
And the person that created this job ticket has done a very nice thing.
There in the middle, you can see in large type,
something you can't overlook, some special information about the way this
job is going to be handled.
It runs with UV inks, and that means that when they create their plates, they have
to take into consideration ,the way they have to make plates for a UV print job.
Also, they're only going to cut 500 sheets, and they're
going to keep the remainder uncut, in inventory, for future use.
Let's look at the individual part.
At the upper right you can see that the job has been assigned
a unique job number and that's going to follow it all through the plant.
We know who the client is, we know where they are, we know who
the contact is, we know who the sales person is, who the production manager is.
And there at a glance you can see, how
many of each of these products need to be produced.
You can see under proof set they're going to require color proofs
and then something called an iris proof and an iris proof ,acts
as a contract proof so that they know what the color is
going to be like and that's what they're going to match on press.
Also in some instances they may
send a PDF to the end user ,so that they can just view it on screen.
They get a very good representation of how their
job's going to look without having to ship anything physical.
Here in the center of the job you can see,
how many of each piece are going to be run.
You can see, how many inks are going to be used in
the seafood platter it's actually printing books called four over four.
It's going to be four inks, one on each side.
The dessert offerings
is just going to be a four over zero or what we just call a one sided job.
And then again, there in the middle there's that big heads up.
Something a little bit perhaps out of the
ordinary and the production planner's calling attention to that.
And that avoids mistakes.
And then finally at the bottom, some finishing instructions.
These two posters that are going to get trimmed, they're
packed out, and then they're going to hold, for future kitting.
And kitting means that they may combine other objects, or
other pieces from other print jobs with this.
Ship those all out together.
And this is a service you'll see
printers increasingly beginning to perform for customers.
Instead of the customers having to kit this stuff and
ship it out, the printer actually does it for them.
It's sort of a turn key approach.
A job jacket, is a physical container for the job materials.
For example the media, the CD that you may have sent the job in on.
And any proofs that have been created along
the way.
And that job jacket is going to be identified,
sort of branded, with that job ticket with
the job number on it and that job
jacket travels with the job through each department.
So, as each department touches it, they're going to make an
entry on that job ticket to check off what they've done.
And you're going to be ensured that all the materials
that pertain to that job are going to travel together.
So, this is sort of a stylized look at a job jacket.
You can see there's a proof that's been marked up a little bit,
and it's probably at the stage where those corrections are about to be made.
And there's some supporting records inside.
And you can see the CD.
And there, of course, is the ticket on that job jacket that identifies it.
And at a glance, anyone who's working on
this job, from pre-Press through proofing, plate making and
the Press, they can see all the necessary information
so that they can reduce errors ,when they're producing
this job.