Defining the new normal: Post-Pandemic Prepress

In the blockbuster 1994 movie Forrest Gump, the young title character’s spina bifida is being treated with cumbersome leg braces that make walking difficult and running impossible, but are necessary to teach his body to move more fluidly and to straighten out his spine.

In an iconic scene, young Forrest is in crisis, being chased by bullies, and he starts to awkwardly trot, increasing his speed eventually to a full run. As he runs, his braces disintegrate under the strain, and he finds he no longer needs them, and possibly has not needed them for some time. Forrest never returns to wearing leg braces. They served their purpose and now he knows he no longer needs them. Why would he go back to the way things were?

During the last few months, we’ve faced a considerable global crisis and had to stretch our abilities to meet the challenge. Printers and converters around the world have had to adjust to health guidance, sending home every employee capable of working remotely and operating plants with skeleton crews. Of course, this has included most digital prepress workers.

Happily, we’ve had most of the tools to cope with the demands of the COVID-19 pandemic all along: we’ve just not been forced to use them in the ways we have until now. In the past few months we’ve learned what it takes to effectively operate remotely, and since this pandemic is still in play, it doesn’t appear that we’re going to be making any changes soon. So the question once again is, like Forrest Gump, why would we go back to the way things were?

The evolution of the “gig economy” has led to the development of a host of collaboration and ideation tools that enable remote operations. Many of the automation tools required for efficient remote operations were already in use by printers and converters, and just needed some adjustments to support remote workers.

That said, many printers and converters continue to struggle with implementing these tools, and many of those who have implemented them struggle with engagement, confidence, productivity and process control. Those who’ve gotten it right have been able to accommodate surging demand while developing and implementing new processes.

Remote work a misnomer

To understand their success, we need first to accept that the percentage of employees engaged under traditional working conditions continues to decline. In a 2017 Bentley University study, about three-quarters of millennial respondents said businesses “should be flexible and fluid in the face of volatile working environments and not enforce a rigid structure on employees.” Easier said than done, right? But for those who are getting it right, the benefits are considerable – and with millennials now comprising half of the workforce, we need to be listening.

“There is no such thing as remote work, just work."

Futurist Mike Walsh presents a fresh perspective when he says: “The phrase ‘remote work’ implies that somewhere there is an office where the ‘real work’ gets done.” He continues: “There is no such thing as remote work, just work. So we need to stop thinking about it as remote work and instead consider it to be ‘distributed work’.” Most of this is antithetical to the business practices we are comfortable with. But again, if done right, non-traditional approaches to business can lead to happier employees, improved productivity and greater profits.

The benefits of our rapid evolution during this crisis will not be restricted to prepress, but allowing your prepress team to work remotely and on flexible schedules seems to inspire much more dissonance than allowing your accounting, customer service, or sales teams to do so.

Prepress is part of the production team, so it seems risky to have prepress operators operating too far from production. Yet, for most printers and converters, that’s the current case.

For a significant percentage of printers and converters, prepress was one of the first groups transformed to “remote” operations. Technically it seemed an easy decision. Most reasoned that these were largely “digital” positions anyway, so by sending the prepress operator home with his or her computer, working remotely should be easy. How long could such extreme measures possibly last?

One of the first barriers they encountered was network security. Most prepress networks are highly secure; many are not even connected to the internet to accommodate client security and privacy requirements. What most printers and converters quickly discovered was that their networks have, for many years, been able to provide ample security for remote connectivity. Tradition and culture had discouraged remote connectivity, but contemporary technology was more than ready for the challenge. Where culture might have stood in the way, the business imperative forced what might have been years of evolution and development, to occur in just days.

Secure networks, new processes and productivity

As companies explored the security capabilities of their networks, many quickly became aware of the other security shortcomings of their current practices. For example, in many companies it was unintended but common for multiple copies and versions of client files to exist on several platforms, even in companies using centralized data-asset management. Only when forced to reexamine their current processes and procedures, did they discover this issue.

The migration to distributed production provided the perfect excuse to eliminate this dangerous condition by establishing new processes. What many found was that their existing data-asset management systems provided version and access tracking features which had seemed “unnecessarily complex” when prepress equipment and personnel were under the same roof. When activated, the systems proved relatively easy to implement and helped to mitigate what was a long-standing but hidden issue.

One of the more complex hurdles in the transition to remote work was the reality that printing companies have traditionally been relatively staid and hierarchical, with new businesses unquestioningly adopting their forebears’ long-standing practices. That these practices have traditionally been very high-touch and visually evaluated raises challenges when your employees are working from their homes.

Companies struggled with how to track and assess productivity when supervisors were unable to visually verify attendance and how hard employees were working. The pandemic caused two fallacies to be revealed. First, that employee productivity and industry could be visually evaluated, and second, that high employee productivity and industry was the result of the high-touch environment as opposed to streamlined processes, automation and engagement.

As more companies approach the “lights-out” prepress automation ideal, measuring productivity becomes a much more involved process. If the majority of jobs submitted can pass through the workflow with little to no intervention, it means the jobs being worked on by prepress operators are the outlying anomalies. These jobs, by their nature, require more effort and scrutiny to complete successfully. When they were calculating based on the entire population of jobs, the average number of jobs per hour, including the outliers, was a fairly reliable productivity predictor for scheduling. When dealing with a much smaller population of jobs composed completely of outlying anomalies, averages are much less reliable.

So, as companies have made more use of increasingly sophisticated automated workflows, the majority of their jobs flow through very predictably and with little intervention. The remainder are more difficult to manage. Some companies have turned to a “bidding” process, which is essentially a self-management technique where prepress operators examine a file that couldn’t pass through automated workflows and predict the amount of time it will take to complete it and why. This helps the managers to develop a feel for the complexity of jobs and a deeper understanding of their prepress division’s abilities. By mixing the bid-on jobs between operators, they can establish the accuracy of the “bids” and work to improve them.

Perhaps the largest hurdle to overcome in the transition to ‘distributed’ prepress operations is the very real impact on the operators. Suddenly finding themselves working from home (often in a makeshift office in a dwelling ill-equipped for business needs), prepress operators are also making it up as they go along.

There’s a discipline to working from home, and it’s a new skill for most. Gone is the formal structure of preparing for work, commuting, putting in a day’s work, and leaving work behind for the day. Now they need to develop a new structure and tradition.

The casual conversations between peers and colleagues became structured calls scheduled in 15-minute increments. For the first month or two, meetings dominated their schedules to the point that deadlines were being threatened.

Gradually though, companies have adopted or reinvigorated corporate communication tools, and prepress operators have learned to use collaboration tools like Slack, Teams, or Hangouts – and are regularly joining ad-hoc video conferences that provide face-to-face connections and facilitate production. What was awkward in March is effortless and ubiquitous in June and beyond.

With printers and converters who’ve successfully navigated the transition, prepress operators are focusing on value-added activities, with little interruption. Their lives are better in many ways. With their commutes eliminated, they have more time for other priorities.

Working from home on complex projects allows them to choose times where they’re operating at their optimum to complete what can be complex and intensive tasks. Communication has become more intentional and value oriented, when compared to the meeting overload earlier in the pandemic.

Consequently, the subject of potential “return-to-work” dates for printers and converters is being met with mixed reactions from many of their distributed staff, including prepress operators.

Most will concede that spending some time in the plant has its advantages, and that eventually they would like to physically attend meetings with their peers. However, rapidly evolving technology and its eager adoption are conspiring to reduce the reasons for a physical presence.

As should be expected, some miss the traditional working environment and the social distraction it allows. Their homes may not ideally accommodate their work and perhaps they have a family situation that’s incompatible. However, a significant percentage of prepress operators are questioning why they would want to return during a pandemic at all – and further why they would want to return once the pandemic has passed!

Conclusion

Companies are still in the process of understanding the transformation that’s occurred over the past few months. Essentially, an evolutionary process that might have taken years to take place was forced to occur almost overnight due to the pandemic. Many printers and converters are processing more work, at a lower cost and with greater efficiency, because they’re starting to explore the full capabilities of solutions they already owned or had ready access to.

Like young Forrest Gump, they’ve shaken off their impediments and learned that they can actually run on their own. Why would they ever stop? In the second part of this feature, we’ll explore some of the critical technology that’s serving to make distributed prepress operations even easier, while driving increased plant efficiency.

- Dan Sparrow

Dan Sparrow

Dan Sparrow has been at the disruptive forefront of th industry for the last 25 years in the Americas, Europe and Asia. He holds a Master’s Degree in Sustainable Commerce, and advanced certificates in Behavioral Economics, Lean Six Sigma, and Strategic Negotiation. He’s held senior positions with Heidelberg, Hewlett-Packard and Esko, and is currently a consultant to printers, converters and brands – with a focus on lean production, automation and cultural/digital transformation. He can be reached at dan@sparrow-associates.com

GRAPHIC ARTS MAGAZINE | July / August 2020 | Page 7-9