The Inovis Blog

Just a quick programming note. Inovis made it to the Top 50 “fastest growing blogs” list on WordPress. Thanks to you our readers, customers, partners and industry experts.

Now back to regular programming. 

The Global Supply Chain Management Forum at Stanford GSB provides relevant information for understanding the trends and best practices for managing efficient supply chains.    The analysis an examples of the type reports available is “Innovators in Supply Chain Security: Better Security Drives Business Value” which provides some interesting metrics on the types improvements which increased security in the supply chain can provide:

• Improved product safety (e.g., 38 percent reduction in theft/loss/pilferage, 37 percent reduction in tampering)
• Improved inventory management (e.g., 14 percent reduction in excess inventory, 12 percentincrease in reported on-time delivery);
• Improved supply chain visibility (e.g., 50 percent increase in access to supply chain data, 30 percent increase in timeliness of shipping information);
• Improved product handling (e.g., 43 percent increase in automated handling of goods);
• Process improvements (e.g., 30 percent reduction in process deviations);
• More efficient customs clearance process (e.g., 49 percent reduction in cargo delays, 48 percent reduction in cargo inspections/examinations);
• Speed improvements (e.g., 29 percent reduction in transit time, 28 percent reduction in delivery time window);
• Resilience (e.g., close to 30 percent reduction in problem identification time, response time to problems, and in problem resolution time); and
• Higher customer satisfaction (e.g., 26 percent reduction in customer attrition and 20 percent increase in number of new customers).

The growing focus on security is yet another way to better manage risk in the supply network as well.  Risk varies from supplier failures to brand risk associated with compliance requirements, be them green or government.  Recent news from the Stanford forum confirms these trends with HP and Wal-Mart’s social responsibility requirements/initiatives, which ultimately represents a competitive advantange for many enterprises.

We’re fresh from a tour of a bustling print shop on the East Coast. We were nosy and asked many questions because we’re excited to get this B2B Makeover off the ground.
Let’s start with a quick overview of the commercial offset printing business.

Commercial printing is a mature industry. It’s well beyond the emergent and growth stages. Earnings and sales are slow to grow, and product has become virtually indistinguishable between competitors. Costs decrease at a lower rate than prices due to fierce competition that hits hard on profit margins, particularly in small to medium-sized printing companies. With profits shrinking, many printers have turned to technological solutions to reduce overhead, optimize workflow and keep their enterprise sustainable. The irony is that technological growth is changing the way consumers interact with media. Digital printing is becoming more popular, especially for short run printing, and electronic document delivery is supplanting both digital and offset printing in many situations.

Additionally, offshore and near shore competitors are getting more orders as the local territorial aspect of the print industry succumbs to LCCS competitors.

Sounds like a perfect scenario for a B2B Makeover
featuring highly effective low-entry cost Inovis Webware.

From our perspective, printing is a manufacturing process. Raw materials in the form of ink, paper, wire, cardboard, plastic and whatever else marketers and graphic designers might envision are prepped, treated, cut, scored, shaped, laminated, drilled, inked, folded, varnished, stitched, ground down, bound, coated, glued and occasionally crash numbered.

The process starts with a price quotation that is available through an online interface with the printer’s ordering system with a straightforward query process.

• Number of pages
• Size of pages
• Colors
• One or two-sided printing
• Type of paper
• Binding style (flat, saddle, perfect bound, etc.)
• Shipping instructions

If the price is right, the customer places an order and sends a raw file (the project blueprint) to the printer over an FTP site with directions on how the final product should be produced.

At this point, all the data needed to produce the project is available in the print company’s database. What we noticed, though, was that none of the specs of a particular project were made available to any of the print company’s suppliers. These were large companies that produce paper, ink, machines, and materials like printing plates that the machines process, all of which have interactive order processing available. We checked.

In other words, all the necessary data was collected from the customer to produce the items ordered (expected delivery date 6 days hence based on a FIFO queue) yet all of the data for the raw materials had to be ordered manually by various personnel in the shop, none of whom appeared to be on the same page at the same time (pun intended).

Okay, let’s get to the nitty-gritty. The printing machines are huge, and they suck electricity. They require at least two operators, a pressman and a feeder operator, skilled tradesman earning a high wage. When the cylinders aren’t spinning (we picked up the lingo quick) the printer is losing money. One of the biggest reasons for unexpected shutdown is wrong paper, or no paper, no ink or no plates.

Fairly easy to see where this B2B Makeover is heading. By increasing process efficiency, we can increase profit margin and customer satisfaction.

A Webware interface connecting the printer’s order and inventory database with the business community of suppliers ensures the shop JIT inventory matches online orders in materials needed, scheduled production time, and anticipated delivery date.

It’s a B2B Makeover that shaves off the expense end to grow profit by optimizing the production process with a simple, yet cost-effective solution.

The Bottom Line: Printers, keep your cylinders spinning . . .

Inovis’ Chief Software Architect, Hatem El-Sebaaly, really knows his stuff.  I recently met with Hatem to learn more about MFT. Here are some of his thoughts.