Movin' On In

With the Facilities Management approach to customer service, prepress providers and printers can forge mutually beneficial cohabitation arrangements.

By Terri McConnell, Prepress Editor

What's the best way to serve your customer? Up close and personal. That's the concept behind Facilities Management. It's a business model that extends service to the point of dedicating your own resources to meet your customer's needs—often by relocating them to your customer's site.

According to Kevin Karstedt, a New York-based graphics industry workflow consultant, Facilities Management (FM) plays out in our industry in several ways.

• Printers and converters provide FM services to consumer product companies (CPCs) by dedicating on-site sales and customer service personnel, and by "data linking" to streamline ordering, approvals, and forecasting.

• Trade shops, separators, and engravers provide FM to CPCs with on-site sales and service, data-linking, and dedicated graphic services personnel and equipment.

• Trade shops, separators, and engravers provide FM to printers and converters with on-site sales and service personnel, data linking, graphics personnel and equipment, and even state-of-the-art prepress and plating departments located on-site or nearby.

"The main appeal of FM, from the customer's standpoint, is faster, improved service," states Karstedt. "Beyond that, it's the added-value the supplier can bring to the table. The areas of graphic design, prepress, and printing and converting have seen dramatic technical changes over the past decade.

Companies have to invest a great deal to stay on top of new developments and trends. Most CPCs don't want to dilute their efforts in their core business [by becoming printing experts], so they look for suppliers that can offer critical services."

Phototype, a family-owned, Cincinnati-based trade shop that has been specializing in the packaging industry for over 80 years, is one of those suppliers. Chris Deye, the company's marketing manager, says offering FM services is key to building strong customer relationships-with both CPCs and printers.

"Having dedicated service people definitely improves communication," Deye explains. "Our on-site FM people work directly with the buyer's graphics people to make sure the work goes through smoother and faster. With FM, we can easily rip out two days in the cycle time."

According to Deye, the company can have as many as eight people working inside a major CPC account such as Proctor & Gamble, Hillshire Farms, or Mrs. Smith's. "We provide different services depending on the needs and level of expertise of the CPC. Those services usually include a telecommunications network for online order entry, job tracking, and digital asset management."

In some instances, the consumer product company has embraced the facilities management concept to the point of having written policies for FM personnel. On-site FM people function as project managers and may have direct responsibility for print projects to which they are assigned. They attend art director meetings, they coordinate with other vendors, and they may even be granted the power to go press-side and give final approval. Says Deye, "They're on our payroll, but they essentially belong to the customer."

With other companies, the FM relationship is less formal. On-site personnel may "fill in the gaps" with a specific knowledge that is critical to the workflow, but impractical for the CPC to hire themselves, such as manning and maintaining color approval systems and preflight stations to ensure that outgoing jobs are optimized ahead of time for downstream prepress operations.

Deye says his company also purchases approval equipment to put on-site at printer locations, and that management has recently formulated larger, more structured FM programs for printers. "We can offer on-site prepress and plating services, so that printers can focus on their core competencies. We'll go into the CPC together to recommend an optimal workflow. In this relationship, we can play an important role in re-connecting the printer to the CPC."

Settling into customers' space

Design and prepress giant Schawk, Inc., with a legion of 35 studios and production facilities, has made facilities management for CPCs and printers an integral part of their business. John Olson, operations manager of Schawkgraphics in Des Plaines, IL, explains: "Working with Fortune 500 companies, we found it was very important for us to build strong alliances with the printers. We began [the FM undertaking] by selecting a printer who worked directly with a number of our CPC customers. We went into their facility and conducted a complete needs analysis to see what we could do to help bring them into the digital world."

That needs analysis meant evaluating the entire process—from the number of plates the printer made each month, to the type of online finishing equipment they used. According to Olson, his team was then able to make specific recommendations for seamlessly integrating Schawkgraphics' prepress expertise to improve the printer's workflow.

The company still employs this critical first step to determine which of their several FM models makes the most sense. In one scenario, the printer purchases the prepress equipment, and for a certain length of time, Schawkgraphics personnel operate it. Then they assist in training the printer's personnel to run it alone. Schawkgraphics may also purchase, maintain, and operate the equipment outright. In this case, however, the company generally prefers to locate it nearby rather than at the printer, if the possibility exists of serving others in the area.

According to Olson, the FM model most attractive to printers is one in which the printer purchases digital platemaking equipment, and his company purchases the front-end system to feed it. Schawkgraphics installs and operates the computer, workstations, telecommunications, and archiving. "All the printer has to worry about is training his platemakers on the digital imaging process—we do all the prepress and imposition work, and we take responsibility for software updates, etc."

Olson says his company has instituted the use of common file formats wherever possible, and has designed an optimized workflow based on a Creo-Scitex equipment environment. A proving ground for countless imaging technologies, Schawkgraphics is currently alpha testing the Prinergy Powerpack PDF workflow designed especially for packaging applications.

Schawkgraphics also supports its printer partners with a Technical Service Group of four full-time employees—more than I've seen at the helpdesks of some major software providers. The Group provides electronic troubleshooting, equipment consultation, and workflow analysis over the telephone and on-site.

"Back in the first days of electronic prepress, a lot of packaging printers tried to get involved. After realizing the difficulties, they eventually pulled back and left it to the trade shops," comments Olson. "Again, with the advent of digital platemaking, we've seen printers embrace the concept, but they're understandably reluctant to make the investment."

With facilities management partnering, maybe they don't have to. As Olson advises, "We're just going in with an open mind to get our common customer turned around on-press as quickly as possible."