Economists and their financial projections have painted a picture of “return to normal” to be at least 5 years away if the world is to get back to how we were at 2019’s end. Therefore, recovery is not something the printing industry is going to indulge in, but rather emergence.
How strong are we coming out of the setbacks from the COVID19?
What lessons have we taken from this time?
What new tricks have we gotten up our sleeves?
Things will not be done the same, as before and digital transformation is setting precedence in everything there is to lately.
Working from home has set new levels and improved on very many things. Have you realized how much time you wasted while working in an office space with other people? Working from home hs taught many to shut out the things that don’t directly contribute to the execution of a task – and this practice is coming to a cubicle near you.
Production planners, customer service representatives, estimators are at home—where they can (hopefully) control their work environment. Various tasks in this industry require extended concentration and now people have mastered cutting out distractions and get work done. (e.g. complex estimates, production optimization/scheduling, and collaboration with clients).
Paper-based workflows are slowly becoming a thing of the past. You can’t go out onto the production floor and look at the printed job jacket. The whole business has to rely on what is entered into the Print MIS. This is exactly the value of “digitizing your job controls.” The minute you print out a job jacket, the information is a snapshot of the job at the specific time you printed it (just call it outdated). If your whole team is entering information about the job (e.g. shop floor data collection, raw material inventory availability, change orders) into the Print MIS and everyone has access to the Print MIS, you have exactly one version of the up-to-date truth. This one version of the up-to-date truth can be viewed, managed, monitored, and edited by people from home!
Employees are slowly but surely walking back into offices and this should be adopted to make them more efficient. When you don’t have to walk through the production floor to see the job’s progress, you get more done at your desk.
Emergence from COVID19 is going to be heavily about efficiency and this should improve your performance overall.
