فرایند مدیریت و جریان کار در انتشار و چاپ شرکت ها

This paper examines the effects of the dramatic changes incurred in the sector of printing and publishing after the introduction of digital printing. The print production process is rapidly shifting from analogue to digital technologies as the infrastructure (or basis) for workflows. The efficiency of the production process requires the digitalisation of all steps and elimination of analogue methods and materials from the process flow apart from the starting and finishing phase. Across networks, printing will be a dial tone service simple, reliable, ubiquitous, fast, and cheap. The combination of all these aspects offers very important competitive advantages to printing and publishing firms, which will be able to adapt their business processes, according to the technological and organisational framework of digital printing. This includes both the improvement of the already offered services in terms of best-value-for-money publishing and printing as well the introduction of new services. In this article, we present a workflow solution over the web that allows printing and publishing firms to capitalise fully the opportunities offered by digital printing. We also present results from performance measurement and reorganisation after the introduction of the D-PRINT solution to three printing and publishing firms.

The publishing and printing market is going through a period of crisis during the last 5 years especially regarding small printing–publishing firms mainly due to • Intense Competition in a shrinking market, due to the creation of small printing and publishing firms, which offer services of questionable quality in very low prices. • The cost of offset printing machines (up to 2 MECU), which is considered prohibitive by most small firms. Due to intense competition and the low investment in key technological advances, the future of printing and publishing firms is considered very problematic with many firms facing at present very serious economic difficulties. With the introduction of digital printing companies investing in this technology are expected to • Gain competitive advantage with the introduction of new services like distributed, personal and just-in-time printing. • Overcome the problem of low investments in key technologies as the cost of digital colour presses is much lower (0.4 MECU) compared to that of the offset printing machines. The introduction of digital printing through the integration of digital colour presses and DTP systems imposes very substantial changes in the overall printing process and causes the emergence of new ways of publishing as it satisfies the following needs: • Print-On-Demand: Because of the direct-to-paper solutions offered, it is possible to adjust the quantity of printed material to the actual needs with high accuracy. This has many consequences both for business and ecology. In terms of the publishing and printing business this means that one can: (1) Offer very competitive pricing for small print jobs, since there are no costs associated with the initial set-up of traditional printing presses. Since there is an identified market trend towards smaller print jobs, it is essential for SMEs to cope with it. (2) Avoid unnecessary costs, caused through “overprinting”, i.e., the printing of more than required material, just for being able not to start a whole new print job, in case some more copies are required. In ecological terms, it means that there is an enormous saving in paper production, since only the required material is printed. • Just-in-time-printing: The direct-to-paper printing solution allows the direct linking of the DTP and the printing process. It is thus possible to print immediately material that has been approved by a customer, avoiding all operations and waiting time that is necessary today for preparing films and sending them to the printing press. This will dramatically improve customer satisfaction, since a customer will be able to receive the exact quantity of printed material with no delay at all. • Distributed printing: Through the interconnection of digital presses to international networks, it is possible to introduce remote printing. This implies substantial changes in the distribution of printed material throughout the world, since it deletes transportation costs and allows the immediate remote printing of the actually required quantity. Especially for manuals accompanying equipment and software this leads to significant improvements in many ways: (1) It offers multinational companies a perfect distribution tool, supporting a decentralised handling of centrally kept information. A distributor of a certain software package will be, for example, in the position to download updated accompanying information, according to actual customer input, avoiding all costs and waiting time for offering updated manuals. (2) It strongly supports quality and localisation. Due to the elimination of intermediate operations it is possible to maintain localised versions centrally and print them remote immediately. • Personalised printing: Because of the possibility of integrating variable information during print time, through database connections, one can easily produce personalised material for direct marketing purposes. This improves significantly the printing services that can be offered to the marketing communication. • Repurposing: The all over digital handling of data and the interconnection with digital document archiving systems supports strongly their re-use through easy incorporation in further productions. The combination of all these aspects offers very important competitive advantages to printing and publishing firms, which will be able to adapt their business processes, according to the technological and organisational framework of digital printing. This includes both the improvement of the already offered services in terms of best-value-for-money publishing and printing as well the introduction of new services.

6. Discussion and future directions Our work has revealed that corporations in the printing and publishing industry will rapidly deploy inter/intra/extranet communications and graphical computing infrastructures that link customers, providers, and suppliers. They will be focusing on content as information assets, network printing, cross-media information delivery, and conducting all phases of the business cycle across networks. The watchwords for marketing and customer support will be: 1-to-1 business communications, and service equals personalized content. They will establish systems that manage network interactions with persons or businesses on an individual basis, maintaining historical context, and profiles to increase the relevance and value of the communication to both parties. The trend in inplant operations will be away from print-store-distribute workflows towards store distribute across networks display and print if needed. Facilities management will increase at the expense of in-plant printing operations. Near-term (the next 1–2 years), forces shaping the road ahead are already in play. Specific circumstances will vary, but on the whole, the directions for corporations, creative services, publisher, printers, trade services are pretty clear, and the needed course of action is imperative, if not remedial. The core message is this: Get digital; Get connected; Reengineer for the new infrastructure (Hammer & Champy, 1993; Longenecker & Fink, 2001; Manganelli & Klein, 1994; Ould, 1995). The future economic health of printing and publishing has everything to do with internetworking businesses and re-engineering printing and publishing workflows to exploit the emerging networked digital infrastructure. Under any of the scenarios, interactive media and new forms of printing and publishing comprised only a relatively small portion (not more than 10%) of graphic communications media in the year 2000. The fulcrum for continued industry growth and relevance is the transition from analog to digital to networked technologies as the infrastructure or basis for printing and publishing workflows of whatever kind.