Setting up "guidelines" for PrePress

[vav]

We are a state agency that purchased a Screen CTP system 18 months ago. Currently we have a Composing Room and a Plateroom that our director now wants to combine into a Prepress Department. I'm not sure where to start or how to set up position descriptions for employees that will work in this new department. How does one breakdown who does the preflighting, checking customer-provided files, trapping, imposition/layout, proofing? I have 3 people in Composing and 4 in Plate. The platemakers have been doing traditional platemaking until we purchased the CTP. Very few analog plates are being used. At least 2 of the platemakers will need training in desktop applications and PC use. Composing staff is familiar with the desktop stuff. How do I break through the barriers of combining two departments? Suggestions for preflighting would be appreciated too. Thanks in advance for suggestions and thoughts.

[David]

Man, this may take a while...

Originally Posted by vav

Currently we have a Composing Room and a Plateroom that our director now wants to combine into a Prepress Department.

This is the traditional Prepress area (it usually consist of prep and platemaking, and with the advent of electronic prepress, it now also includes preflight).

I'm not sure where to start or how to set up position descriptions for employees that will work in this new department. How does one breakdown who does the preflighting, checking customer-provided files, trapping, imposition/layout, proofing? I have 3 people in Composing and 4 in Plate. The platemakers have been doing traditional platemaking until we purchased the CTP. Very few analog plates are being used. At least 2 of the platemakers will need training in desktop applications and PC use. Composing staff is familiar with the desktop stuff. How do I break through the barriers of combining two departments? Suggestions for preflighting would be appreciated too.

In most cases, the mac/pc /imposing operators can and should also do preflight. Since they are the ones that need this info, they know more of what is missing or wrong.
We have a dedicated preflight area in our room only due to the amount of work we do. In smaller shops, the mac/pc oper. is also preflight.
The platemakers only make plates and maintain the processors and related machinery (loading plates, cleaning processors, etc.) and QC plates before going to press.

Preflighting usually involves copying up all the files supplied by the client and then opening and verifying that all the parts and pieces are there (fonts, linked art, etc.). We use a piece of software called Flightcheck. It works great and tells you all about your files from the colors in it to the resolution of the images and the fonts used.

This will probably get to be a busy thread, so ask more questions and we'll be more than happy to help you with details.

This is just a start.
Good luck,
David

[prepress_brillance_43]

In some cases it's all done by one person. :evil: which means no vacations, ever. I receive and log and number jobs as they come in, then preflight, impose and proof. Once approved, accept it to the imagesetter for plates. very simple and basic.

Suggestions for preflighting would be appreciated too.

This will be ever evolving as you discover things that work and don't work with your RIP and platesetter.

[edgar]

After we purchased our first ctp, we worked with films so we had 2 areas: imagesetting and platemaking.

Working with ctp and the introduction of a digital workflow server, the guys who were in platemaking started to work with imposition programs, outputing jobs to proofers and ctp. They were converted to our digital output area. The guys who worked in imagesetting are working in the same way, their final stage is preparing final pdf files for sending to the digital output area for impose, proof and plating. They still do preflight, prepare files and also do some design works and have communication with clients.

By this way, the learning curve of our output operators was short because they don't have to go to the front end complexity, also they still play their old knowledgements.

Hope this help, and doesn't produce confussion.

I think everybody build his own workflow based on his real needs.

[rcmayor]

Hey Verla, my dad says quit surfing the internet and whip those State workers into shape. haha

On a more serious note, most of this started from where I work. Several months ago my Dad and the Director took a tour of where I work. I work in a prepress shop that is a centralized prepress facility for 4 (soon to be 6) CTP plants across the country. We have 15 team members in our prepress area. We all work the same way through detailed Work Instructions and Procedures (required for ISO 9000:9001). The skill level varies a little of course, but with regular group and individual training we are a very efficient shop. 2-3 members are often gone on any given day and work flows through smoothly.

Most months we process over 2000 job tickets. These range from simple film output of ripped and trapped files stored on a server, preflighting, printing Epson proofs, or setting up an imposition for a CTP plant. A lot of customer supplied file processing and Typsetting is mixed in there also.

A prepress area with even a third of the amount of people with equal knowledge would be a good start. I know there is a lot of knowledge at the State Printer. This knowledge needs to be shared thru 1 on 1 training and team training. There is also some very good online courses at www.prepresstraining.com. These courses are probably already close to being assigned.

[rcmayor]

Now for the nuts and bolts of our operation.

First of is file storage. This is one of the most important items in a team environment. We do not store any jobs on a desktop computer. When a job is worked on it is pulled down from the server, worked on, then copied up when you are done with it. This ensures that nobody has exclusive access to any job files.

Next is all 15 Macs are configured identically. Same software, Quark, Adobe CS (soon to be CS2) and any application needed in production. Everything is the same including items on the desktop and positions in the dock. This helps efficiency if you have to work on someone elses system.

Everyone posseses these skills:

Typsetting forms or any type of document.
Digital file prep.
Preflighting.
Film output of ripped and trapped files.
Plating for 45 different press sizes.

[rcmayor]

In addition to the 15 graphic artists/technicians, we have 3 multi role Quality assurance emlpstaffed. Most but not all jobs that get ripped and trapped go thru a quality control procedure. They are trained in proofreading, trapping/color breaks, and making sure all the specs of a job are followed. They also handle all proof output (email and hardcopy) and distribution of these to all plants or sales offices.

On top of all this is are levels of production and quality that our Graphic Artists and Quality Assurance must obtain. These efforts are rewarded each month thru company awards. This is sort of a competition between the Graphic Artists to maintain the highest level of quality while maintaining a high number of jobs processed.

All this is a complex system that took 2-3 years to develop, and is an ongoing project to keep everything up to date and making things more efficient. The end result is a system where everyone is directly held accountable for what they produce, and any errors are recorded in a database for future evaluation/training.

[bubbatub]

Good Luck to you. I live in KC and have set up the prepress department at the agency I am currently employeed. I am willing to do contract work! If you feel obligated, ask your employees if they want to learn something new. Go by employees reaction along with experience to help you decide who does what. You don't want to move someone who doesn't want to try something new, that just leads to more problems.

Before changing any process, sit down and map it out how a job with flow through the company. This is where you can evaluate what is working and what is not before setting up processes.

[Cornbread]

Originally Posted by bubbatub

Before changing any process, sit down and map it out how a job with flow through the company. This is where you can evaluate what is working and what is not before setting up processes.

This is good advice, just show your outline to some of your top operators and let them try and break it. We used to do this is and it worked out most of the kinks before we went into full production. Today we move a little to fast and with to many cooks for my taste. But it all gets fixed eventually, it is just a little more painful.