Print Shop Organization

“The will to win is important, but the will to prepare is vital.”

            -- Legendary Penn State football coach Joe Paterno

Like a football team, any graphic arts business must plan to be successful and assemble an effective playbook that will serve as a roadmap to that success.

Along with a solid business plan, an essential part of that playbook needs to be a workable organizational structure, a way in which the business arranges people and positions to maximize efficiency, foster good communications, and meet corporate goals.

It should go without saying that some organizational structure in graphic arts business with 50 or more employees must be in place or chaos will abound. But, the organization of staff can be just as critical in smaller size print businesses to assure customers’ needs are met.

First, it is essential to note that within a graphic arts business, different people and functions cannot operate completely independently and that all parts of the organization need each other.

At the same time, there must be some structure permitting the seamless delegation of various tasks that assign responsibilities for various functions within each part of the business.

Timothy Fischer, Senior Vice President of the National Association for Printing Leadership (NAPL) based in Paramus, NJ and consultant on graphic arts business operations, says an organizational structure is critical. 

“The owner or CEO must have an executive team regardless of size, and the business should then have a formal organizational chart clearly showing the chain of communication,” Fischer says. “People need to know exactly who they report to and who to take direction from.  Two bosses is like having no boss at all.” 

An organizational structure depends on a number of factors including the particular type of graphic arts product, the number of employees, and whether it has multiple facilities. Yet, the division of roles can be pretty uniform within the industry.

Fischer says the typical management groups in a graphic arts business include: 

• Group #1 – Accounting, H/R and Office;
• Group #2 - Sales, Customer Service, Design, Estimating, Scheduling, Purchasing;
• Group #3 – Prepress/Plate-room, Press, Post-press, Shipping/Receiving.   

Fischer also recommends a decentralized approach to managing the shop.   

“The organizational structure should empower the people on the floor to take on responsibility and accountability, for example having working supervisors or self directed work teams if the business is large enough.”       

Fischer notes that the biggest change in the structural groups has been in pre-press saying that area used to be a large stand alone department.  But, with the advent of desktop publishing and computer to plate technology, elements of pre-press are being absorbed in both the customer service area and in the press area. 

“We are also seeing more collaboration and team approaches to managing group #2,” he adds. “Teams are instead being developed around customer profiles or product attributes.” 

NPC of Claysburg, PA employs approximately 450 people providing a diversity of graphic arts and data services, and was the federal Government Printing Office’s top print supplier in 2009. Company President Mark Kelly says NPC is a second-generation family owned business that has grown its organization structure over time as its business grew, more products added, and talented persons were added to staff.

“We continually look at our organizational structure as we grow, but also as people develop within the organization,” Kelly says.  “In 1990, we consolidated three manufacturing locations into one, added 100,000 square feet to our facility in 2004, and in 2008 started a wholly owned separate facility. All these changes made it necessary to alter our structure to meet the needs of the organization.”

NPC’s current organizational structure looks like this:

• CEO
• President, CFO, CIO
• Executive Staff - VP Sales, General Manager, Pricing Manager, VP New Business Development
• Department Managers
• Supervisors
• Group Leaders

Rob Gottlund is one of the two managing partners of Kutztown Publishing in Pennsylvania and employs approximately 40 professionals.  He says the 136-year-old business has looked at its organizational structure extensively and made major changes to reflect what he terms “needs of the marketplace” with an emphasis on large account management resulting from the integration of web store front ordering capabilities with variable/digital capabilities. 

Gottlund says the changes have greatly improved the profit picture in the last half-year or so, after a dangerous slide which most of the industry felt.  

“It has made the fulfillment business grow extensively, Gottlund says while noting that the emphasis on the structure of his size business is certainly different from a large print manufacturer.

“Net, net, there is far less need for what we would call executive management and much more customer interaction and management,” he says.

In addition to the hierarchical structure of positions, Fischer adds that layout of where employees do their work should marry up with the organizational chart.

“Physical layout is very important in order to promote quality and timeliness,” Fischer explains.  “While it is understandable that it could be too costly and prohibitive to change the physical layout of a plant if the organizational structure is updated, every effort should be made to group people in the logical order of the process.”

The changes at Kutztown Publishing in their use of physical space have produced an interesting byproduct, according to Gottlund.

“Because of the physical changes we actually are negotiating with a customer to move some of their offices into ours,” he says.

Kelly agrees that the physical set up is important since communications is a key to company efficiencies. 

“We have set up our offices to enhance the formal and informal flow of communications among departments,” Kelly explains.  “Currently, we have sales, pricing, scheduling, customer service and purchasing all located as close to each other as possible in order to increase the flow of communications.”

No doubt, says Fischer, that a setup that fosters good communications must be present since the largest and most costly problems are found between the hand off from one department or group to another. 

“Most problems happen between sales and customer service, or customer service to production,” Fischer says.  “Productivity loss in many plants results from a lack of ownership and responsibility for results by people working on the production floor.  Every process and area of the plant must have an owner who is empowered to make decisions and be held accountable for results.”   

 Execution of this communication is also important.

“David (Kutztown Publishing’s other managing partner David Esser) and I split the operation – me in sales and David in ops – but really we both sell,” Gottlund says.  “Therefore, we have an overall person in charge of scheduling and purchasing, and then each work area has a leader that meets daily as a group and turn to us only when there is a problem that cannot be resolved by the group.”

Indeed, Fischer says a workable organization structure must be one where every member of the team must own (not in an equity ownership manner) a part of the business and take responsibility for the results. 

“The Chief Executive cannot own all of the functions of the business.  The best structures are where the owner of the business has outside responsibilities such as sales and marketing, and he has a team of inside people who take care of the customers and manage the work,” he says. 

Technology has certainly played a positive role in communicating and allows a company to conduct its internal business in ways that simply were not possible a short time ago.

“I work from home at times with access to our server, while we also have a combination of Blackberrys and cell phones,” Gottlund says.

This certainly results in a much different organization set up than in the past when the lag in communications was longer and, according to Gottlund, results in shorter turn times on orders and invoicing.

Kelly says NPR also continues to adapt it organization to meet the changing technology requirements of customers and employees

“Our mission statement is ‘To provide the opportunity for self reliant individuals to improve their quality and standard of living’ and that has not changed,” Kelly states. “However, what has changed is the physical facility, the equipment and the skills required to meet the changing needs of our customers.”

So, what drives organizational changes? Fischer’s says continuous improvement is a management discipline that is the responsibility of the owner or CEO of the business. 

“The printing process is still largely a manufacturing process. The well managed companies in this industry recognize that and always make productivity improvements a company priority,” Fischer says. “Without buy in at the top of the organization, improvements will not be possible.”

Invoice
Date: 4/2/10
Invoice Submitted to: Cygnus Business Media
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Assignment article: Where’s the Money: Organization
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