MAPPING OUT SUCCESS

Kevin Burke of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel described a cross-functional preprint team’s efforts to understand and improve work processes during the past two years.

The effort, started in 1998, sought to identify critical areas that needed improvement, to map out how jobs were done and to change and improve processes, the paper's application and development manager said during a Wednesday session.

While the team has identified and attacked several problems, they noticed right away poor communication from sales and ad-order entry through the distribution centers and delivery. "Everybody knew what they were doing but didn’t know what others were doing," Burke said.

That showed clearly the newspaper needed to map out work processes, the steps detailing how each job is done so problem areas can be identified and corrected.

The task force decided to talk to the people who do the work and brought front-line employees together from all areas that work with any facet of inserting.

Five teams representing the various skill sets mapped out the process from start to finish, he said.

Milwaukee staffers were using flow-charting and process-mapping software elsewhere in their business, so they weren’t hesitant to seek systems to do the same in production, according to Burke.

The company chose software from Visio, Seattle, Wash. (www.visio.com) but also considered software made by Allclear, a Chicago company, at www.spss.com.

Burke offered tips to help tackle the process:

o Have each person write on self-sticking notes each step in their job.

o Include everyone in the process, because no job is too small.

o Put the self-sticking notes on a wall or flip chart, and lay them out in the order the work is done.

o Complete the entire process without eliminating any steps.

For continuous improvement he suggested:

o Eliminating obvious duplicated steps that don’t add value to the end product.

o Developing and applying standards at key checkpoints to prevent errors from occurring too late in the process.

o Automating the steps in the process as much as possible.

o Getting feedback from internal and external customers.

o Using the process map to develop new procedures and to establish training plans.

-Bob Sims