In earlier blogs we discussed the past Mac font issues. For those of you who don't use many this may sound strange. But for designers and service providers the latest OS may have solved some font problems but created more. Here's a few:

• There are more places to put fonts in OSX (6) then ever existed in the previous OS and more font types. As a result  I see many computers with the same fonts installed 2 or 3 different places, often the same font in different formats which is creating some of the font problems. Some companies (Adobe & Microsoft) create and look for fonts in more locations which adds to the complexity of management.

• In different versions of OSX there are different fonts that are essential for the system to work. If you move or something happens to one of these fonts the system may not work.

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In an earlier blog we talked about a training program that included both basic and advanced ideas to help people understand the value of workflow.  One of the concepts I consider very basic to the analysis of a workflow is flowchart or process map.

I find myself doodling flowcharts on napkins and newspapers in restaurants and airports while I talk to people on my cell phone. I am referring to the simplest of all flowcharts with start/stop points, arrows and decision boxes which typically point to bottlenecks in the process. Understand that what  I am describing is not complicated a flowchart overlaid over different departments, the plant layout and it was not very granular (in-depth).

What surprised me was that some people said it was a bit too in-depth a tool, did not have much practical application and did not offer much value. This is...Read More

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In a earleir blog we talked about how frustating using many fonts on the Mac can be. Adding to this frustration was the hope and promise that when the Mac OS went through its greatest evolution to OSX that many of these problems would disappear.

• There was the dreaded font id conflict. If two fonts had the same font id number one would be randomly assigned a new number just for that machine.

• There was talk that the jaggied screen font issues would disappear. In OS X, antialiasing qualities are built-in, so there's no need for a separate application to make PostScript fonts appear properly on screen. In addition, Adobe talked abou how it was discontinuing ATM (Adobe Type manager) but that it licensed the ATM code to Apple for inclusion in the new OS.

• Apple created a font management tool called Fon

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I created a workflow training program recently for a manufacturer who wanted their salespeople to understand the competitive advantage and extra value provided by workflow automation. At first glance this objective sounds fairly straight forward – but it is actually much harder then you might expect. 

One of the challenges is trying to explain what a “typical” or “average” workflow looks like. Why? Because there is no “typical” or “average” workflow.

Believe it or not every company has a different workflow. Some are closer to an 1980’s analog workflow while others are closer to a present day digital / hybrid workflow.  So the first challenge is to explain several different generations of workflow just to start to understand the different possible tools and issues.

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One way to try to explain the level of frustration people can experience when trying to overcome font issues on the Mac is that it is like trying to restart a roll of tape or plastic wrap after it has merged back with the rest of the role. You can peel off small slivers but the more slivers you remove the worse the problems become. The same is true on the Macintosh. No matter how Apple changes the OS (Operating System) or which font tools you try to use, for “the rest of us”  it just seems to make the problems more pervasive and insidious.

It does not matter if you’re a designer or service provider font problems are professional agnostic, they frustrate everyone equally. If you're a graphic artist and have shipped your files to a service provider of any kind, you've probably experienced the dreaded “font phone call”.

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If you did not see the Olympics on Monday night you missed quite a show. In the first few rotations of equipment the guys were much more consistent and had a better attitude then most of the other contenders. As a result they were looking like Silver contenders until the pommel horse.

Considering all the adversity they experienced after Hamm, the 2004 Olympic all-around champion, withdrew from the Games because of hand and shoulder injuries and his twin brother, Morgan, withdrew last week because of a sore ankle – most analysts counted them out of contention.

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In a recent blog we talked about measurement and its role in day to day operational decision making which is a sign of the transition in our industry. There are many aspects of the printing industry in transition and whether companies or staff admit it or not. It does not matter if you are a large conglomerate. a mom and pop shop or even an inplant reprographics department - everyone, everywhere is in one stage or another of this transition. In the most simplest of terms the change is from the philosophy that the printing process is an art or a craft to the opinion that it is a science or based on new technologies.

One piece of evidence  of this transition is the way the company is managed. Many managers and supervisors who grew up in shops where printing was a craft manage by intuition and experience. Those who studied printing as a subject may focus more o...Read More

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Last blog we talked about, the act of measurement, itself, impacts the results of the measurement. Interesting enough this is not something new - but actually well know in Psychology circles.

Come on. I can’t be the only one with a psychology degree and just dying for a way to use it?

Psychologists call this the Hawthorne effect. In one of the great ironies in research. This effect was discovered by Harvard professor Elton Mayo while Dr. W. Edward's Deming was working on his Ph.D. in the Western Electric Hawthorne plant in Chicago. Deming is considered one of the fathers of the quality movement.

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I am heading down to Washington for the NAPL Management Institute and thinking about some of the strange things about workflow improvement efforts. Without going into detail there is a very strange thing that occurs just because you start to look at something closely using measurements.

The act of measurement, itself, impacts the results of the measurement. Just as dipping a thermometer into a vial of liquid can affect the temperature of the liquid being measured, the act of collecting data, where none was collected before creates a situation that didn't exist before, thereby affecting the results.

For us in the graphic arts there is this more obvious then in prepress department and the press room. All you have to do is chart waste or spoilage, put this chart in a production area and people will start to ask about it and become motivated to see the...Read More

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I was having a conversation today with our marketing director about some direct mail cards we are sending out promoting our consulting services. The cards look good they are professionally designed, printed on offset presses and are scheduled to mail 2- 3 times over the next couple of months.

As an evangelist of the benefits of variable  data printing or VDP I am constantly trying to find aways to take advantage of the technology and add success stories to my arsenal of war stories. So I suggested that we consider variable data printing.

As usual, the question was “How can we print variable data without using a digital press?” There is actually more then one way. You can inkjet over four color, you can print black toner over four color, but for this job I was thinking of a simple black plate change, during the offset press run....Read More

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Last time we joked about reorganizing the plant layout. I gained a lot of experience with this a few years ago when I worked for small printing franchise. The wanted some best practices about how to organize a new site and how to evolve the layout as the application mix changed.

I visited a number of their sites and looked for common denominators or that made the leaders the leaders. One the best practice was a good plant layout. Here are 4 (too obvious) best practices about physical plant layout:

•     no consecutive workflow steps in a process should be further then 7 paces apart (21 feet)
•     materials and tools should be within 3 paces (9 feet) of each step
•     find the common paths people walk and the points at which they intersect and create workflows that

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In several previous posts we discussed cost savings measures. Every once in a while I make a cost saving recommendation only to hear that it is too obvious. One example of this is reorganizing the plant layout..

I wish you could see the Cheshire Cat grin on my face as I write this because  I always laugh inside when some tells me a recommendation is too obvious. I always wonder if I should say that’s an oxymoron or just eliminate the oxy prefix and tell them what  I really think. How can anyone complain its too obvious why they are not doing it?

But lets not forget what happened to the Cheshire Cat in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. The King and Queen of Hearts ordered him or her beheaded. So while I am laughing inside I am also holding my tongue .. and my neck.

Next time more on the Physical plant layout and less on keeping you facial parts intact.

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