Automated, single-touch data processes
fuel the future at Lewis Press

One of the biggest issues Lewis Press faced was the time and effort required to input the information for every job. Staff members used filing cards in the prepress department to document the items sold and details about what was to be printed; and created specification sheets in the operations department.

Much of the data was duplicated between these departments, but due to differences, they couldn’t just be photocopied — someone had to hand-copy the pertinent information from one form to the next. This process was incredibly time consuming and left them vulnerable to more errors as they got busier.

“Even production data was captured in these massive spreadsheets, which, although they were wellconstructed with multiple validation tools to try and reduce errors, were still prone to issues,” noted Godwin Pace, Quality Manager, Lewis Press Ltd.

“We even had users occasionally highlight the wrong cells and delete critical data by accident! Plus, those spreadsheets were used to generate the job labels and the final release certificates that went to the clients as well. At each stage, someone had to manually go through and double-check every data point to validate that it was correct.”

“The fact that we never had any critical errors was only due to the sheer commitment of our people, and the exhaustive checking and rechecking of the data,” Godwin adds. “But we couldn’t sustain that kind of process long term.”

The problems went beyond just job tracking. The company tracked raw material storage the same way, with manual records that could often get confusing. Changes required entirely new records to be issued and attached to the jobs, and again, errors were a problem. Inventory in general was tracked in another spreadsheet, with no unique identification number for each item.

The only way to track materials allocated to a specific job — or a completed job that hadn’t yet been delivered — was by segregating it into distinct physical locations.

The delivery and invoicing process was also manual, requiring a note tobe created for each completed job. Once that was done, someone would enter the important details into an entirely separate invoicing system to generate the final bill.

“As the orders from our pharmaceutical customers grew, and with an increasing product portfolio, working with the manual system on a daily basis was becoming more time-consuming and risky,” says Godwin. “In the beginning, there was only one cabinet holding the item cards; with 10 cabinets you had to walk more and spend more time filing and retrieving documents. If you misfiled a document, you either had to search for it or retrieve the data from other source documents. The need for a centralised database was clear.”

“Prior to having the system, a simple call from the client asking for a job status or the status of a number of jobs would entail an exhaustive run around the factory floor to physically check the work in progress,” says Louis Pace, Director of Operations at Lewis Press. “This would have typically required between 20 and 40 minutes of running around. Nowadays, the scheduling tool instantly provides information with a clear view of the production flow, such that feedback to customers is instantaneous without any running about.”