Fox Valley Wins PODi Award
Fox Valley Technical College Printing Services has won an honorable mention award in the Workflow Automation Category in the PODi 2013 Best Practices Awards. It was the only in-plant to be recognized in the competition.
These awards from PODi, the Digital Printing Initiative, recognize outstanding examples of cross-media and relevant direct-marketing campaigns, self-promotion programs and communication applications successfully re-engineered for effectiveness and efficiency, all featuring digital print. Winners will receive their awards at PODi's AppForum, January 28-30 at Planet Hollywood in Las Vegas.
Fox Valley's eight-employee Printing Services operation, located in Appleton, Wis., supplies all students and instructors with curricula and classroom materials, as well as marketing and operational materials.
"We surveyed our customers back in 2009 and asked what we could do to make things easier for them," explains Shana Farrell, Printing Services and Distance Learning Manager, in a PODi case study about the in-plant. "Three common themes really stood out in their responses. They were frustrated by the turnaround times. They didn't like manually filling out work orders. And they really didn't know what our department was capable of doing beyond monochrome copying."
A new Web-to-print to print solution was developed using WebCRD from Rochester Software Associates. With the new workflow Printing Services now enjoys the following benefits:
- 100% of orders are submitted electronically
- 86% cycle time reduction—turnaround time on the average job has gone from two weeks to two days
- 97% of manual work eliminated for digital monochrome work
- 85% of volume now produced in two touches—down from four
With the new solution makeready is virtually unnecessary and all jobs are ticketed automatically.
“We still have to set up some jobs manually, such as manuals with tabs, and non-digital orders,” explains Jessica Van Dyn Hoven, Printing Services Online Administrator. “But now that only represents less than 15% of our work. This has removed a huge bottleneck on the front end.”
Users appreciate the real-time estimate which lets them know their cost ahead of time. They can also preview their job to be sure how it will look.
