Is Your Dashboard Useless?
In-plants often talk about the need for print production dashboards, but many of those dashboards don't improve anything because they're built on weak information. That is the central message of a new blog by Consultant Howie Fenton, which argues that dashboards only become useful when they are fed by timely, consistent, job-level workflow data rather than monthly totals or after-the-fact reports.
Fenton's new blog explains why common print metrics such as touches, queue time, rework causes, and bottlenecks cannot be pulled reliably from invoices, page counts, or end-of-shift notes. Instead, they depend on disciplined data capture throughout the workflow.
He notes how one manager improved the situation by creating a stronger workflow foundation: structured job intake, consistent service rules, visible status updates, clear ownership at each production stage, and barcode-based tracking at key handoff points. By standardizing data collection and limiting it to practical, meaningful checkpoints, the operation gained trustworthy information it could use to identify at-risk jobs, measure delays, and address recurring causes of waste.
Read Fenton’s blog for a closer look at how better workflow data can turn a dashboard from a passive report into a tool for real production improvement.
- Categories:
- Workflow/MIS/Web-to-Print
Bob has served as editor of In-plant Impressions since October of 1994. Prior to that he served for three years as managing editor of Printing Impressions, a commercial printing publication. Mr. Neubauer is very active in the U.S. in-plant industry. He attends all the major in-plant conferences and has visited 200 in-plant operations around the world. He has given presentations to numerous in-plant groups in the U.S., Canada and Australia, including the Association of College and University Printers and the In-plant Printing and Mailing Association. He also coordinates the annual In-Print contest, co-sponsored by IPMA and In-plant Impressions.
