Automation is critically important to what we do at Mimeo,
and touches every aspect of a job—even when there are manual processes involved
in producing parts of it. The automation
begins with the customer on our web site, and extends to the delivery of their
job.
Automation delivers many features and benefits to them and
to us. Every document we produce
originates as an order placed on our website. The customer brings their content
and uses our interface to tell us how they want their print product produced—
organizing the content, telling us what paper and binding they want, specifying
finishing options like folding or covers.
As they create their piece on the screen, we show them exactly what it
will look like, and provide them with their price in real time.
Automation means the website can look at the choices they
are making, and determine when we can produce the job, so we can tell them
during the process “Submit this order by 10pm Eastern for delivery as early as 8:30AM
tomorrow”, or conversely telling them that a particularly option they’ve chosen
might take us an extra few hours to produce, so will not be able to be
delivered until the next day.
When the order is placed, we already know how much it will
cost to produce, and how much we’re selling it for. We’ve often already collected the money. The best part is: it automatically goes into
production (although some jobs can be automatically routed to preflight or
prepress, if necessary or desirable). In many cases, a job could literally
appear on the workstation of a press operator seconds after the customer
clicks. People throughout the organization have visibility of the job’s status
at all times. Once printing is complete, the job moves through the plant for
finishing, then on to shipping.
Once the job is finished and shipped, a number of different
groups throughout the company take advantage of the data we’ve collected about
the job and our performance to make decisions and continuously improve our products
and operations.
