Think You Know Print Workflows? Take This Workflow Quiz to Find Out

Do you think you and your staff have a pretty good understanding of print production workflows? Would you like an independent assessment? Take this 9-question quiz and see how you do.

Print Workflow Quiz

1. Why is your workflow important? Because it impacts or determines your

a. … product price, bottlenecks, turnaround times

b. … customer experience, manufacturing cost, turnaround time

c. … pain points, customer experience, product price and profitability

d. … bottlenecks, pain points, price and profitability

2. What determines the efficiency of your workflow?

a. Hardware and software

b. Memory and hard disk space

c. Staff, training, equipment, procedure

d. Lean or Six Sigma procedures

3. In which departments are workflows important?

a. Sales, customer service/order entry, prepress, pressroom, finishing, billing

b. Customer service/order entry, prepress, pressroom

c. Customer service/order entry, prepress, billing

d. Sales, customer service/order entry, prepress, finishing, billing

4. What are the most recognized workflow software product categories?

a. Aleyant Pressero, EFI PrintSmith, Esko Automation Engine

b. Canon PRISMA, HP SmartStream, Ricoh TotalFlow, Xerox Freeflow

c. Web to print, Print MIS, Prepress PDF

d. Adobe Creative Suite, MS Office Suite, Google Docs

5. How can I identify workflow problems?

a. Measure the time for different people to do the same tasks

b. Find departments with the most work in progress

c. Flowchart the workflow

d. Create a spaghetti diagram of the paths everyone walks

e. All the above

6. What is Job Floor Tracking and why is it important?

a. Tracking jobs from station to station, it helps identify bottlenecks and confirm production times

b. Placing yellow lines on the floor to let staff know where to walk

c. It’s a tool to create spaghetti diagrams that shows how people walk through the shop

d. It is an inventory management system for paper

7. Which software is missing from most printing companies?

a. Web to print (e-commerce)

b. Print MIS (management information system)

c. Prepress PDF workflow

d. CRM (customer relationship management)

8. What is meant by too many workflows?

a. Offset workflow, toner workflow, large format workflow

b. Business card workflow, #9 envelope workflow, 3-piece match and mail workflow

c. Color match offset, color match toner, color match poster, workflows

d. All the above

9. Which of these expressions go together?

Web to print
Print MIS
Color management
PDF workflow
JDF
VDP
Ecommerce
2D barcodes
Job floor tracking
Prepress
ColorSync
Finishing
Marketing
XML

Answers

#1 Answer b: Workflow determines turnaround time because it can eliminate or reduce the time of steps. Workflow impacts customers experience because it provides online and/or mobile functionality and communication. Workflow affects manufacturing cost, not price or profitability, because cost is a fact and price and profits are a philosophy.

#2 Answer c: Your workflow is determined by staff, training, equipment, and procedures. You could have the best hardware and software and work with too few, poorly trained, or bad procedures and be unproductive. Similarity you could have world class procedures such as Lean or Six Sigma and the worst equipment and be unproductive.

#3 Answer a: Workflow is important in every step in the process. The only tricky part of this question is that not all workflow can integrate to a sales (CRM) system such as SalesForce, but some of the manufacturers have built their own modules into their software.

#4 Answer c: Web to print, Print MIS, Prepress PDF

#5 Answer e: All the above

#6 Answer a: Tracking jobs from station to station, it helps identify bottlenecks and confirm production times

#7 Answer d: In the evolution of print workflow software, the three original components are Print MIS, prepress PDF software and web to print software. In comparison the request for CRM functionality is relatively new and only integrated or offered in a limited number of programs.

#8 Answer d: All the above

#9 Answers:

Web to Print – Ecommerce

Print MIS – Job floor tracking

Color management – ColorSync

PDF workflow – Prepress

VDP – Marketing

JDF – XML

Finishing – 2D barcodes

How to Score

If you score questions #1-8 as one point each and count each correct word pair in question #9 as 1 point, you have 15 possible points.

If you got:

13 or more – Congratulations! The ways of the workflow are strong with you and you are a Workflow Jedi.

10-13 – You are Workflow Guru.

7-10 – You are Workflow Padawan.

Less than 7 – You are a Workflow Apprentice and should read up some more on workflows. You can start here. Or, simply outsource to a reliable trade printer like SinaLite.