Workflow and process management in printing and publishing firms

This paper examines the effects of the dramatic changes incurred in the sector of printing and publishing after the introduction of digital printing. The print production process is rapidly shifting from analogue to digital technologies as the infrastructure (or basis) for workflows. The efficiency of the production process requires the digitalisation of all steps and elimination of analogue methods and materials from the process flow apart from the starting and finishing phase. Across networks, printing will be a dial tone service simple, reliable, ubiquitous, fast, and cheap. The combination of all these aspects offers very important competitive advantages to printing and publishing firms, which will be able to adapt their business processes, according to the technological and organisational framework of digital printing. This includes both the improvement of the already offered services in terms of best-value-for-money publishing and printing as well the introduction of new services. In this article, we present a workflow solution over the web that allows printing and publishing firms to capitalise fully the opportunities offered by digital printing. We also present results from performance measurement and reorganisation after the introduction of the D-PRINT solution to three printing and publishing firms. r 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.