Quality Control and Your Orders
When it comes to your projects, the Cushing team is here to provide optimal customer service for an incredible experience.
Did you know we use an incredibly powerful, homegrown production system?
It includes two features that play a major role in quality control and prevention of mistakes or project errors.
Although they appear very different on the surface, both have a direct correlation to the level of quality work we output, whether pertaining to a specific job or making edits to the entire production workflow.
Proof Sheet
The proof sheet utilized by the Color Operators is an editable form linked into each project number. These forms are initially completed by the operators with basic project information, including:
- Client Name
- Project Number
- Project Ship Date
And then more specific information, for example:
- Finished Cut Size
- Are their Pantone colors?
- Project File Name
- Specific Finishing Needs or Requirements
The operator attaches small thumbnails of the graphics that assist in the next step of using these proof sheets.
Ultimately, the form serves as a quality control checklist as it is managed from one department to the next. Eventually, it ends up with a Color Coordinator who either approves or rejects the completed graphics.
Reorder Analysis
The other function, utilized mainly by myself and the production manager pertains to re-do orders. These are orders that had to be reprinted due to issues ranging from ink spots on a print to dust under a laminate. Once completed properly, they are pushed into color verify in our order system.
It is our responsibility to assess (bi-monthly) where the incidents occurred, whether there are incident trends, and what can be done to prevent them from reoccurring.
Re-do orders include information regarding what happened to cause a reprint – they also reference an original order number which can be looked up in the system and assessed.
In using the system this way, we have been able to determine when a machine is due for maintenance, which clients need slightly more attention than another (of course – all clients receive top notch customer service at Cushing!) and which materials we should eliminate from our inventory.
Using the Cushing Order System for quality control and tracking trends, we are able to anticipate challenges and most importantly, prevent incidents!
What questions or thoughts do you have on the Cushing order system? Please drop in your thoughts in the comments box below!
