Mini-Case Study: Defining Standard Projects at Global Green Books Publishing

Global Green Books Publishingis a successful printing and publishing company in its third year. It has survived bringing on a large new customer and all the challenges of new work that this customer needed quickly.

Much of this work for the college is customized eBooks. As the first term progressed with Global Green Books making customized eBooks for this college, several issues affected the quality of the eBooks and caused a great deal of rework for the company. The local university was unhappy as their eBook products sometimes reached campus late for use by professors and students. In some cases, the books were a week or two late.

These projects also challenged the management of Global Green Books. The college expected them to deliver on time and cheaply, and the company was not always doing that. Accounting had difficulty tracking the costs for each book, and the shift supervisor often had problems knowing what tasks needed to be completed and assigning the right employees to each task.

Some of the problems stemmed from the new part-time employees. Since many of these workers had flexible schedules, it was not always clear which tasks they were supposed to work on when they came in. Each book being produced was indeed a book, but that was all they had in common. Each book had different production steps, contents and reprint approvals required, and layouts and cover designs. Some were just collections of articles to reprint once approvals were received; others required extensive desktop publishing. Each eBook was a complex process but would be made just once, as these eBooks were all customized for each professor and course each semester. Each eBook had to be produced on time and had to be made to match exactly what the professors requested.

Understanding what each eBook needs must be documented before starting production. Global Green Books had been told by the college how many different printing jobs the college would need, but they were not all arriving at once, and orders were quite unpredictable arriving from the professors at the college. Some professors needed rush orders for their classes. Some orders arrived as projected, but some came later than anticipated. When Global Green Books finally got all their orders, some of these jobs were much larger than they had thought they would be.

Each eBook needed to have a separate job order prepared that listed all the steps needed to be completed so that tasks could be assigned to each worker. These job orders were also becoming a problem. Not all the steps needed were getting listed in each order. Often, the time estimates for each task were not completed until after the work was done, causing problems as workers were supposed to move on to new tasks but were still finishing their previous tasks. Some tasks required specialized equipment or skills, sometimes from other groups within Global Green Books. Not all new student hires were trained for all the printing and binding equipment used to print and assemble books. Global Green Books wanted to start developing a template for job orders. This template should list all of the possible tasks that should be performed in producing an eBook for the college. These tasks could be broken down into the different phases of the work.

In the Receive Order phase, the order should be received by Global Green Books from the professor or the college, checked and verified, and a job order started. In checking and verifying each order, the customer representative should ensure they have the requester's name, email, phone number, the date needed, and a full list of all contents. They should also verify that they have received all the materials that should be included with that order and have fully identified all the items they need to request permission for. Any problems found in checking and verifying should be resolved by contacting the professor.

All desktop publishing work is planned, estimated, and assigned to production staff in the Plan Order phase. Also, all the production efforts to collate and produce the eBook are identified, estimated, scheduled, and assigned to production staff. Specific equipment resource needs are identified, and equipment is reserved on the schedule to support the planned production effort.

In the Production Phase, permissions are acquired, desktop publishing tasks (if needed) are performed, content is converted, and the proof of the eBook is produced. A quality assistant will check the eBook against the job order and customer order to make sure it is ready for production. Once approved by quality, each of the requested eBook formats is created. A second quality check ensures that each requested format is ready to release to the college.

In a Manage Production Phase, a supervisor will track progress, work assignments, and costs for each eBook in parallel with the Production Phase. Any problems will be resolved quickly in an attempt not to have any rework or delays in releasing the eBooks to the college.

Each eBook will be planned to use the standard job template as a basis for developing a unique plan for that eBook project.

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