Andrea Silva – 500644670
Kathy Hoang – 500695203
Saba Nassiri-Bavili – 500625701
GCM372 – Operations and Process Management
Instructor: Art Seto
April 3, 2018
TABLE OF CONTENTS
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 3
QUALITY SYSTEMS 4
THE TEAM 4
PROCESSES 4
CHALLENGES & SOLUTIONS 5
PHOTOGRAPH OF GROUP 7
REFERENCES 8
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
This report evaluates the quality control systems and processes to determine any challenges that TC Transcontinental Premedia might have. Through analyzing their procedures, processes and previous challenges, we can begin to find possible solutions that may help increase productivity and the quality of Transcontinental’s products and services.
The research discovered that Transcontinental do not use any digital quality control systems and prefer to go through certain processes manually. However, they still use programs such as Java System, an online markup tool, to help track changes in price and design.
Although TC prefers to control quality manually, it is recommended that they include a system that may help automate and track changes efficiently and effectively to increase productivity and receive results. These results can illustrate the errors, changes, costs, and time, to better portray weak areas that the company may have and be used to discover solutions for those weak areas, and continue to be “Canada’s largest printer and a key supplier of flexible packaging in North America,” (TC, 2018).
QUALITY SYSTEMS
Transcontinental (TC) have set the following procedures and measures to ensure that the quality of of their products and services meets their customers expectations and that errors are reduced, prevented, or eradicated.
Currently, TC Transcontinental Premedia business unit “do not have the software systems driving quality management,” (N. Milner, Personal Communication, 2018). However, TC uses “old school” practices by managing quality through the use of metrics and objectives. They use two perspectives that assist in finding errors: the number of errors that are visible outside the company, and the amount of duplicated time spent in reviewing and repairing errors throughout the production process. Errors visible outside the company are found by the customer or by the print plant from the final files. These perspectives are the two KPI’s (Key Performance Indicators) that are tracked every month by each and every department at TC.
In addition, TC follows a set of guides and standards to help protect their customers brands. TC refers to these as their “Brand Standards” and “Style Guides,” which adhere to each company that they work with. In particular, Lowe’s, Loblaws, No Frills, Home Depot, and more, all have a set of brand and style standards that need to be followed. TC not only checks for mistakes in soft proofs but also ensures that the companies are not making changes that would affect the brand. TC focuses on being their customers “Brand Guardians.” For instance, Canadian Tire wanted to change the red maple leaf in their logo to green, however, TC ensured them that would change their brand’s identities and prevented the modification.
Transcontinental Premedia ensures that they achieve the highest quality. Attention to detail is critical to ensuring that they meet their objectives on time and be productive. However, TC’s methods can be improved through the use of quality management systems to help automate the process and increase productivity.
THE TEAM
The TC Transcontinental Premedia plant in Mississauga has a great production team of personnel that consists of devoted CSR’s, production artists, layout artists, proofreaders, quality control and prepress. Along with all of those people, TC Mississauga also has many personnel working on translation, creative management, copywriting and brand standards. By working together, this wonderful team ensures accuracy and efficiency from beginning to end. They also ensure that products get delivered on time, well within budget and with the best quality possible. The TC Premedia team in Mississauga deals with packaging, print and digital projects of all kinds and sizes, whether they are very complex or really simple.
PROCESSES
TC Premedia have a four step philosophy that they follow in everything they do to ensure high quality, affordable, high frequency content that is at scale. That philosophy follows a process consisting of planning, creating, assembling and managing. In the first part of the process, the key stakeholders of the project get together and through very thorough pre-planning, figure out the best opportunities and ways to leverage spreads and maximize the use of existing budgets. The project then goes into a creation phase where the team provides all the materials (photography, copy and video) needed to create anything from a label to a marketing campaign. Once all the material is gathered, the assembly phase commences. In this phase, the material gets assembled and managed with the use of both technical specifications and brand standards. This all gets done with the end result in mind. The last phase of the process requires lots of management. Customers get provided with completely transparent and comprehensive workflows. Through the use of tools like Digital Asset Management, Java System, Job Management, Soft Proofing, Content Management and a packaging workflow, the customers get visibility into the jobs, easier searches for all of the content and the approval process.
TC Transcontinental uses two different ink drying processes when printing all of their products. The first ink drying process used is the heatset process and is done when ink drys rapidly due to forced-air heating. The oil-based solvents evaporate and leave the waxes, resins and pigments behind. As the paper passes through cooling rollers, the waxes and resins cool-off and set. A sillicone layer is then applied to prevent the ink from offsetting onto other parts of the product during finishing. The other process used is called coldset and occurs through evaporation combined with paper absorbtion. This process is only done with jobs done on uncoated, supercalendered and matte finished paper. These papers allow for proper ink absorption and are therefore excellent for the coldset process.
Different printing processes are used by TC Transcontinental to print different products and ensure quality control. The most common printing process used is offset lithography. Offset produces an even print and is used when printing materials like magazines, newspapers, books, catalogues, brochures, posters, flyers, art reproductions and folding boxes among other things. Another printing process used is flexography. This printing process can print almost any substrate that can somehow be rolled. It is used to print materials made up of large areas of solid colour with brilliance and intense gloss. Some materials that can be printed on by using the flexography process are toilet tissue, flexible packaging, bags and corrugate board. Gravure is a printing process that involves engraving an image into a cylinder of rotary press that serves like an image carrier. It can be used for both short and long runs although long runs are a lot more preferable as gravure can be really expensive. This printing p
rocess is mostly used in the printing of newspaper, catalogues, magazines, photographic reproductions, postage stamps, prin
ted electronics and fine art but also be used for printing corrugated packaging. Digital printing is a process that allows for the creation of products on plateless presses. This printing process allows for the use of variable data but has dimensional volume limitations. Digital printing is for the most part used to print books, specialty publications, direct mail, manuals, billing statements, labels, photos, coupons, yearbooks and more. By knowing how all these presses work, what they can do and what their processes are, TC Transcontinental is able to make decisions that allow for quality assurance and control.
CHALLENGES & SOLUTIONS
Since 1976, TC Transcontinental industries has been regularly anticipating their customers’ needs. They have been an industry leader in innovation and adoption which has been one of their keys to success. Here is a summary of the challenges the company has faced from 1976 to 2017.
Rémi Macroux and his partners first acquired Trans-Continental in 1976. After major restructuring the company generated $2.9 million in revenues and employed 100 people in its first year. The main challenge during this time was production. Print was an already established concept, everyone preferred the physical aspect of the written word as opposed to the spoken word. Thus this period marked one of the highest periods of mass printing, from magazines, to flyers, newspapers, etc. This phase needed Transcontinental to focus on innovation and growth so that they could stay relevant in a saturated market. In the late 70s we see the beginning of Transcontinental innovation streak with the adoption of the door-to-door flyer printing through the acquisition of Publi-Home Distributors. They later continued the evolution of Transcontinental by breaking into the CD production market in the early 90s by acquiring a major stake in Americ Disc, which would go on to become one of the largest producers of CDs. Transcontinental backed their forays into new markets by expanding their proven business of printing. In ‘82 Transcontinental began its first major growth by opening a flyer printing plant in Brampton, Ontario. By ‘86 they moved into the US market with their acquisition of two flyer production companies. Finally by the early ‘90s Transcontinental had established itself as one of the largest printing operations in Canada. We see that Transcontinental success can be seen through their inability to stay placid and instead opting for rapid growth and early adoption of new technologies; this in turn kept them as one of the more relevant printing companies in North America.
We now turn our attention to the mid ‘90s to the mid ‘00s. With it’s printing capabilities firmly established, Transcontinental had the challenge of staying relevant in an ever growing industry. There solution was to delve deeper into the acquisition market. Within this 10 year period they acquired more than 100 regional and national publications, from flyers, newspapers, and magazines. They further expanded their reach in the US by purchasing a few established printing companies with multiple presses in the US. Transcontinental went even further with their expansion into Mexico through their acquisition of Refosa, one of the countries largest commercial printers. A major accomplishment for Transcontinental was the one billion dollar revenue milestone they achieved in 1998. This was in no small part due to their rapid expansion and growth as well as their ability to stay ahead of the innovation curve; they managed this by making several technology acquisitions including CEDROM-SNi which was a Montreal firm specializing in electronic information delivery.
From the mid ‘00s to current we see a further growth of Transcontinental through the acquisitions more publications and various decade long contracts with newspaper publications such as the San Francisco Chronicle. 2010 marked a large shift in the printing industry. Consumers were focused more on the digital consumption of materials through the rise of smartphones. At this point we note an important milestone in the company’s history, the acquisition of LIPSO and Vortex Mobile, both leaders in mobile marketing solutions. Here we note Transcontinental shift from printing to online publications, ahead of the market of the time. They still kept their publication roots in the market of larger, national, publications as opposed to smaller regional ones. 2010 marked a large sell off of regional publications in favour of expanding their national customers as well as their online profile. Their foresight into seeing the decline of print publications in favour of online marketing allowed them to remain an industry leader.
The rich history of Transcontinental allows them to offer a wide range of services to their customers. Their department of Premedia fell into place as a result of this, from their start in printing, to their early shift into the digital marketing and publication business. When offering clients a comprehensive package, from print to digital the area where the biggest bottleneck can occur is printing. Luckily Transcontinental has a long history in printing and they can bring the same time-tested, turnaround times and quality that they have been applying to their other sectors for decades. A large problem in quality control remains communication. For example, how can an art team get their design quickly to the printing department with the least amount of handoffs, where their is a great risk of distortion to the design. That challenge was overcame by Transcontinental through the implementation of TC Transcontinental’s corporate ERP. This allows various departments to quickly and efficiently work together without compromising on quality, which without such a dynamic system would lead to a compromise of either quality of time efficiency.
PHOTOGRAPH OF GROUP
REFERENCES
EFI Packaging Suite – Case Study. (2015). Retrieved from http://www.efi.com/library/efi/documents/715/efi_packaging_suite_transcontinental_cs_en_us.pdf
History. (n.d.). Retrieved April 02, 2018, from
https://tctranscontinental.com/about-us/history
Premedia. Retrieved April 01, 2018 from
https://tctranscontinental.com/premedia
Print Essentials. Retrieved April 02, 2018, from
https://tctranscontinental.com/printing/resources/print-essentials
T., Curcio. (2014, February 4). Print industry news magazine-your connection to the print and graphic arts industry. Retrieved April 01, 2018, from https://graphicartsmag.com/news-archives/2014/02/transcontinental-installs-unique-hp-press-configuration-boost-efficiency-speed/