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Expert L. Expert is the principal consultant of his company, a firm specializing in process analysis, and strategic development of firms in the fields of electronic publishing, design, premedia, and printing across the globe. He began in the graphic arts as a commercial photographer, and has since founded several prepress and printing operations. His experience includes expertise in Cross Media Publishing, with an extensive background in pre-media and printing processes. He has consulted with many users, vendors, and government agencies in the industry on a wide variety of issues. Projects include global production and data management solutions; book, magazine and package publishing technologies and processes; remote production systems development, color management and process collaboration systems. He is currently the Chairman of the GWG (Ghent Workgroup), and sits on many national and international standards bodies.

This project was for the design and print division of Crane & Co., a large 240 year old domestic printer and paper manufacturer. They had been using a 30 year old publishing system to support their manual and web based processes.

We designed and developed a backward compatible system that decreased their design production process cost and time by approximately 50%. Additionally it is based on international standards and has support for future growth and technologies.

As a part of this project we also did a production audit of their print manufacturing facility. This audit looked at quality, efficiency, and cost factors in an effort to give them a road map for optimization.
Fred Meyer, a division of Kroger, a major Northwestern Retailer, was interested in streamlining their catalog and circular design and production process. The goal was to integrate data from multiple disparate systems, including merchandising, sales, inventory, customer rewards program, and their image data bank.

Once the systems were integrated, we designed and implemented an automated selection process for page content to facilitate the production of the catalogs, circulars, and web site. We guided them through the research of requirements, creation of design and specification, RFP creation and evaluation, and the ultimate implementation.

Completion of this phase of the project resulted in a reduction of 40% of the production cycle time, streamlined communications, and initial savings of over $4M for the first year.
Whirlpool, the worlds largest major appliance manufacturer has a number of internal, and external creative service groups, located in various international divisions as well as in their corporate headquarters in the Midwestern US.

This long term project was to develop systems that would allow them to produce, store, catalog, and share their increased, and changing volume of creative resources electronically, with the creative groups, output vendors, other interested members of the corporation, as well as customers.

Our goal was to make all of the creative resources available to the rest of the corporation, by integrating this creative system with a corporate wide document management system. We started with a long range plan, that included corporate department reorganization and consolidation of creative resource management, as well as some changes to the infrastructure. After that, we researched and implemented a centralized creative file management system into the corporate headquarters, and designated additional resources to be mirrored in some of the other divisions. In addition we researched and implemented a system to handle order entry, job scheduling, costing and tracking, and department charging. We also developed and implemented a data driven web to print system that facilitated custom creation of builders appliance selection pages for new construction. This included integration with customer and other data systems.

They needed a way to streamline their digitization of photographs, which included scanning and digital photography in order to insure a high level of quality and consistency in all of their publishing endeavors. We implemented color management systems in the entire creative group, and determined that the scanning was best handled though a Facilities Management relationship. We managed the RFQ and selection, and implementation processes. Finally we developed and implemented systems and procedures for working with their external design agencies and output vendors. These systems include process requirement development and verification. In addition, we developed a new process work flow to handle the input of the creative groups, and a streamlined print purchasing process.
The Flint Group, a major international manufacturer of graphic arts consumables wanted to explore new lines of business. This new business was to complement their existing business and support their customer base, as well as expand further into the creative publishing market. Ideally it would have a service component as part of business.

Our final plan was to create a service business that would use a subscription or transaction based technology to enable customers to streamline and ensure color control throughout the publishing and production processes. Additionally there were other components that would include process support and consulting opportunities.

We did extensive research to establish the potential market size for a new business of this type, and presented the plan to the board of directors. When we got the OK to proceed, we developed the business plan and created a three component solution. This ultimately included new software software development, researching and negotiating cooperative business relationships as well as packaging of the business offerings.
Random House, one of the largest book publishers in the US was interested in developing a way to migrate from conventional paper based publishing methods to an electronic process of preparing books. This process would be required to support paper as well as electronically distributed product.

The project required an evaluation of existing systems. We coordinated the evaluation of future needs and requirements, and the development of a plan for a staged implementation. Stage one was the restructuring of the Publishing Technologies department, to be able to support the up-coming process changes. Stage two included identifying training needs and developing and executing programs, for all of the departments involved in the book creation process. We worked with internal staff, as well as outside authors and packagers to insure a complete solution and a smooth transition. In stage three we are working with a joint team of Publishing Technologies, and IT departments to develop the necessary server and workstation configurations, and RFQ’s for equipment purchases, and some specialized software development. We were actively involved in the vendor evaluation, and selection process as well as final negotiations.