While Management Information System (MIS) has been around for over 20 years, if you asked 20 people to explain what an MIS was, you would likely get 20 different answers. Simply defined, MIS is a system for tracking information useful to managers. The information helps to plan for future work, to control the flow of work currently in process and to report on activities completed in the past.

Typically, MIS applications are divided into modules with different portions of the software supporting specific business processes. These modules may seem like stand-alone applications, but their true strength comes from their integration and the fact that they share data in a single database.

The standard modules in an MIS system are usually divided as follows:

Estimating
Defines the individual elements of a job, the processes and materials that will be used to produce them and the associated costs. This information is combined to create an estimate, which in turn is used to generate a quote, define many of the details of an order, inform production scheduling and relay materials requirements to purchasing. The estimating module is the core of MIS systems in the print industry.

Order Entry
This module is used by customer service to maintain customer information, enter orders and track in-process and completed jobs. Order details that are not usually defined in the estimating module (they may not be known at the time of the quote) are typically maintained in order entry, including production instructions and shipping information. Here quotes are converted to orders.

Scheduling
Once an order is received in the system, it must be produced. The scheduling module helps to plan production by determining when and where a job will be produced. Specific equipment, production centers and production steps are identified—and the job is assigned a time to begin activities in one or all of the production centers.

Shop Floor Data Collection
This module captures actual production information for a job. It acts as a record of time and materials, enabling managers to control those key aspects of cost and productivity. Historically, shop floor data collection (SFDC) has involved operators manually entering data against a job using a touch screen, mouse and keyboard to scan barcodes. More and more today, the most advanced implementations integrate with production equipment using a direct machine interface (DMI) so that the MIS system tracks, in real time, the number of units produced and materials used.

Inventory Management
This module tracks materials and other production consumables. Paper, ink, bindery components, plates, chemicals and other items can be defined in the system. Physical characteristics (size, paper caliper, ink mileage, etc.) are added to the item data to support the estimating process.

Items in inventory can be assigned lot numbers and warehouse locations. The quantity on hand in a location can be tracked providing a real time view of the warehouse. Additional information, such as preferred suppliers and desired on-hand quantities are assigned to specific inventory items.

Purchasing
In conjunction with the order entry and inventory modules, the purchasing module generates purchase orders for materials and outside services. An incoming order can automatically generate a requisition, identifying the material quantity required for a specific job. If the material cannot fulfill the required quantity on hand, many systems can convert a requisition to a purchase order. Purchase receipts can be matched with the PO and invoice to support accounts payable processing.

Shipping
This module manages the shipment of a job. Typical functions include generating packing slips, shipping documents and labels, and now include integration into the major online shipping systems available such as UPS®, FedEx® and Purolator®, to name a few, as well as storing tracking numbers, package weights and freight costs.

Accounting
Accounts payable (A/P), accounts receivable (A/R), and general ledger functions are located in this module. Connections to the other modules provide an integrated view of accounting information by customer, supplier and internal cost centre. Since accounting functions have tax and other legal implications, many systems also provide integration with third-party accounting applications.

Job Costing
Though not present in all systems, this module helps analyze the actual costs of specific jobs and the productivity of various resources. Employee, shift, plant, machine, department, etc. can often track productivity. Data from the shop floor data collection module is used to support the costing analysis. At the job level, this data can be compared with the original estimate to identify refinements that can help produce more accurate future estimates.

Executive Dashboards
Executive dashboards deliver a graphical view and real-time status of key performance indicators (KPI) impacting production, customer service, finance, sales and marketing–all with powerful filtering and online analytical capabilities to allow managers to drill down to get to the bottom of a problem or opportunity.

CRM
The promise of customer relationship management (CRM) is a single consistent real-time view of everything to do with a customer, accessible by everyone in the print shop. By bringing a customer-centric view to the job-centric production system, CRM helps enhance the print shop’s sales and marketing efforts by identifying the shop’s most profitable customers for targeted marketing campaigns, identifying “ideal” customers for targeting potential customers, managing and tracking the shop’s lead generation efforts and driving its sales effectiveness through accurate sales forecasting.

Reporting
While not necessarily a module in itself, most systems provide some standard (aka “canned”) reports within each of the other modules. No system provides a complete set of reports that can be used to manage every business, so most systems offer a third-party reporting tool such as Business Objects Crystal Report Writer to enable users to customize the built-in reports and create new reports.

What does an MIS do?
The power of MIS lies in its ability to help employees in performing business functions quickly and consistently. The collective knowledge of the organization is entered into the system; the resulting workflow ensures that the steps are performed in the proper sequence and that business rules are applied to each transaction. The integration between the various system modules enables every job to be tracked as a single entity.

The ability to implement business rules in the system is a key source of the value of MIS. When the application defines and enforces business rules, the organization saves both time and money. This is accomplished by reducing the amount of employee knowledge required to accomplish routine tasks and by reducing human errors that can produce costly mistakes absorbed by the business.

Estimating and quoting provide a prime example of this type of savings. Estimating is the heart of the system. The combination of a good estimator (or estimating department) and the structure provided by the application can avoid production problems, simplify production planning and ensure that the true cost of a job is factored into the price.

Detailed estimates can include specifying each piece of equipment and each manual step in the production process. Once the estimate is turned into an order, integration with the scheduling module enables production managers to see the impacts of incoming work in real time. Shop floor data collection and the reports that go with it enable the organization to see and understand how the performance of a job is impacted by run length, raw materials and other factors. The system’s ability to capture actual performance on previous jobs reduces the chances of repeat mistakes.

Many systems provide estimating templates, which can reduce the estimating department’s efforts in the quoting process. Common jobs can be estimated once and quoted to customers many times. Customer service representatives (CSRs) can use existing estimates to create properly priced bids in minutes. If a quote requires a different material, the system can update the cost based on the material price and automatically adjust the planned running speeds of presses and finishing equipment automatically. For example, a change from a 20lb. bond to an 80lb. cover involves more than a change in the cost of the paper.

Most systems also enable notes to be added to a job and carry those through to every step in the process. Bloated job folders with sticky notes, illegible handwriting and confusing instructions are replaced with standard messages and easy-to-understand work orders. Some systems can even provide electronic job tickets so that equipment operators can see instructions and make notes directly from the shop floor on their data collection workstations.

Technology and Connectivity
Some MIS applications offer limited connectivity to external applications and equipment. In small shops, this may not matter, as everyone will use the MIS for most of their job functions, with third-party applications limited to prepress and the office productivity suite. In these cases, it doesn’t matter if the MIS package has strong integration capabilities.

In larger environments, multiple applications and multiple vendors are a reality. Companies invest in best-in-class applications and equipment in design, prepress as well as in the pressroom and bindery. In this case, the MIS has an important role to play, acting as the information hub of the shop–automatically sending and receiving data from the different software applications and equipment throughout the shop (see figure below).

For several years now, the high-end systems have provided the ability to integrate MIS directly with production equipment. One of the first applications to integrate with MIS was shop floor data collection, using a direct machine interface (DMI). This technology simplifies SFDC by providing operation counts directly into the data collection system. The operator simply selects the activity to be performed, turns on the counter, and the technology records both the time and materials automatically.

MIS can extend the power of these manufacturer-driven applications by providing a point of integration. Job information entered into MIS can be passed automatically to multiple devices, benefitting the production floor staff.

Some MIS systems provide automated scheduling functions that can compare workload to capacity and graphically represent the schedule by week, day and hour. Schedules can be driven by start time, due date and customer priority. More advanced scheduling features can support “what if” analyses enabling the scheduler to compare different scenarios before committing to one schedule. Some applications even support dynamic task scheduling. If a job is moved ahead in the schedule for a press, the application can automatically move the job ahead in the prepress department. This ensures that the job will be ready for the press at the scheduled time.

The MIS can show all of these production impacts in real-time. An operator can view a change in a job schedule immediately, ensuring that the proper job is processed next. With shop floor data collection, the location and status of a job can be identified by anyone with access to the system. When system access is combined with DMI, managers even have the ability to see the percentage completed at any time. If a job is running long, schedule changes can be made right away, enabling the production team to quickly respond to unexpected events.

What is the role of JDF?
Job definition format (JDF) is a technology standard defined by the CIP4 organization and built upon the widely-used extensible markup language (XML). JDF provides a common language and vocabulary that enables applications from different manufactures to communicate with each other. This standard is being adopted by an increasing number of software and equipment manufacturers. Recent developments in defining interoperability standards have led to improved compatibility between vendors.

During the creative process, JDF can be used to communicate job specifications for the artwork. The MIS can combine this information with process-specific details contained in the estimate to determine exact production parameters required by JDF-enabled equipment. JDF messages (in job messaging format or JMF) are then sent to vendor applications, driving equipment configurations and run quantities. JMF also allows devices on the shop floor to communicate processing and production information to the MIS.

Before JDF was available, these types of communications were possible only if the software developers created a custom interface between two systems. As the number of systems in an environment increases, the number of interfaces has to grow with it. The interface development process is slow and expensive and has severely limited the number of applications that can interact. In the past, most of this integration was between products from a single vendor.

Now, a software developer has to implement a JDF interface only once. This interface can be reused to integrate with applications from multiple vendors, reducing development costs and increasing flexibility. The trend towards JDF integration continues to gain momentum and makes this technology an important capability for MIS.

How does MIS affect customer relationships?
Customer service is always a hot topic. Print shops are under a lot of competitive pressure and are constantly looking for ways to maintain profit margins and avoid bidding wars that shrink margins to near zero. Their ability to provide better service and faster job turnaround is a key component to this strategy.

Customer service reps can provide more information in less time by using MIS. Improving CSRs’ access to data and providing more information to customers can require changes to the way an organization does business; but, the result is improved speed, accuracy and extended customer service.

Most systems provide the ability to offer customer-specific products and pricing. This enables a company to offer tailored programs to each customer, while reducing the burden on staff. CSRs are no longer required to memorize the list of rules for each customer. They learn to access information in the system, and the system provides the rules, products and prices for each customer.

The Print Shop that never closes: the role of Web-to-Print
The leading providers of MIS solutions also offer Web-to-Print solutions. These solutions provide print shops with an effective way for customers to place and track orders “anytime from anywhere.” MIS plays a critical role in this process. As the repository of all the information about customers, pricing, jobs, products and inventory levels, the MIS system can share this data with internal and external users in real time (see figure below). This moves some of the cost of customer service to the customer in exchange for better and faster turnaround time on jobs.

How does MIS impact staff?
Some employees view technology as a threat to their jobs and a source of increased problems. Others become concerned that the system may expose and highlight performance problems that have been easy to hide. But star performers usually welcome the automation and assistance that MIS provides.

A forward-thinking organization will take advantage of the benefits of MIS to enable employees to spend time on value-added activities. Automating mundane and repetitive administrative tasks should give employees more time to provide improved customer service and focus on quality. Companies that embrace technology are more nimble and can more rapidly respond to their increasingly demanding customers.

Technology has long been an important factor in conducting business. As our reliance on technology increases, so does the pace of technology. Organizations that use technology to their advantage are more successful than those that don’t. The PIA has found that investing in technology is one of the primary differences between the 25% of printers who are profitable and the 75% who are not.