Fewer spreadsheets

The usual way

Who has which job lives on a whiteboard, in a spreadsheet or in somebody's head. A job is checked, or says it is. The soonest job is the one somebody remembers. When two people open the same file, the second save wins.

What Studio Cloud does

• A job has one holder. It is held against a person's account, so two people with the same name are two people, and Take it is a deliberate act.
• A check is a person's, with a time. Mark as checked keeps who and when, and a supervisor reads it on the job's row.
• The shop's work is one list. Jobs finds a job by name, customer, order number or person. Orders have due dates, and the soonest comes first.
• The day is shared by who is here. Hand out today's jobs suggests who takes each job, from who is signed in today and how many jobs each holds, and you change any line before you press Hand these out.
• The day's plan suggests which press takes which job, grouped so there are the fewest roll changes, and a supervisor puts the day on the presses in one go.
• Jobs on one stock share a roll. The roll view draws what is waiting along the whole roll, and Studio says when it is full enough to print.
• The press board shows what each press last reported and the jobs waiting to be fetched.
• Nobody saves over anybody. Only one window holds a job for saving, and the second is told who has it and offered Save a copy.
• Every save is kept, and Go back to this opens an earlier one.

What it means for a shop

• A supervisor can say who has what, and what is due, without asking.
• A check means something, because it has a name and a time.
• The morning's plan is a suggestion with the sums done, not a blank page.

What it does not do

It does not schedule your RIP. The press keeps its own queue, and a person at the press starts every job. The day's plan is a proposal.

Read more

Hand out a job and mark it checked, Jobs, orders and bulk orders, The day's plan and Ganged rolls and Print at N% full.