Moneyball Lessons

A recent airline trip lead me to do something I rarely do: watch a baseball movie. But "Moneyball: Winning at an Unfair Game" is not your usual sports flick, and the lessons it teaches about trusting analysis over instinct and overcoming established habits to move ahead apply perfectly to our trade. In the movie, the Oakland A’s can’t compete effectively against the big budget teams until they abandon traditional approaches to team building based on gut instinct and batting averages. After switching to an innovative system of meaningful statistics ignored by other teams ,they go on the the longest winning streak in history with a rag-tag team of misfits, but not before facing doubt and skepticism from old timers within their own organization. The conflicts in “Moneyball” were so familiar to me that the movie could have been made about the graphic arts industry, except for the complete lack of glamour in our business. Just as in the movie, printing has been dominated by two persistent errors: trusting instinct over analysis, and placing too much faith in the wrong statistics. And just as in the movie, changing these old habits can mean hurting some feelings and taking chances on a new approach. “Eyeballing” color on press is the exact equivalent of judging player’s potential by their looks, and an overemphasis on density as a control metric is just as unsuccessful as relying on batting average as the determining statistic for ball players. In “Moneyball” a new system of statistics called Sabermetrics replaces unhelpful batting average statistics with more meaningful measurements such as On Base, Speed Score and Fielding-Independent Pitching. In the new approach to printing, the old metric of Ink Density is replaced by L*a*b* values, TVI and Gray balance. The Oakland A’s manager Billy Beane found that change was difficult, but worthwhile. Change is tough in printing too, but when done right it can lead to impressive winning streaks

Technology is Not the Answer

Every once in a while I get the feeling that the print industry's ability to think clearly is declining along with its market share. Printers with shrinking pockets put hard-to-find resources into expensive technological fixes in the hope that with this new widget, everything will change. There is about this something of the Hail Mary pass: One last trick to try before the clock runs out.

That's why I was so happy to see this article from Jennifer Matt at What They Think. She argues the dream of the technological fix has become almost an article of faith, a blind belief in technology is preventing printers from finding truly effective solutions that transcend technology.

The big three:

1. Strategy.
2. Focus
3. Execution.

Technology is part of the answer, but it is not THE answer. Or as Lance Armstrong would say,"It's Not About the Bike."

It's All Downhill from Here!

You know, there is something about process control that's a lot like water: it doesn't flow uphill. A lot of commendable work on process control starts down in the trenches, with serious committed workers who want to see things get better, and often it falis to pan out. What happens? Here's the problem. Quality control is really about creating a feedback loop of communication-correction-comunication. That means that all the parts have to be both connected and active. No everyone is interested, and so breaks appear in the feedback loop, and it eventually breaks down.

Since individuals in different departments don't tell each other what to do (they haven't the authority) when one player decides he isn't interested, that's the end of it. Ciao process control!

That's why process control is a downhill game, There has to be support from the the top making sure that everybody keeps the feedback loop going.

Supercrunchers!

Can we really tell how well a pressrun will match a proof will look by measuring a few patches on the tail of the sheet? A lot of old time pressmen will tell you that it's impossible, that "We're not selling colorbars", and that there is no substitute for careful eyeballing on press.

Well, some smart decision makers are finding that crunching the right data can lead to uncannily accurate predictions on everything from the price of next year's Bordeaux to future world population to how long your marriage will last. It's called Supercrunching, and the concept is causing quite a bit of excitement. They are doing it "by the numbers", and in many cases, are doing it when the stakes are very high.

So why is it that so often, we don't do it in the pressroom. What if I told you that, based on just three measurements, taken in under 10 seconds, that I could predict with better than 90% accuracy how well a press sheet would match a proof. Supercrunching on press works, and if you aren't doing it, you may be missing the best way to imp[rove productivity and quality.

The Male Code and the Pressroom

We all know about the Male Code, those rules that govern the behavior of guys: Always split the lunch bill in two, no matter what, never speak in a public restroom, and never, ever, ever ask for directions.

But how about the male code in the pressroom? Pressmen are mostly guys, does some form of the Male Code exist in the pressroom, and how does it affect performance?

The central tenent of the Male Code-never, ever, ever ask for directions.-is probably the biggest obstacle to great presswork. Presses are pesky things, subject to all sorts of mechanical and atmospheric conditions. These variable factors affect press performance, especially in the area of dot gain. Now a pressman has limited control over dot gain, but dot gain is easily changed by the use of plate curves. Problem is, plate curves are set up over in the prepress department, and getting a change made would involve asking for help-a direct violation of the Male Code.

Overcoming the Male Code in the pressroom is a tough problem, and we will talk about different ways to get over this obstacle in future posts.

Solving Our Problems with Stuff

Every time I return to work from a trip to a trade show or technical conference, I have the same impression: "Wow!" "How about all that stuff!" By stuff I mean all the solutions that get presented to a rapt audience. Workflows! Systems! Solutions!Transformative Technologies!.

It really can make your head spin. All that great-looking stuff! But will it work? Will it provide the solution it promises? Will it solve your problems? Will it make your workplace better, your production more efficient, your quality more outstanding? Well, I'm not really so sure. In fact, I'm pretty sure that in a lot of cases it won't make things better. And this isn't because it isn't good stuff. It probably is. But it probably wont solve you problems because most of the problems we face in the color business have nothing to do with the stuff....they have to do with the people.

We are all in a project together...to make great color, by offset, screen, or digital, and most of the stuff needed to do this is probably already in place. What we need now is communication and coordination. We need to become a team. Enjoy looking at the stuff? Go ahead, enjoy. We all like good gear. But for real improvement, look first to yourselves, to your team, and ask the question: "How can we make things better with the stuff we already have?"

New Viewing Standard

Well, I can't believe how long it has been since I posted to the blog. Shame on me! A lot happened at the recent IPA color conference in Phoenix, but one of the most interesting developments happened outside of the official events. Great! Real world events race ahead of planned presentations!

The new standard for lighting, ISO 3664, specifies increased UV content. What does this mean? That extra UV energy is invisible by itself, but it excites the optical brighteners in many commercial printing papers, making them look brighter and bluer. Problem is, during the past few years, zero optical brightener has become a strong tend in proofing papers. The result is that proofing papers, with zero OBA's, and printing papers, with sometimes very large amounts of OBA's, look completely different when viewed under the new UV-rich lighting.

The problem is not really new, but the new standard has made it more noticeable in the light booth. That's a good thing, because we want our light booth to reflect real life, but in a controlled way. Proofing paper manufacturers may be reconsidering the zero OBA focus, and we will cover that in a future blog.

Reflecting on Dot Gain

Dot gain, one of the fundamental metrics of printing, has recently come to be called TVI or Tonal Value Increase. It's a distinction without a difference, an attempt to deal with the fact that digital prints may not have dots, but specs. Maybe we could call it spec gain. Both terms describe the tendency for tonal gradations to "gain weight" as a part of the reproduction process.

Old-school thinking was "Low dotgain good, high dotgain bad". Since CTP, thinking has switched. The feeling is that as long as we can control dotgain with curves, everything should be fine. but there is a fallacy here. As dot gain or TVI increases, press stability decreases. The curves that control excessive dot gain amplify normal press variations. The result is a shaky, unreliable press that can't be controlled. The moral: uses curves for minor correction when needed, but beware of overly-strong corrections. In the long run, they will fail you.

Our industry is changing so quickly that almost all discussion turns immediately to technology: the newest widget, the hottest trend, or the most advanced new application. So it is especially refreshing to see that at the latest PODI AppForum-where you'd expect to hear a 100% focus on new technologies-at least one attendant heard a different message.

For Cory Sawatski of Consolidated Graphics, the takeaway was....training!

"I came here basically to see what everybody else was talking about in the digital realm, data management, asset management, data mining, digital print, cross media and that’s all kind of represented here. I’ve seen a number of the speakers so far and one of the areas that seems really intriguingly important that I really haven’t heard so much before is training. I’m hearing everybody talk about train, teach your people"

Check out the video on What They Think. Exotic technology comes and goes, but training your workforce.....that's an advantage that sticks!

Solar Powered Printing Press

A solar powered printing press still sounds futuristic, and probably little impractical, but in fact a working solar press was demonstrated back in the '80s.....the 1880's.

Abel Pifre demonstrated his press in 1882 and used sunlight concentrated using an 11 foot concave reflector. He envisioned the device being practical for areas such as Peru and Egypt, where sunlight is practical.

Sadly, while technically successful, the solar press never became a commercial success, Tony McGinley tells the whole story in his sustainable energy blog.