Production

• Production cycle time improvement: Reduced book development cycle by 33% at a large trade publisher, now part of Random House, through process mapping and redesign. (Trade6)
• Vendor capacity planning: Developed process and system to forecast and share required vendor capacity by service and commodity type. Forecast is generated monthly and provided to vendors through an online vendor portal. the ability to provide these forecasts was a key factor in vendor contract negotiations. (HE5)
• Product development timeliness metrics: Implemented cross-functional tracking of product development status allowing automated reporting of "at risk" titles and analysis of root causes of lateness. System provided the ability to identify situations before they escalated into revenue-threatening problems. (HE11)
• MarkLogic implementation: Implemented MarkLogic as the asset management system used to capture and control asset and metadata information for the majority of assets used in publisher's digital products, including narrative, assessment, rich media and interactive asset types. (HE12)
• Content readiness improvement: Developed and implemented a learning content metadata and content readiness strategy, leading to 90% of titles being created in an XML-first workflow, 96% with full electronic, worldwide rights and 100% available as digital files. (HE13)
• Digimarc and Quick Response (QR) codes: Completed pilot program to use Digmarc and QR codes in popular reference material. Program tied online videos to codes embedded photos in current events titles that allowed a reader to scan the code with a phone camera and have the videos play on their phone. (HE18)
• Assessment development and production: Developed an approach to manage the development and production of psychometrically valid assessment items using a combination of vendor and internal staff. (HE19)
• MathML: Drove implementation of MathML into publisher's product development process to increase accessibility and reduce the effort associated with repurposing complex titles from print into digital. (HE20)
• Plant metrics: Implemented monthly reporting of differences in plant spend from prior year based on number of titles, size of titles, complexity and format. (HE23)
• Prepress vendor consolidation: Consolidated over 200 prepress vendors and freelancers into a core group of 5 preferred full service prepress vendors. This approach resulted in substantial ongoing cost savings, reduction in production schedules and reduction in staff required for supervision. (HE27)
• Full-service outsourcing: Implemented program to outsource all production activities, including production management, of low-value titles allowing production staff to focus on higher value or otherwise at-risk titles. (HE28)
• Backlist XML conversion: Managed project to convert over 2,000 legacy titles from Quark, InDesign and print PDFs to support ongoing publishing operations. Project was one factor in driving the unit's value in its ultimate purchase price by an private equity group. (HE32)
• India content services outsourcing: Increased offshoring of composition and prepress services to ultimately include 69% of all pages, including both simple and complex work in higher education, trade and K12 markets. Along with offshored data conversion the project has resulted ina net 27% savings in plant spend. (HE39)