Xerox: LDP Lean Document Production®—Dramatic Productivity Improvements for the Printing Industry
The Problem
As a creator of the digital printing industry, Xerox has provided the industry with a continuing stream of innovative products and services that have demonstrated improved effectiveness and productivity for over five decades. In the intensely competitive global economy, where industries are facing cost and productivity challenges, providers of print services are required to improve dramatically their productivity to survive.
The Analytics Solution
Using analytical tools and methodologies, Xerox invented, tested, and implemented a novel class of productivity improvement offerings, trademarked LDP Lean Document Production® Solutions, to meet this need for the printing industry. Xerox LDP Lean Document Production® is a simulation-based print production operational framework that utilizes the notion of autonomous cells and a hierarchical dynamic scheduling architecture to route and process jobs. The key idea is to identify job types that have common overlapping workflows and/or dynamic flow characteristics and dedicate equipment and personnel clusters to process these classes of jobs from start to finish, in their entirety, within the clusters.
LDP Solutions are delivered to customer print shops via a set of laptop-based computer tools operated by specially trained Xerox service personnel and consultants. Xerox personnel utilize analytics and industrial engineering techniques embedded in these tools to model the work flow in the shop, devise and test alternative layouts and work processes, and propose suitable job control policies. LDP Solutions have been delivered to over 100 print shops in the United States, Canada, China, and Thailand.
The Value
These tools generate dramatic productivity and cost improvements for both print shops and document manufacturing facilities. Quantitative measures of the associated improvements include labor savings of 20%, productivity improvement by 40%, cycle time reduction of 80%, revenue increase of 17%, and annual profit increase of 20% of the revenue of the shop prior to the LDP implementation. Clearly, implementation of the LDP Solutions in individual printing operations transforms the operations’ competitiveness and profitability.
Implementations of LDP in customer sites create value for both customers and Xerox. Xerox has embedded LDP within its software services platforms, thereby leveraging the high performance of LDP Solutions in both pre-sales and post-sales engagements. The cumulative value delivered by the initial XIG-led implementations (1999-2003), Xerox Mobile Solutions deployments by Lean Six Sigma Black Belts (2003-2007), and external XGS engagements is over $200 million with an additional $50 million expected in 2008. In addition, the higher quality and faster delivery enabled by the LDP Solutions provide strategic competitive advantages to print shops.
Productivity improvements as large as those obtained using LDP Solutions over time will likely migrate through the printing industry due to competitive pressures. Based on the scaling laws obtained from the implementations to date, the value of LDP to the $100-billion
U.S. printing industry alone is estimated to be tens of billions of dollars annually, even after its benefits have been shared with customers via lower prices.
