Kepner-Tregoe Training the World's Business Leaders
By printing the course materials Kepner-Tregoe uses to train the world's top corporations, this in-plant helps its parent company shine.
By Bob Neubauer
Kepner-Tregoe is a familiar name to many Fortune 1,000 companies. Based in Princeton, N.J., this 47-year-old firm has made a name for itself by studying the habits of business leaders and teaching them to corporate clients around the world.
These courses, like Kepner-Tregoe's flagship "Problem Solving and Decision Making" course, have trained thousands of corporate employees to be better managers.
The materials required for these courses can be extensive—sometimes 40 items are needed for one three-day course, including wire-bound manuals, handouts, wall charts, CDs and more.
"Because we're primarily an intellectual company, the value of our documents is the lifeblood of the company," notes Jim Frintner, a Kepner-Tregoe partner and director of its Production/Facilities Services.
To keep that lifeblood pumping, the company relies on its 19-employee in-plant, overseen by Frintner, who's been with the firm for more than 18 years. Located in a 20,000-square-foot facility a half-mile from company headquarters, the in-plant is linked to those headquarters via two T1 lines and four daily mail runs.
Course materials make up the bulk of the in-plant's business, Frintner says—and the shop handles nearly every aspect of them, from electronic publishing to fulfillment and mailing.
"Short of the actual product development, we pretty much handle it from there," he says.
To do this, the in-plant uses a mix of offset and digital printing equipment, as well as prepress and bindery gear. A Xanté imagesetter provides the film used to make plates for a pair of two-color presses: a Heidelberg 1925 perfector and an A.B.Dick. These are primarily used, Frintner says, to print the corporate PMS colors on long runs of "blanks" onto which course materials are later electronically printed in any of a variety of languages.
Two Xerox DocuTech 6115s and a DocuColor 12 provide some of the digital printing, while a NexPress 2100 helps the in-plant keep up with the growing need for on-demand color.
"Our volume is building on the NexPress," remarks Frintner.
Maintaining Corporate Identity
Kepner-Tregoe insists that its course materials reflect the strong corporate identity the company has built; each item requires a consistent look and feel. The in-plant's ability to provide this is one reason the company has so strongly supported the shop throughout its nearly five decades of existence.
As for the quality of the in-plant's products, Frintner says, the in-plant simply cannot afford to slack off.
"If we're trying to teach someone to improve their quality, it's pretty important our quality be top notch," he points out.
Kepner-Tregoe places a large burden on its in-plant, trusting it to get course materials to their worldwide destinations on time and complete. Frintner is proud to have had several company consultants tell him there has never been a problem with their course materials and this has given clients a great impression of Kepner-Tregoe. Those same consultants have also praised the in-plant for producing what they feel are the highest-quality printed materials in the training industry.
Fulfillment Specialists
One of the in-plant's many specialties is in its fulfillment and trafficking department, where employees assemble the many and varied components of the different course packs.
The shop's fulfillment staff packs course materials in the order they will be used by the instructor, making his or her job easier. Being able to do this requires well-trained, long-term employees who are intimately familiar with the materials.
Though the in-plant keeps some course materials in inventory, it is constantly producing these items on demand.
"The challenge we have is making sure that we have all the components available at any given time," Frintner says.
The NexPress has certainly helped with this, he says, though a primary reason the in-plant added it a year and a half ago was to produce marketing materials. Historically, Frintner says, those four-color items were produced by outside printers. But since a lot of the company's marketing has now moved to the Internet, long runs are no longer required. As a result, the in-plant can now do them in-house on the NexPress.
"The NexPress has enabled us to [print] whatever we really need for many of these pieces," he says.
Other materials now done on the NexPress include four-color case studies (previously done on the Heidelberg press) and customized course materials produced for clients with specific training needs that are not met by Kepner-Tregoe's standard offerings.
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Applying Its Own Lessons In addition to sharing its expertise in problem solving and decision making with thousands of corporate employees all over the world, Kepner-Tregoe has taught these skills and philosophies to its own in-plant staff. As a result, the in-plant has flourished. "It's pretty much ingrained with everyone here," says Jim Frintner, director of Production/Facilities Services, referring to Kepner-Tregoe's project management and critical thinking skills. "I run this part of the business using those concepts all the time." In its courses, the company offers new approaches to quality, competitiveness, cost and cycle time. These methods have inspired in-plant employees, as well. Employees use project management technology on any project they tackle. Analytic troubleshooting is widely used on the shop floor. When rush jobs or crises threaten to bring stress, employees use critical thinking skills to manage them, creating a much more stable environment, Frintner says. "Using rational processes to deal with those kinds of situations creates a much more sane environment for the employee," he says. They know the company won't be in a reactionary mode, but will analyze all problems. This builds employee confidence. When deciding which equipment to purchase, Kepner-Tregoe methods also come into play. "The decision to get the NexPress," Frintner notes. "We used our decision-analysis technology." This allowed the project team to identify the factors needed to make the decision, then determine which was most important, changing the issue from "what feels good" to "what's the best decision for the company," he says. "Any major decision we make, we apply that technology," he adds. Everyone in the in-plant has taken at least one course, Frintner says, and he himself has taken several. "I've become a much, much better manager having used those technologies," he says. |
"What we've seen, actually, is...an increase in this custom work that we do," Frintner says.
The in-plant also uses the NexPress to print materials for Kepner-Tregoe's non-profit arm, the Tregoe Education Forum, which endeavors to bring rational process skills into schools.
"A lot of their materials have color," Frintner says. "So this equipment has enabled us to economically produce a variety of color components, whether it be marketing collateral or course material."
The in-plant also uses a seven-disc 52x Disc Makers Reflex CD burner to produce its digital products. The shop prints labels and inserts for the CDs.
Though Frintner says the in-plant is "very competitive economically," it still has to prove this to the company by analyzing and reporting its costs.
"We bill internally for everything we do," he says.
Saving the company money, though, is not the only reason the in-plant exists, Frintner points out. One of the most invaluable services it provides is document management. The company maintains an electronic archive of thousands of documents.
"At any given time we have to be able to access one or more of those to produce something physically that a client needs," he says. "So making sure we have those available and can produce as required...it's something that's pretty much taken for granted, I would say, by the company, but it's still a major component of what we do."
- Companies:
- Heidelberg
- Xerox Corp.
- Places:
- Princeton, N.J.
