Historically, English in India has become part of several aspects of the society: the government, the media, the education system, the legal system, and the social sphere as well.

It is taught in all Indian schools and as a result, Laserwords has people with good command of the language in the middle and higher management levels. However, at the operators’ level, the status is not the same, since the operators have generally only studied English, mostly as a second language.

At Laserwords, we believe it is important to bridge this gap so we can better serve our many U.S. clients.

The Laserwords Training Department has designed the English Language Proficiency Program (ELPP) to teach English Language skills. The curriculum has been carefully designed to cater to the specific needs of our employees through sessions that deliver training on grammar, listening, speaking, reading comprehension, and writing skills.

This helps the operators to understand the nuances of the language, enhance their language skills, and respond to the specific requirements of the publishing industry.

The Future Leader Program (FLP) at Laserwords is a conscious, deliberate program undertaken to develop and retain people with the aptitude and abilities to meet current and future organizational needs.

After studying the requirements, which included an analysis of requisite leadership competencies and the identification of a detailed instructional strategy to get at those competencies, a curriculum and delivery methodology have been created.

Objectives

• To equip the employees selected for the FLP program with managerial concepts relevant to the trainees’ current roles as well as in preparation for future positions
• To impart soft skills such as better communication, interpersonal problem-solving, customer relationship management, and so on
• To give employees an off-the-job feel for working and learning together with peers, that is, conceptual as well as reflective learning about self and others
• To provide an opportunity for participants to use and test their skills through live projects

Classroom Training

To meet the objectives, the curriculum for classroom training covers:

• Fundamentals of Economics
• Overview of the Publishing Industry
• Functional and Technical Training (to equip the learners to manage work done in different software application platforms)
• Operations Management
• Project Management
• Quality Management
• Organizational Behavior
• Basic Accounting Principles
• Basics of Marketing
• Customer Relationship Management
• Networking Basics
• Team Building and Leadership Programs

Coaching is an important aspect in the design of the classroom training. Class sessions are conducted by Laserwords’ leaders who share their experiences in their fields of interest or specialization. These sessions act as a platform for our leaders to coach the candidates on various aspects and best practices using the wealth of knowledge that they have gained through years of experience.

Hands-on Training

The learners are provided an opportunity to use and test their learning through live projects. Trainees who have successfully completed the classroom sessions will enter the “mentoring” phase for 45 days. The first 15 days are spent in different departments understanding the processes. After this initial period, each participant is assigned to a mentor, under whose guidance they will apply the knowledge learned during the classroom training by leading projects.

Methodology

The execution methodology of the FLP is two-pronged —

1. Selection process based on the following:
   1. Performance appraisal rating
   2. Nomination from the respective cluster leaders (Senior Managers)
   3. Personal interview with the head of human resources and chief operating officer
2. Mapping skills and program implementation as follows:
   1. An analysis of the responsibilities versus the skills required is performed: based on this analysis, the instructional design, curriculum, and methodology is created.
   2. At the end of each training program, candidates go through stringent assessment. Based on the results, suitability to the role is assessed and communicated. Then the employee is appropriately deployed into mainstream work.

Laserwords firmly believes in building quality into every product. “Do it right the first time” is our mantra. All of our processes are defined to meet this goal, starting from the review of inputs.

Laserwords has a well-equipped quality control department that works closely with the production teams to ensure our high standards are met at every stage. The quality department is comprised of highly skilled and experienced proofreaders who have a good knowledge of specific client requirements and excellent “book sense.”

Multi-stage, rigorous quality checks are done at the end of template design, first round, subsequent rounds and printer pass.

• Design Check: Once the template is created, it will be moved to the quality department to ensure every aspect of the design specifications have been followed. The checks performed on the template design include trim, layout, header and footer, color, graphics, percentage, math terms and symbols, font, font size and library files. The input for this is the prototype design supplied by the client and other specifications as applicable.
• First Round Proofreading: After pages are composed, they are moved to the quality control department. Various checks are performed at this stage by team-specific proofreaders. The checks include one-to-one matching of proof with manuscript, especially math terms and symbols, bold, italics, superscript, subscript, and equation alignment. In addition, PDF documents are checked against the sample PDF for text font, text color, text point, and color. The proofreaders also make sure that everything falls within the trim lines. Other checks include adherence to general pagination rules, footer and folio as per book map, and checking of the art with art specifications.
• Round II Proofreading: Proofreaders ensure that the corrections requested by the client in the first round have been carried out by checking the live proof against the manuscript. If there are any new inserts, then complete one-to-one matching with exact font is done and all the pages in the related sections are checked for quality as if they are first-pass pages.
• Subsequent Round Proofreading: This round includes the same rigorous quality control as described in the Round II Proofreading stage.
• Printer Pass: The final stage of the entire production process involves checking all the necessary elements thoroughly including page count, header and footer style, global changes requested in previous round, and copyright pages (i.e., ISBN and printer key code).

Laserwords started creating NIMAS files in February 2007. Since then we have seen a phenomenal increase in our production in this area. By June 2008, our output was 120,000 pages of NIMAS for McGraw Hill and 250,000 pages for all K–12 publishers. We are proud that our clients have entrusted us with the responsibility of dealing directly with NIMAC on their behalf. From follow-up of submitted files to certification, we ensure a smooth execution of NIMAS projects for our clients.

We are proud to go on record that from June 2007 to June 2008, more than 50 percent of the titles received by NIMAC were books submitted by Laserwords.

Creating NIMAS Files

At Laserwords, we developed a workflow to cater to the specific requirements of NIMAS. Our workflow has in place systems and processes to ensure that we produce high quality files that meet the stringent NIMAS specifications.

Workflow Stages

• Review/Analysis: A complete review of the input files to verify that they meet NIMAS standards. This involves a NIMAS production-based review, tag review and NIMAC metadata review.
• Content Extraction: Content extraction is done though a proprietary tool specifically built for xml extraction.
• Image Creation: Laserwords has a graphics team dedicated to take care of the image creation needs.
• Normalization: Since the content extracted from the PDF is not an exact replica of the PDF, a normalization process in which we manually reorder the content using a set procedure is required.
• Rendering and QualityAssurance: After normalization, we ensure that the XML content matches the PDF exactly though rendering and QA.
• Packaging: We Zip complete file set containing XML, images, a package file, and PDF of copyright and ISBN.
• Validate Package: Package is validated using local and NIMAC tools.
• Upload and Certification: Depending on size, we upload file set to NIMAC or to OverDrive, or send DVD to OverDrive.
• We include metadata XL if package will be uploaded to OverDrive

Laserwords NIMAS Cross Training and Its Advantages

Customer Focus

The NIMAS team is highly customer focused and has taken several initiatives to move from a composition workflow system to a structured content environment. These initiatives benefit our clients by: enabling workflow and infrastructure; supporting turnkey book production and sales; cross training in InDesign and research and development work.

NIMAS Cross-training Benefits

• Laserwords XML technologists working with an excellent understanding of the application files
• Approaching, analyzing, standardizing and understanding the data in a logical way
• Cross training helps identify:
  1. where we need to make changes and
  2. how we can incorporate the new requirements into the existing school workflow
• Helps us to switch to both print and electronic for K-12 books
• XML developers have more room to work with template creators, composition team to bring a high degree of automation to content, page layout, and production instructions

Research and Development Activities

The training is being effectively utilized. We are taking this forward with a team of Specialists (NIMAS XML developers and InDesign experts) doing research and development to create a process where both print and electronic production run smoothly.

Research and Development Processes

XML First: DITA and DocBook Standard

• Style incoming word documents to ensure that the output is a structured document
• Transform tags to styles through XSL.
• Auto generate InDesign document
• Generate valid NIMAS and webML (eBook, SCORM)

Production-Ready Template

• Modify InDesign template as required
• Modify Inline text frames as required
• Label all items in template to ensure content flow can be generated
• Create rules to map InDesign paragraph and character styles to XML to generate NIMAS XML tags
• Normalize math expressions, images with overlapping text
• Generate valid NIMAS XML

A proofreader at Laserwords is expected to correct errors in spelling, style, alignment, spacing, and so on. Proofreaders must also have an eye for overall page layout. A proofreader compares the pages provided by the author against the typeset copies and indicates the errors on the typeset copy using universal proofreading symbols.

Laserwords’ proofreading training includes an introduction to the principles and best practices of proofreading for the publishing industry, including those involving the styling of figures, tables, equations, footnotes, illustrations, captions, headings, running headlines, and page numbers as well as the use of good judgment about what to change and what to leave.

Training Objectives

• To provide the learners with the ability to proofread the typeset copies per the specifications provided by the client

Learning Outcome

By the end of the course, a learner will be able to:

• Read a document word for word for errors
• Understand and apply the style guide
• Understand and apply the client’s instructions
• Raise relevant queries to the clients

Course Content

The course is designed to start with simple pages that increase in complexity as the course progresses. Every effort has been taken to simulate the production environment by giving adequate hands-on experience and parallel projects that last at least one week.

Evaluation

Daily tests and quizzes on the learning elements are part of evaluation. The scores on these evaluations are recorded and feedback is given to the learners regularly.

Proofreading Curriculum

The curriculum consists of an overview of the workflow, proofreading principles, proofreading marks, and composition guidelines program features such as, front matter, pagination--galley, proofs/first proofs, pagination--second/corrected/master proofs, head levels, equation/scheme, figure/art, tables, boxes, examples, quotes/extracts, lists, references, back matter, index, glossary, endnotes, instructions, mail reading/filing and queries.

Post–Training-Assessment

At the end of the program, the participant takes an assessment that is measured against the learning objectives specified at the beginning of the program. The final evaluation is a 3-hour comprehensive test comprising all the elements that were taught during the training. Based on the results of this evaluation, participants are either moved into active projects as proofreaders or put back into training.

Management policies are deployed throughout Laserwords via a Policy Deployment Matrix Methodology, where top management’s policies are broken down into targets for the Team Leaders’ level. The achievement of targets is monitored continuously through Fortnightly Daily Management Metrics (DMM) review meetings, and shortfalls in achieving the targets are managed through initiation of Kaizen Improvement Projects and Six Sigma Projects.

Steps are taken to implement Quality Assurance activities such as documentation, internal audits, handling of customer complaints, and so on. Efforts are also taken to revamp the knowledge base and competency of the employees through training and other HR initiatives.

Quality Assurance Activities

• Preparation of Standard Operating Procedures and Work Instructions
• Training internal auditors and conducting audits
• Tracking customer complaints through monitor mails and implementing corrective and preventive actions
• Designing a system for certification of uploads to clients

Quality Improvement Activities

A culture of problem solving through Data Based Approach is being created by providing training to the employees on seven quality control tools and involving them in continuous improvement projects. The teams have focused on Small Group Activity (SGA) Projects to reduce customer complaints in their respective teams.

Six Sigma Black Belt Projects Objectives

• Increasing productivity
• Reducing error rates
• Reducing cycle time

The targets are achieved by strengthening Pre-Production activities such as manuscript review, template creation, and analysis of proofread pages to identify the root causes of errors so that they can be fixed in template.

In addition common problems have been identified through our Cross Functional Team (CFT) approach.

In the pre-press production space, Laserwords utilizes several software applications catering to various client needs. There are dedicated teams working on these applications. As a result of this, teams working on one application are not exposed to other applications. Similarly, the copyediting team has three types of editing work: pre-editing, reference-editing and copy-editing. However, people working on pre-editing and reference-editing will often have less exposure to copy-editing.

With this in mind, Laserwords has developed a training program on cross-platform applications and copy-editing. This helps both the employee and the organization.

After studying the requirements, which included an analysis of requisite leadership competencies and the identification of a detailed instructional strategy to get at those competencies, a curriculum and delivery methodology have been created.

Employee Advantages

• Gain additional skills
• Opportunity to be cross trained and improve skill sets
• Better growth opportunities

Training

• Training is provided at the “Application” level
• Three month course includes:
  • Theory
  • Guided Practice
  • Independent Practice
• Post-office hours
• Trainers from expert resources

Post-training

• Exam
• Certification

Paginators at Laserwords complete the allocated work and move the pages to proofreaders, who in turn check the quality of the job. To improve quality awareness and curb the error rate at the initial stage, a program on self-quality checking has been initiated at Laserwords. Sustained quality checking by the paginators will reduce the creation of errors in the long run, thus improving overall quality. This program insists that paginators be responsible for the quality of the pages that they produce.

Participant Objectives

• Understand the importance of self-quality-checking
• Understand that they are responsible for the quality of their work
• Learn to quality-check their work in a systematic way

Methodology

• Conduct gap analysis on the errors committed by paginators before submitting their work to proofreading
• Identify common errors
• Develop course content based on the gap analysis, with special emphasis on both the areas in which paginators typically make errors and ways to avoid them

Delivery and Evaluation

• A two-hour theoretical session explains the process of self-quality-checking
• Another two-hour session provides hands-on practical exercise
• A one-hour test covering self-quality-checking points is administered to ensure understanding