Raw

**To:** Engagement manager
**From:** [consultant]
**Subject:** TTW composing costs can be cut about 10% by simplifying quality control, and the methods study should start now

You asked whether TTW's composing costs are genuinely excessive. Two weeks in Aylesbury settle enough of it to act: TTW runs 20–50% below the industry productivity benchmark, and the department is now so overloaded that it cannot absorb another late season. George Kennedy will authorise trials. We should therefore do two things, in this order.

## 1. Test a shortened quality-control process on inexpensive titles — worth up to 10% of total composing cost

- Every title passes through essentially the same checking stages, whether it is a complex reference book or a simple novel; the simple work is where TTW is uncompetitive.
- Select a set of inexpensive titles, remove or re-time individual checks, and measure the effect on quality and on customers before generalising.
- Kennedy is willing to test whether stages can be removed, so the trial needs no new mandate.
- Indicative saving: about 10% of total composing cost. [data needed: cost per checking stage, to firm this up]

## 2. Commission a methods study of the composing operation itself — the larger and slower prize

- TTW trails the productivity benchmark by 20–50%; process simplification alone does not close a gap of that size, so the composing method is the remaining candidate.
- Manual composition is the acute constraint: it is the most capacity-short operation in an already overloaded department.
- The labour position makes this urgent rather than optional. TTW pays below local market rates, cannot hire or retain compositors, has just lost two, runs most jobs late, is more than 50% over budget on overtime, and faces a fresh union claim. Higher productivity is the only lever here that does not require paying more or promising less.
- Kennedy also wants to know why measured productivity trails the benchmark, which is the study's question.

**What I need from you:** agreement to scope the QC trial with Kennedy this month, and a decision on whether the methods study runs in parallel or after the trial results.

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**Omitted or demoted**

- Benchmarking against three other printers: dropped as a line of work. A simple comparison will not settle whether TTW's costs are excessive, and the productivity gap already gives us the answer the comparison was meant to supply.
- Management disagreement over whether costs are high: dropped as a finding. It does not bear on what to do, and the relevant part — that all managers will support an investigation — is covered by Kennedy's willingness to test.
- Interviews with Roy Walter and Brian Thompson: recorded as sources, not as conclusions; their content appears above as evidence.
- The 40% hardback / 50–55% paperback cost shares: omitted from the memo as facts you already hold.