Whirlpool, the world’s largest major appliance manufacturer has internal and external creative service groups, located in various international divisions, as well as an in-plant print department in their corporate headquarters in Benton Harbor, Michigan.
This long-term project was to work with them to reengineer their in-plant design and print department into a more complete marketing support organization. Initially we had to identify needs and costs. This included reviewing and analyzing the work currently being produced internally and externally through their advertising agencies, and locating the rogue design and print procurement, to establish the total need and cost. Once completed we worked with senior management to establish a plan to address the centralization of production and procurement of both advertising, design, production and distribution. Our end goals were to maintain brand control, make the creative resources available to the rest of the corporation, and reduce turnaround time and cost.
We started with a long-range plan that included corporate department reorganization and consolidation of creative resource management, as well as some changes to the production infrastructure. After that, we researched and implemented a centralized creative file management system into the corporate headquarters, and designated additional resources to be mirrored in some of the other divisions. In addition, we researched and implemented a system to handle order entry, job scheduling, costing, tracking, and department charge backs. We also developed and implemented a data driven web-to-print system that facilitated custom creation of builder’s appliance selection pages for new construction.