Episode 2 IT in the Workplace

It's December, and the March issue of Sugar, the teen girls' magazine, is under way.

The team has just four weeks to work on the issue before it hits the shelves.

As editor, I oversee the editorial department.

They all come to me with their ideas for any given issue.

I work entirely on my computer. It makes things much easier.

I feel much more in communication with everyone.

Everything's documented, and you don't have to go back through old files of paper.

This morning, Annabel is having a picture meeting.

The next one we need to talk about is in your element...

I'm a picture editor. My role is to work closely with the art director

to determine all the photographic content for the magazine.

It's going to be based on the periodic table. So it's science-y.

Maybe we can do something with test tubes.

So take one of the elements, the angry element, let's say, and put her in,

say, a red liquid, shrink her down and she could be within a test tube.

'My role is art editor.'

I have to know constantly what is going on with the pictures,

that the content is working well with the imagery,

when shoots are, locations, what models we're going to use.

Finding the models in the first place is Pru's task.

What I would do is contact a number of model agencies

and tell them what it is we're doing and the kind of model that we need.

Then they would usually send me a light box which links directly

to their agency, and that will have the girls that they've suggested.

There's this girl, Flo.

I've seen her book before and I think she's quite versatile.

She's got quite nice expressions, and I think she might work quite well for us.

With the models cast and the plan in place, it's off to the shoot.

How's that looking light-wise, Duncan?

-OK. Look at that.

-That's better.

As I take the pictures, they come straight into the computer.

You can see the pictures and make sure that everything's OK.

This programme, called Capture One, it will affect it in whatever way

we've decided it to be affected, like the colours.

If we wanted it colder, I would go into the levels.

The temperature's 5500, which is quite cold, it makes it quite clinical.

Now I've made that adjustment, the next shot will be adjusting exactly the same. So everything's very even.

In the past, the process was lengthy.

You could get one look at what was going on, which was a Polaroid.

And then it was all guesswork.

And this is expensive and time-consuming, and you often didn't get what you want.

Whereas the great thing now is that I can look at it, I can see if it's going to work, if the positioning's

right, the colour balance is right, the lighting's right, the model's expression is right.

You can do it all at the time, and it allows you more creative control over the final outcome.

Yeah, that's great.

The photographer will put all of the content that we shoot today

onto an external hard drive, and I can just take it away with me

at the end of the day and start working on those images tomorrow.

Now Pru's back in the office, sorting through all the images

taken on the shoot and picking the best ones.

The different softwares that I would use, some of them are design-based

software, so I would use InDesign, I would use Photoshop.

But I also use some editing software.

Photo Station is one of them.

Photo Station enables me to sort and assimilate photographs, store them

and to print them out with all of the image reference still on them.

Which means that when we come to look for that image again later, it makes it quicker for us to find it.

Another one is a programme called Bridge, which links quite closely with InDesign and Photoshop.

The purpose of that is that I can do an edit and mark off those images and export them

straight into Photoshop or straight into InDesign, where they're ready for a designer to pick up.

My process after the shoot is to take the imagery to make sure that it's working within the layout.

Here's the holding shot.

You can see that you have the test tube without anything in it. I'll pick a colour.

In this case, let's pick red, and I'll add that to the image.

I'd probably make that half opaque, so then behind that, you'll see the angry girl.

Once the team has given its feedback, Mark inputs their comments

into a programme called VIP, which is shared by an external agency which perfects the final page.

VIP stands for Virtual In-House Production.

What it allows us to do is see a virtual flat plan.

So we can go close to the image here, the girl on the left.

We can ask them to change the colours, to cut the hair out, resize.

What happens is, once we click this page off, it will send an automated

message to VIP, and from that, they can do the additional changes.

The current design programmes allow us to do things visually

that are absolutely incredible and much more easily.

So before, I think it was very, very specialist.

Now we can all produce magazines that look fantastic.

A lot of that is to do with digital abilities and IT programmes.

I don't think we could put the magazine together in the way that we do now without IT.

As more and more journalism moves online, the team at Sugar,

the teen girls' magazine, has created Sugar Scape, an online version of the magazine.

The wonder of the internet

is that it's immediate and instant and constantly updated.

We wanted to be able to produce that content for our users now as well.

The website is updated daily, so we have around 15 stories going up

throughout the morning, 15 during the afternoon and we have content going up when the writers aren't in

the office, so we can update content by scheduling stories.

We don't duplicate content.

For instance, if we're doing a cover shoot with a celebrity, for instance, Taylor Swift, we do a beautiful shoot

and an interview which appears in the magazine, which is unique content, but we might film her

and then you'll get a behind the scenes video of the photo shoot that appears on Sugar Scape.

So it's not duplicated content, but it's complimentary content.

Now I'm going to go through an article. I need to go into the CMS.

This is the main body copy.

So this is all the pictures, and all the text has been written by the writer.

I have to look at it for grammatical errors, check spellings

and make sure that the tone of the article is correct for our website.

Then all I do is hit "submit" when it needs to go live.

A really handy programme that you need to know when you become a web journalist is Photoshop,

so you can manipulate images to put in articles.

Another piece of software that you need to know is a CMS, a content management system.

Each website has its own CMS, so if you're used to one, you're probably used to all of them.

You don't really need to know HTML when you become a web journalist,

but if you have an all-round knowledge of computers and how they work,

social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, that's all helpful for the web journalist.

Making cars is big business, and IT is central in helping companies

like Nissan stay at the cutting edge of design and manufacturing.

Well, technology is right up there in our infrastructure.

We cannot make a car without having the latest and the greatest.

IT is critical to how we do business on an everyday basis.

We have a large investment in IT.

Creating a new car is a collaborative process,

involving people from different departments across the company.

It all starts with the design team where Patrick and Martin work.

Most of the designers like to work with Photoshop.

The idea of the programme is basically that you sketch

like as if you would on normal paper.

So you have different layers which you can sketch on and overlay, take them off, put them back on.

For example, if I set up an interior, I just did a couple of lines here.

It always keeps the opportunity open to change things around and try things. It's very arty too.

Finally, the whole picture could look like this.

It gives a more clear picture of how the surfaces work, where the volumes are.

Once the initial sketch is agreed, more exact computer programmes come into play.

This is an example of a drawing done on Photoshop,

so it's a lot more sketchier.

Now I have it open on Illustrator, so you can jump back and forth.

Once you start getting into, I guess, more minute detail, I find Illustrator very precise.

If I'm trying to develop this curve, I can play with the tangency.

You can really create very, very fine illustration.

We try to communicate with the digital modellers, and they tried to visualise, in 3D, our sketching.

So the more precise our sketch can be, obviously the easier they can interpret the idea.

Matt is a designer.

He's working with Steve, a digital modeller, to transform his 2D image into 3D.

Obviously as a designer, you create the image that you want.

We simply import the files into this programme that Steve's using, Alias.

Obviously this is a 2D drawing now.

Now I can start putting in virtual surfaces that we can push and pull

and make into a 3D environment, and it will become real.

Then it's time to hand over to the technical team.

The styling department will make the physical shape and maybe the colour and the grain and this type of thing,

but from there we have to work out how we're physically going to make the vehicle.

This is the front end of the vehicle.

When we first get the data in, this comes in as a surface skin. So there's no fixings,

no method of putting parts against each other like that,

so what we have to do through the development

is find out ways how we can attach the parts together and make sure they function properly.

This is a styling A surface of a bumper. It's just a skin.

There's no thickness to it.

So my job is to design this and put thickness on it.

Put the different fixings around the edge.

This is what the bumper will end up looking like.

Ashley needs to make sure that parts don't overlap or clash with each other.

We use a software called SpaceVision.

That is an interference and checking tool to see if we've designed it incorrectly.

This shows that there is a clash between the hood

and the top of the grille.

It's highlighted in yellow in this software.

So what we need to do is feed that back to the appropriate engineers, the grille engineer

and the hood engineer, and redesign it so it fits properly.

Because of digital technology, there's now no need to create a physical prototype to test the car.

In the old process, we would have assembled a prototype vehicle,

that would allow us to do the crash analysis,

and that was the first time we'd see if the product worked.

Now we can do all of this simultaneously because when we release our cab data,

the cab data's used by a simulation team who do crash performance,

and our manufacturing team who do manufacturing simulation, and also by our trial build team.

Simon works in the team which uses Jack software to test cars' functionality.

It's important that anyone using the car, whatever their size,

can not only see the controls, but can reach them too.

We can tailor Jack and Jill to whatever size we need to,

depending on what checks we want to do on the model itself.

Whilst we have an average male in here now, I put, say, a small female in.

She might not be able to reach the same controls, and this reach zone

would change to represent that, but we need to make sure that all the intended users that are going to

buy the car, hopefully, can use all the features that we want them to.

Glossy preview shots of a new car can also be created before the car has actually been built.

In the past, we would have to have prototype cars made.

We'd then have to ship them around the world

and have traditional photo shoots around that car.

Now we can mimic this,

so we can create a new environment by bringing in

the spherical style image into this software.

Using a spherical 3D image means that the background is reflected in the paintwork of the car.

OK. So the environment has now been imported.

The final thing to do is to adjust the scale and the perspective and the position.

And finally, we can create a photo-realistic image.

In the past, you had limited avenues of how you show your work.

In the internet, Flickr and all of these other image libraries,

you're able to download, just give them the stuff and wait, and the public is reacting right away.

The more we can do digitally, the less prototypes we need

and the shorter development periods we can manage.

So it's had a very big impact in the last five to ten years to reduce the development cycle.

That means we can develop more cars more quickly with less problems when we start making physical vehicles.

The process of designing and building a car can take years.

Here at the Nissan plant in Sunderland is where the finished cars come off the production line.

Lucy works in the press and communications team.

The Sunderland plant is the company's centre for

passenger car production in Europe.

We produce around 350,000 cars a year.

80% of our production is exported to 45 world markets.

The first thing I do in on a morning is go through the regional papers.

I also go online and check our media monitoring e-mails.

So here we have a PDF of a cutting from an old newspaper about the 400 jobs.

What we tend to do is save the cuttings, and at the end of the month

we'll do a media valuation, which tells us how much press we got that month.

Over 4,000 people work at the Sunderland plant,

and thousands more work at other branches around the world.

Good communication tools are vital.

Today, Lucy is having a conference call with her colleague in another area of the plant.

We have several video conferencing rooms, which are used for people to

have meetings with colleagues from across Europe and the world.

All of the communications team have webcams and Microsoft Messenger, so we can keep in touch.

Lucy is using a resource called iMeeting.

You can share PowerPoint presentations, Word documents, short videos.

As the presenter who sets the meeting up, I can control the meeting and scroll through the presentation

so that the people see what I want them to see.

Certainly, I couldn't do my job without IT.

It's revolutionised communications.

IT also helps the 3,500 workers on the factory floor.

Behind, we have two screens.

One screen monitors the performance of the trim line.

The right-hand screen measures the performance of the chassis line.

So the shop is split into two.

The information is generated from the computers that control the facilities online.

When we have stoppages or breakdowns, that creates an event.

We then change that event data into usable information.

We're actually running the line at one minute, so every minute, a car comes offline.

In order to maintain this level of productivity, all the necessary car parts must be in stock.

That's where Paul in the scheduling team comes in.

Once the order's placed and confirmed,

we take on information and say, "OK, we need to build this spec,

"as this has been ordered on this date".

Then our systems look through and say, "What parts do I need to build that car?"

Then that goes into the control systems, and is actually then transmitted out to the suppliers

to say, "I've got this requirement on this date, and this is what I need".

So it constantly changes when everyone's working with the latest information.

The computer system also works out the sequence in which the cars will be assembled.

The sequence scheduling system will actually take all of the orders that we've got to build on for that day,

based on all of the information that the users fed into the system.

It'll find the best solution, so it spreads out the work content,

as some cars are harder to build than others.

The amount of volume that we're building, 1,500 cars a day,

it would be literally impossible

to manually try and find the best sequence for those 1,500 cars.

It would probably take about 20 people 20 hours a day, or something like that,

to try to come up with something, and it still probably wouldn't be perfect.

A chocolate lover's dream - the production line in a chocolate factory.

Whizzing along the conveyor belts are thousands of chocolate bars, including the new Bar of Plenty.

These are the hazelnut and cashew bars.

James is a process engineer on one of the production lines.

A typical run on this plant will make 12,000 to 15,000 outers.

In each outer, there's around 30 bars. You can do the maths.

It's a lot of chocolate bars coming down the line in 12 hours.

This system has a recipe that you can select for any of the bars,

which has all the parameters stored that we need,

so we can control and check the various different types of ingredients that we put inside of it.

This is giving, for the different types of bar,

different fillings, so Turkish and caramel, and it also has

different running speeds.

As well as people on the production line,

there are also teams in control rooms dotted about the plant,

monitoring the overall production process.

Tony is a distribution controller.

My job, basically, is to make sure

that all areas of the factory

have sufficient chocolate to make whatever product they're on.

It's very important to keep the chocolate at a constant temperature.

If it goes cold, obviously it's very hard to move the chocolate.

If it's too hot, then it could cause us problems further down the line.

All the temperature inside the containers is between 50 and 45.

If it should flow in or out of that area, then we're on it.

The computers also help to measure the amount of chocolate that needs to be provided.

We have flow meters, which measure the amount of chocolate going to each department.

Grey indicates a tank which is free to fill.

Before, what would happen is, they would bring us up and say, "We've got no chocolate".

Now we can see that they need chocolate.

We can redirect whatever plant is making that particular recipe to them.

So the system here gives us a heads-up on what we need to do.

Lastly on the production line, wrapping the bars.

Ideas for the wrapper began here in the design studio.

My job is a graphic designer.

It varies from putting together a design for a new bar,

amending old bars,

redoing things like producing catalogues, posters, advertising.

With jobs coming in constantly, someone needs to organise and schedule the designers' time.

This role belongs to Kelly, the resource manager.

I keep an update of our resource plan, which is all of our designers,

and the workload that they have day by day.

We have a list of jobs which have come through. If I click "design"

it brings up everybody I have within the studio to work with.

It will blue out for me where they're not available.

The booking that's come through, I just drag into that task list.

Once Lisa receives the job alert on her screen, she can get to work.

This is the Photoshop file that I have here.

In this file, though it looks quite flat there, it's made up of individual layers.

If I wanted to, say, enlarge the font there, I can isolate that part

and then make it either bigger or smaller,

and also change the colour if I want to as well.

Lisa then transfers the image file of the amended design into a digital layout package.

All of the text and the information goes on, along with

what's called the cutter guide, which is what they use to trim out the bar.

It also includes things like the barcode as well.

Any wrapper design needs to be signed off by a number of different departments across Cadbury.

This is where Jonathan, the artwork administrator, comes in.

We always check for the copy text -

ingredients, allergen statements, things like that.

The stakeholders can make their comments and pinpoint

exactly what the issue is.

In this case, one of the objections was that the vegetarian logo needed to be changed from gold to white.

So the person that rejected it was able to point right at the logo that needed to be amended.

Everyone can comment live on this system.

So rather than taking it to legal and then rejecting it

and then you have to go back round everyone again,

physically walking it around, obviously with this,

one person can make a comment.

If it's irrelevant or not required, then someone else who knows that,

they can see that comment and dispute it and say, "No, we don't need to do that".

Once wrapped, the chocolate bars are transported to Minworth

Distribution Centre to be stored, before being dispatched to shops and supermarkets.

Behind me are all the pallets of chocolate

that we're currently holding.

These will be going out in the next few weeks.

Specialised software is used to allocate storage space to

inbound deliveries and to organise outbound orders.

A pallet will come in to us with 280 boxes on it.

It will arrive on a trailer, where our operative will start taking

the pallets off and scanning the pallet.

That pallet is then assigned a location by Autostore.

So if we look on the system for where the Bar Of Plenty are stored at the moment,

we currently have 38 pallets on site.

I can see instantly where they are.

Workers on the warehouse floor and specially programmed robots

receive instructions from Autostore about where the pallets of chocolates should be moved to.

This information is received and recorded on radio data transmitters - RDTs.

Basically, this is like a mini computer.

What it allows the operative to do is walk around and

use this instead of having to walk backwards and forwards to a computer.

We benefit from using IT on site by the speed of the information

that you can get and how quickly you can process that.

It just really assists you in making sure that everything comes in and goes out correctly.

More than 1 million people a year visit the Royal Botanic Gardens

at Kew to enjoy the huge array of plants from all over the world.

For anyone planning a visit, or for anyone interested in the scientific

work going on behind the scenes, the website is usually their first port of call.

Claire works in the digital media team.

What that involves is working with experts to produce content for the website.

It also involves developing new tools and services and things

for the website and keeping it up to date.

Today, Claire is uploading an article written by a scientist about plant DNA.

So I'll open up the story in a new window,

so you can actually see it in the website.

I want to add a link.

Once we've made the link, we need to edit it in order to apply

some additional information which enables people to know where the link's going to take them.

When we're in the normal view looking at the website,

and I roll over that link, it'll give me more information about that story.

Once we're happy with it, we can publish the story.

As soon as you've published it, you can't take it back.

It's up there, and it's live. Now that I've finished the story,

I'm going to go on to Twitter and Facebook,

add a little teaser and a link back to the site to promote that story.

This is really useful for us,

because it's basically a way of promoting Kew's work beyond our

own network, so we're as strong and as large as all the people interested in what we're doing.

We're in touch with about 4,000 people via Facebook and Twitter.

36,000 people have viewed our videos on YouTube in the last six months,

and 2,500 photos have been shared with us,

so we're really pleased with the interest and the engagement with Kew.

Most of Claire's time is spent keeping the website populated with new information,

but today, she's taking a walk in the gardens in the interests of a completely new project.

We're on the broadwalk at the moment, and I'm going to demonstrate a mobile

application prototype that the digital media team have developed.

So what we're seeing at the moment is a number of dots, which represent trees in the gardens in front of us.

We're currently in the augmented reality view, which is basically

using your phone's camera to show you what's in front of you, and the dots

each represent a different tree.

If you click on the dots, you'll find a bit of information about different trees.

It's currently sourced from our living collections database.

So you get the common name, the Latin name,

a bit of information about the tree, so how high it is,

and also how far it is from you, where you're standing.

What it's enabling us to see in a real way, this prototype,

is what the possibilities are for us

in terms of providing location-based information to visitors in the gardens.

Kew's such a massive site.

It enables us to provide information to different types of visitors that

suit their needs in a more personalised way.

We're using third-party software.

So the software itself was already developed.

The work that we had to do was plug in Kew's data.

Increasingly, smart phones are becoming more used by the general population.

It's just the way the world is going.

So we're trying to get in there in the first instance and develop some

really exciting applications that people can use.

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