Mid sized shops and growing pains

[ebscreen]

Undoubtedly my biggest downtime is ink color mixing. Particularly with discharge. The Rutland software
is surprisingly accurate for a lot of colors, but occasionally you get one that's "what the hell were they thinking?".
Not to mention some colors you just don't know until it's through the mesh and out the other side of the dryer.


We count shirts in and stack on carts as soon as they arrive, screens are typically shot a day in advance, registration
is very quick, it's just that damn ink.

[Shawn (EIP)]

How did you get your wife to do the printing?  I have to learn this trick.

You need a wife that has an eye for detail, mine does not... nor the patients. Her motto is "as long as the "paint" is on there". LOL. A real bummer. 

[mk162]

I am having one of those "what the f*ck am I doing days."  It seems I can't get everything dialed in right so I am working through bit by bit.  There aren't enough hours in the day to get this crap sorted out.

Luckily we are slow right now and I am hoping to work the kinks out.

[tonypep]

Ok I'll go after this one first because the answers are slightly more concrete than Brandts issues. First I like to have a little one color jig set up in the ink room with a screen ganged up with some one inch circles. This is obviously for pre-striking off discharge colors. One of those industrial hair dryers will accurately cure the ink. Nothing like instant gratification. In the smallest batch allowable make up 1%, 3%, and 6% pigment loads of all the PCs. Activate at 6% and test swatch on garments of your choice. Next; using the same method; only splitting the pigment load in half ie .5% red+.5% yellow etc. Combine as many pigments that you like or even every possible combination. (Be sure to have someone assisting with wash up and documentation this will speed things up tremendously.)
I mark the formals directly on the swatches and record in an excel format as a backup. You now have quite a few formulas but not only that; by observing the formulas and their subsequent results you can make reasonable deductions on how to make additional colors. You'll be surprised how quickly you will amass a tremeendous amount of colors. Accurately produced by you in your factory. Like most things the hardest work is on the front side but after a while it will be a non issue. Need some opaques? Add white pigment or create an opaque base and strike away. You can keep the swatches in a book or wall mount for quick and easy identification.
If you find that some colors are very popular then batch mix in gallons and activate in smaller batches as needed.
 If you are getting shifting on a partcular garment go back to drawing board, being sure to use the above methods and documentation.
Finally if you're serious about discharge and have the means get a cheap plastic sink (or used stainless from kitchen supply outlet) and set this up in a designate area free from distraction. You'll thank me later....
tp

[Ron Pierson]

OMG Tony...........someone who "gets it" when it comes to running a mid-size shop!! thanks for your insight!! One of the best posts I have ever seen on any board anywhere.

I have one of these shops and I think I think the same way as you. I have 50 employees, 3 autos, 2 shifts, embroidery, 2 buildings, screen departments, art departments, shipping and recieving, office staff, production managers......

I have one word for it all......STAGING.

No matter how you sub-devide it, the word is staging. All your have to say here in these posts are right to the point. Thanks for showing this to everyone.

I have just one question......what scheduling software did you use to make the changeover? I need to make that change, it is one of my log jams. I have a good piece of software but our growing pains are requiring something better to carry us into the future.

[T Shirt1]

Not to hijack the thread but maybe History Channel or Discovery Channel could do a series on garment decorators.  They would have plenty of different sizes and business models to choose from.

[tonypep]

Hi Ron....I don't recall seeing you here before but welcome. In the shop I was originally posting about we used Impress. Overkill and expensive for many. I like Shopworks and Fast Manager. I print overflow for a large company with nine autos two shifts. They are responsible for many of the Shopworks upgrades as they have 36 users. What I've seen from them is nothing but amazing. You can capture a single order in real time and know exactly where all the pieces of the puzzle are. Blanks ordered, recd, approval status, prepress status, etc. It tracks production speeds on each press and can configure based on certain parameters when a job will be complete. If I remember right it won't let you schedule a ten color on an eight color press!Design sheets with production specs and color mockups. Much more. They schedule weeks in advance and know when to send me work. Other software is also good but if you're growing well....
Send me a p-mail if you need to
best tp

[JBLUE]

OMG Tony...........someone who "gets it" when it comes to running a mid-size shop!! thanks for your insight!! One of the best posts I have ever seen on any board anywhere.

I have one of these shops and I think I think the same way as you. I have 50 employees, 3 autos, 2 shifts, embroidery, 2 buildings, screen departments, art departments, shipping and recieving, office staff, production managers......

I have one word for it all......STAGING.

No matter how you sub-devide it, the word is staging. All your have to say here in these posts are right to the point. Thanks for showing this to everyone.

I have just one question......what scheduling software did you use to make the changeover? I need to make that change, it is one of my log jams. I have a good piece of software but our growing pains are requiring something better to carry us into the future.

Great post guys. Its not just the mid sized shops that could use this. Staging works if your busy period. Its been huge with us and we are just a 1 auto 1 manual place at the moment. This has turned into such awesome thread I hope it keeps going. Tony thanks for the waterbase info. Priceless.

[ebscreen]

Industrial heat gun to test discharge colors? GENIUS!!!!

I've got a good handle on what the different pigments do, and have developed a
few of my own colors, many out of necessity due to software weirdness. But your
recommendations are priceless on developing your own system so to speak.


We'll be remodeling shortly and number 1 on my wishlist is an ink sink for the waterbased section.

[Lizard]

We are primarily a contract printer and have a pretty solid scheduling and proofing system.  We use a spread sheet that's networked throughout the shop and we color code each entry.  As soon as an order is written it is entered in the spreadsheet as needing proofing (one color) and the order goes to art.  After proofing and waiting on approval the job goes to another color.  Once approved the job goes to another color and we know it can be scheduled to run.  We also use a color for holding for art and have one for job on hold etc...  Our two biggest challenges are ever shorter lead times and employees with minimal experience.  Then add in fast growth and more low level employees than highly skilled people and you have many potential time wasters in a day.

Today I spent all day in the shop and we had a great day.  Only one minor set back.  Tore a job out before verifying all the counts, missed 48 shirts and had to reset a 4 color job.  Got back on track in about 30 minutes but can't ever get that time back.  Thankfully it was only 30 today.  Usually a bunch more.  Talked about this In our Monday morning meeting.  We call it finishing the job.  The job isn't finished until it is properly counted, packed, labeled and moved into shipping.  Seems quite obvious but training is often something we feel we do not have time for but need to do daily.  Reenforce the good habits and talk about potential bottlenecks and time wasters.

Now I will pay for being out of the office tomorrow.

[alan802]

I can attest to the benefits of having a great software program to help keep things in order.  We have shopworx and I'm just now beginning to really use it to manage production and scheduling.  There is a glitch in our program however, and not every job that is entered into the system is showing up on the production schedule.  I'm racking my brain and deductive reasoning every possible reason why some jobs aren't there.  It's hard to use a production scheduler if jobs aren't automatically put in the scheduler.

This is unbelievably valuable info that Tony is sharing with all of us.  I certainly don't have everything figured out and always welcome any advice, information, intel, etc. that I can get my hands on, even if it won't work at our shop for some reason.

Is this thread open to other sharing of info or should we leave this one free of all that so Tony's great info doesn't get lost in the shuffle?  Personally I'd prefer to leave this thread to Tony so somebody doesn't get overwhelmed with too many posts and rushes through some of this gold.

Oh yeah, shopworks is pretty awesome, even though I'm just now sinking my teeth into it and am sometimes frustrated at it.  I also can't find a possible glitch in the software, or perhaps it is user error (probably the culprit).

I have little things that I do that maybe could help others or someone could take my idea and make things better for them.

[inkbrigade]

Our biggest challenge is lack of extra hands.  So its often hard to shift gears from embroidery to screen print to design all in the same day often.  When possible we schedule days all embroidery, or all screen print or all design and so on.  But its tough at times to do that.  So thats our biggest struggle.  We are just two people so it is what it is I guess.  I think a lot of our issues would go away with another employee and I struggle often about when to do that.  Gut keeps telling me not yet so I listen.

The girls at the shop each have their own tasks. They break the tasks into time segments. Something like 1st hour of the day is burning screens, next hour while those are drying is emails, responding to quotes. Presses usually don't even start up till after lunch. But at that point all the other stuff and the press spins no matter what till the end of the day.
Maybe doing stuff like that will help. It works for me to in my personal life. Like the next 30 minutes is email only... then reddit for 20, then a smoke

[inkbrigade]

How did you get your wife to do the printing?  I have to learn this trick.

You need a wife that has an eye for detail, mine does not... nor the patients. Her motto is "as long as the "paint" is on there". LOL. A real bummer. 

haha.. i love when people call it paint! I find lots of press ops at big shops are women because usually they are less "get er done" than men.

[BorisB]

This is by far the best thread I ever read on all boards at all times.

Boris

[squeegee]

This thread is definitely full of nice tips and is very interesting to hear the in and outs of the organizational structure of different companies.  I'm very interested in hearing more details about shopworks or fast manager or other scheduling software.  Scheduling and prioritizing is one of our biggest challenges, we use a cloud based calendar now but it falls short in many ways, basically we need more points of reference as to the status of each job, art, approvals, screens, goods, etc.  I want every person in my company on the same page as easily and efficiently as possible.  Thanks to all for taking out their time to contribute.