Staging question: Lots of orders, how to deal with all these garments?

[inkbrigade]

Hey Guys,
Busy season is upon us. We have about 50 orders worth of garments in the warehouse. We're having trouble figuring out how to manage them. I know putting them all on carts would make sense.. But that's like $5000 worth of rolling carts. Plus we don't exactly have the space for that.
We have available table space, but we're getting to the point where were putting shirts on the table, putting a flat cardboard box on top of the order and then stacking another order on top. It's making it really hard to find garments when we actually do goto stage the jobs with the carts we do have.

In a perfect world one job would arrive in one box from the garment vendor. But in reality sometimes garments for one job can come from multiple vendors. Or multiple different client jobs can come in one box from one vendor.
I guess we could rebox them but that seems like kind of a waste of effort.

Does anyone have any, thoughts, ideas, pointers on how to deal with something like this?

Thanks!

[Get Shirts]

When an order arrives it's counted in, boxed, labeled, and then moved to the correct shelf where it waits until it is time to run that particular job.  We only have 2-3 jobs staged at any given time, having more than that is just asking for trouble.

I agree, it would be great if each shipment that we received only contained one order.. But our receiving would still process shipments in the exact same manor, if not we would learn of the (frequent) shortages or vendor mis-pulls at the exact time that we have scheduled to run a job, and that would be a huge schedule interruption. 


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[mk162]

correct, we also use moving dollies for larger orders and push them around to where they need to go and unbox at the press.  If you cart things as they are counted it will suck up all of your space.

also, we use color coded space age totes from U-line to divide smaller orders and to instantly know if they belong in embroidery, screen printing or DTG.  Helps a ton.

[Printficient]

I have a customer that uses laundry baskets to separate and sort orders.

[ericheartsu]

When an order arrives it's counted in, boxed, labeled, and then moved to the correct shelf where it waits until it is time to run that particular job.  We only have 2-3 jobs staged at any given time, having more than that is just asking for trouble.

I agree, it would be great if each shipment that we received only contained one order.. But our receiving would still process shipments in the exact same manor, if not we would learn of the (frequent) shortages or vendor mis-pulls at the exact time that we have scheduled to run a job, and that would be a huge schedule interruption. 


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this is exactly how we do it as well.

[jvanick]

Same here.  Orders are checked in, and re boxed with the order number written on the box and the invoice taped onto the topmost box.

As a general rule, there's 10 to 20 orders staged at any given time.

At print time the boxes are emptied onto the cart, and then reloaded as the shirts get finished with a final count.

The boxes are taped and put in the outgoing area.

[kingscreen]

We use a packet system.  Job packet contains Invoice, Proof, and films.  Packet follows the order from the arrival of garments to the completion of the order. 
When garments arrive, they are counted and checked off on the Invoice.  Garments are put back in the box.  Boxes are then labeled with Customer last name and Invoice #.  Boxed (and labeled) garments are put on a shelf or stacked together on the floor along with the job packet.  We have an incomplete section on our floor where garments that are awaiting additional pieces (from another vendor/warehouse, etc.) are placed.  We do order garments in individual POs by job.  That makes it a lot easier and faster to find, sort, check in and keep organized.

edit: I should clarify, we keep garments boxed until the are taken out and put on rolling cart to be printed.  We never store garments out of boxes.

[Screened Gear]

This may be a dumb question but how many jobs do you print a day. I only order 2 days in advance. I can get shirts next day so ordering more then what I can do just fills my shop and messes with the flow. Ordering late like I do helps with customers adding shirts and last minute order changes, when they happen.

When orders come in they are unbox right away to catch any shortages. Smaller orders (24-50} get laid flat then folded over on themselves. Then they are stacked on a table with a label. larger orders are put on to rolling carts for easy moving. Each shipment has 5 to 10 orders so its not that hard to handle. I have 5 rolling carts. Having all the shirts laid flat makes the work look less overwhelming and easier to view. The print order of the jobs is already determined so the ones that print first get rolled over tot he presses and start a line of carts.

Obviously your doing more jobs then me but having a simple system in place works even with many more orders.

[Screened Gear]

Here is one pointer.

I get free shipping at $150. So if I have a few larger orders I will separate those out in to their own orders. So instead of doing one big order with a distributor I will do a few smaller orders with them. This make sorting jobs alot easier. I usually do it by color. If I have 3 orders of black shirts those orders will be in separate orders with maybe an order of royal or white shirts. This saves a ton of time on sorting. The distributors don't mind either since they can pull the smaller orders faster with more then one puller working my order.

[LuckyFlyinROUSH]

We have a dry erase board, everything needed for that day/week is put in particular order of what is needed first to what can get bumped to the next day.

Whatever is needed for that day is counted and laid flat on carts/table  with a Po on top of it. Sometimes we stack multiple orders on top of each other with the PO. Its up to your press operator to actually READ the DAMN PO before they print the crap.

We have some stock to fill missing pieces or mis-ships. Usually falls on the person who ordered them if something is incorrect.

Sorry...on a rant today...Got one operator that doesn't read everything. Shes had breast cancer 3 times and been with us for 19 years or I wouldn't think twice about firing her.

[LuckyFlyinROUSH]

twice

[ebscreen]

I'm with not wanting to put things back in boxes. We have several thousand in carts and need more...


Sanmar has a PSST program, pack separate, ship together. Still get free shipping even though it's
packed by PO.

[ZooCity]

We basically cart everything.  It's rough this time of year as we are very short on staging space.

I like the idea of re-boxing- you can go vertically then. 

As it is we have something like 30 or 50 carts that are more or less constantly full.  They are lined up on either side of the dryer waiting to be fed to either press. Overflow gets stacked in boxes on moving dollies.

Another great thread I'm glad I had time to read.  This crap is super important when it's busy.

[inkbrigade]

Lots of great responses everyone. Thanks for all the input. Lots to think about. I think we might do a mix. It's the smaller jobs, less than 72 pieces that we seem to have trouble with. So we might move to a rebox model for those. Keep stuff like the giant sweatshirt orders on the tables until it's time to put them on a cart and roll them to the press staging area.

[tonypep]

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