Know it All's

[Audifox]

Except for the voices in my head I am flying solo and handle everything from a commercial location.
mooseman

A funny shirt I saw once, "Even though the voices in my head aren't real, they have some pretty good ideas!"

Steve

No to derail,
but I have a shirt that says, "my imaginary friend doesn't like you either..."

And I'd say that being well versed in all aspects of your business isn't a bad thing,  some things just happen to be more glamorous than others 

[photoscreenprint]

In the shop where I work I may be the closest thing. I work in the art department and do the illustration and color separation work for the automatic presses. I also design and maintain the website. I am also a screen printer in my off hours and have an art studio where I burn screens and print on textiles and flat stock.
 So, I can walk into any department and know exactly what they are doing and why, except sales. I cannot figure out for the life of me why everything from sales gets labeled TBD and ASAP!!!!

[ABuffington]

I've written on the problems owners face when they move from laborer to manager. "Who's running the shop?" is a responsibility owner's forget when they are dying to get out of the messy part of the business. Documentation of best practices and creating a training book can really help.  I work in screen rooms mainly and it amazes me that recently hired workers often bring in bad habits that owner's may not see until production drops.  Something as simple as the concept of exposure vs image are two entirely different subjects and the exposure time needed to achieve them.  I have found screen rooms go their own way as to what is easiest, not what is best.  If 20 seconds less exposure makes the halftones fall out easily then they will chose that path and production managers will get used to re-shooting screens and press down time.  Owners need to still run the shop down to the nuts and bolts of all processes and get away from letting recently hired staff make huge process decisions that can cost dearly on press.  Don't get me started on Accountants who make decisions that have nothing to do with production or print quality.  The best firing I ever did was my accountant who only saw price but didn't have a clue on how to get top performance from a shop.

[Sbrem]

I needed to know it all... fast forward from '72 to '90, and I change to digital, Illustrator 88, Photoshop 2.0, Freehand 2.0

Steve

AI88 and Freehand, good times. Setting the point on a path and waiting 30 seconds for the mac se to catch up... and thinking how cool this is.

My MacPlus had 1 MB of RAM, which I upgraded to 4 MB, no internal hard drive, but one 20 MB external that cost $650.00, and that was 1991 dollars. I loved Freehand, but I got used to Illustrator from necessity. I love Illustrator too.

Steve

[alan802]

I don't do art, but I know of some of you jokers can do it I could figure it out .  However, the rest of what I do around here is no less important than if I did literally know how to do every single detail.  If I'm out, we're lucky to get 3 jobs done, easy, 2-3 color jobs all day.  When I'm here we can knock out 10 average jobs.  Luckily I'm here every day, 10-12 hours. Most of the crew probably don't have a clear view of what I do, but if I have to go next door for any amount of time to put out a fire over there, very little gets done while I'm gone.  I don't think most people understand how many "little things" need to be done to make the shop run well.  Making sure the screen inventory is up to par, even having a proper supply of sharp squeegee blades and maintaining the presses for the most part goes completely unnoticed, among at least 50 other little things.  I know for the most part I'm preaching to the choir, but just in case some of you might be wondering how to squeeze out 40-50 jobs a week with one auto might do good in looking at all the ancillary stuff.

We are fully staffed here right now, which is rare, but I'll explain why it's not what it was this time last year even though we have the same amount of warm bodies.  I have a point system I devised where I use a 10-point scale to grade out each employee.  At our current volume and job specs, I need 25 points to make this shop run like a top.  Unfortunately I have 3 employees that only grade out at about 5 points each for a total of 15, which leads me to pick up the extra 10 points.  This time last year I had a 9-point employee running the auto, my current printer graded out much higher last year as a support person and was a 7 or so.  My 3rd guy was a solid 7, but damn was he a pain in the anus.  That put us at 23 on the average day so I could spend my time tinkering with things, finding new ways to make us better, more efficient.  Knocking out 8-10 jobs a day was very common a year ago.  Now, if I were to not get involved in production we would average 2.5-3 jobs per day...yeah, it's not something I'm proud to say, but it is what it is and I've always been open and honest with this forum, for good or bad.  I also run the G3 most of the time and spend at least 4 hours every day running it to pick up the large amount of slack.  The RPM is run by my main printer 8 hours a day but I get more done in 4 hours on the G3 than he does in 8 hours, but it's not the RPM that is the difference.  I also run most every job that is more than 3 colors in size, which leads me to running 3-4 times as many screens per day on the G3 than what gets done on the RPM.

So I'm not the know it all that many of you are, but I have a full plate nonetheless.  I have to go mix up some ink and print a nice little 7 color left chest before the customer gets here...hopefully later than they said.   

[kalisana]

know it all and owner of a printing business that offers a hub of resources and fun ideas for people new in this business.