Realistic Production Standards

[avogel]

I am looking for some feedback on realistic net production numbers from a 3 man production crew. We have recently started doing some large run (for us, 10 - 15k) contract orders. The first order was navy shirts with 1 color white print on front. We setup 3 white screens, single stroke, with 2 flashes. Shirts are counted in and stacked on tables for the day by a prep person. 3 man team is expected to print, catch, count and box. How many shirts would you expect this team to NET at the end of an 8 hour shift? Job was setup and ran some the day before. They have 20 minute paid lunch in there. Job is medium coverage. Take in to account, adding ink, stops for lint, reloading from tables to carts, bathroom breaks, etc. Our shop is not ac, so factor a little fatigue, it was 92 when they started and 108 at end of shift. I set them a goal of 3000 per shift.

[Colin]

when they were running - how many dozens per hour were they printing? i.e. how fast were they able to load consistently all day?

[avogel]

500 - 600 per hour running speed. My main loader can get up close to 700 but there is to many crooked prints at that speed especially on the larger sizes.

[im_mcguire]

That is exactly how my shop runs on a consistent basis.
3 people on the large runs, and 2 people on the smaller runs.

Our large runs go from 5-7k pieces with 3 locations.
We will use a loader, unloaded and catcher.
Each person is trained on each position, so when one person goes on break, we slow the press a bit, and 1 person can load and unload, and one person can catch. Then that first person takes over.
Sometimes we just let the shirts pile in a bin, and the catcher just plays catch up.

We run 35 dozen per hour with 2 people loading and unloading.
With one person loading and unloading we run at 30 dozen per hour.

On average I know we should be able to hit 2,000 impressions in a 8 hour shift. If for some reason we fall below that, I know it?s due to the heat. We will start printing at 5:00am and run to 2:00pm and call it a day.

I?m not a big shop that can do 1k prints in a hour, but we try with these jobs to work as long as we can without stopping.

[mimosatexas]

We have only had our auto up and running about a month and a half, so i am probably slower than I could be, but i usually solo load and unload at around 35 to 38 dozen with breaks every hour or so. There are two main things that I know make this slower than we could be running as well. First, 90% of our shirts are canvas or next level, and when I run a gildan or port and co job I am easily about 3 or 4 dozen faster. Second, the raised pallet design of our saber means shirts frequently catch on the pallet arm and loadind requires an extra step to clear the arm on any smaller sizes. With an unloader I have hit 60 dozen a few times, but usually hover closer to 50 to 52 comfortably. The bottleneck for us is actually our dryer at this point, not the press. If we do 2000 impressions on a full front or back in a shift I am happy right now, especially considering all the assorted other crap i need to do during the day besides just printing.

[Atownsend]

By myself I run around 32 doz / hr. With two operators we max out around 68doz / hr on the 10clr sportsman. But that is balls to the wall and not too realistic for production in the heat. Day to day we run on average 45-48 doz with two on the press and a catcher. Running 7-10 setups / day (one machine) at the moment between 50-500 pcs. We will usually set up 2-3 jobs on press and will switch to one operator @ while the other tears down screens with the press moving. Kind of wish we had bigger runs... setup time is our wall. But the grass is always greener as they say.

[jsheridan]

You?re not going to like this..
3000 shirts is a piss poor day honestly for a 10k pc run. That?s 3.5 days of solid work.. gotta go faster!

Goal should be 5500 per day if they walk into everything ready to go.

A 3 man crew should easily hit 4500 per shift if it?s the same print all day and thats with 2 breaks, a lunch and moving their own product. 

Sportys run about 72 dz an hour max.. that?s 864 an hour.

Run for 7 hours and you?ll print 6048 shirts. 

I?d love to tell you what we Spin the Roq?s at with only 7 people all together running 4 machines and two dryers but you won?t believe me, you have to see it to believe it. The crew runs solo in the 350-400 per hour range and we exceed 1000 pcs per hour when we team up and help unload. We knocked out 10k shirts the other week with front, back in 3 days. We ran at 850-1050 per hour all day till it was done then went right into the next job up and running 10 minutes later. Shop was over 100, it was high 90?s outside and we all just did our job.

The name of the game is prep, make sure the next job is ready to go and help the press turnover and get going ASAP.

[mimosatexas]

Maybe I'm missing something, but how are you going more than twice as fast with 2 people vs one person?  loading takes longer than unloading+index time/grabbing the next shirt from what I have seen on our press, so the gain from adding a second person is a little under twice as fast.  It definitely isnt 2.5 times as fast for us. 

I'm entirely sure we could be more efficient since we are pretty much brand new to our auto, but I've also noticed that real world numbers when you factor in re-inking, stoppage for lint (and refreshing the tack on our lint screen), refreshing the tack on pallets, changing shirt carts, etc knock our numbers down by probably 10% at best. 

[Colin]

The difference is in the index rate/speed of the press.

Also, on the Roq's and a couple other presses - the carousel does not go up and down - so that saves a lot of time over 8 hours production time. 

Makes it VERY easy to hit higher rates per hour.

[avogel]

We are running a Roq press. The carousel not going up and down definitely makes loading and unloading easier. I was mostly trying to get a gauge for what people realistically net versus the we run at X per hour "all day long" speed. It sounds like if we run 550 per hour "all day long", 3000 - 3500 net would be a good realistic production standard. Once we get there we can work on getting our gross run rate up.

[jsheridan]

How do we do it, the pause pedal.

I?ve been a press op most of my career and are not new to 1000+ hours. Getting to that rate and staying there on a blue wasn?t that hard, until you had any problems with the load. Choice was to let it go, yank it off and let the no sensor catch it or flip to finish, load next and flip back to run. Easy but it was a missed shirt and lost time.

Now you?re running solo, sometimes you wait for the next board, sometimes your stopping when you get a bad load then it?s switches and missed boards and time again.

the pause pedal.. if need just that much more time to load, step on the pedal and the press waits for you.. step off and back in it. No skips no wasted board at the cost of a fraction of a second. Step on it a little longer and I can add some fresh glue or go into finish ad glue then when it comes back start the load as I go push all the inks and back to unload without stopping the press.

It?s a real beast in solo mode as now the press goes as fast as you. With a double base or double stroke HSA or WB work you can set the perfect pace and just go.

[Atownsend]

How do we do it, the pause pedal.

I?ve been a press op most of my career and are not new to 1000+ hours. Getting to that rate and staying there on a blue wasn?t that hard, until you had any problems with the load. Choice was to let it go, yank it off and let the no sensor catch it or flip to finish, load next and flip back to run. Easy but it was a missed shirt and lost time.

Now you?re running solo, sometimes you wait for the next board, sometimes your stopping when you get a bad load then it?s switches and missed boards and time again.

the pause pedal.. if need just that much more time to load, step on the pedal and the press waits for you.. step off and back in it. No skips no wasted board at the cost of a fraction of a second. Step on it a little longer and I can add some fresh glue or go into finish ad glue then when it comes back start the load as I go push all the inks and back to unload without stopping the press.

It?s a real beast in solo mode as now the press goes as fast as you. With a double base or double stroke HSA or WB work you can set the perfect pace and just go.

Is this pause pedal only for Roc's / higher end / newer M&R's? We use a foot pedal to skip a pallet, but it sure would be nice to pause! Don't see a way to program that on our Sportsman E Circa 2009.

[mimosatexas]

Our press has a pedal that can be programmed for pause or skip, we use it as a pause. My question isn't about the speed itself, but why you would more than double that speed with 2 people vs one. How are you going from 400 to 1050 an hour when the time saved by the second person is the time it takes to unload and grab another shirt during the index, but the loading takes longer than both of those actions together based on what im seeing in our shop. I could see going from 650 to 1050, but not understanding how the jump is 400 to 1050.

[3Deep]

I only read a little bit so correct me here if I'm wrong by saying this, but every shop does not have the same size press or dryer, so how long it takes one shop to output 10K is going to be very different than a shop with a bigger press and larger dryer. A lot of people on here talk about speed, but for me if I have a shop with only 1 or maybe two auto's I'm not going to worry about speed but concentrate on quality production, I see those large shops with 6 or more auto's worry more about speed because of the volume they need to keep the doors open.  So to me there is really no production standard unless your comparing your shop to another that is set up the same as your own.

[ericheartsu]

You?re not going to like this..
3000 shirts is a piss poor day honestly for a 10k pc run. That?s 3.5 days of solid work.. gotta go faster!

Goal should be 5500 per day if they walk into everything ready to go.

A 3 man crew should easily hit 4500 per shift if it?s the same print all day and thats with 2 breaks, a lunch and moving their own product. 

Sportys run about 72 dz an hour max.. that?s 864 an hour.

Run for 7 hours and you?ll print 6048 shirts. 

I?d love to tell you what we Spin the Roq?s at with only 7 people all together running 4 machines and two dryers but you won?t believe me, you have to see it to believe it. The crew runs solo in the 350-400 per hour range and we exceed 1000 pcs per hour when we team up and help unload. We knocked out 10k shirts the other week with front, back in 3 days. We ran at 850-1050 per hour all day till it was done then went right into the next job up and running 10 minutes later. Shop was over 100, it was high 90?s outside and we all just did our job.

The name of the game is prep, make sure the next job is ready to go and help the press turnover and get going ASAP.

I've always wondered about this in terms of waterbased inks. We can hit that no problem, with plastisol, but with double stroking waterbed ink, we typically hit around 400-500/pc per hour with a loader and unloader.