Keeping track of setup/ breakdown/ printing times.?

[whitewater]

I would like my employee to keep track of setups/ breakdowns/ and printing times.

The reason for this is I schedule jobs in a way knowing I would get those done if I was printing. Well we are never finishing the jobs each day that are scheduled and I'm rearranging every day to accomondate.. I know I am much faster at all these then the employee, but I do not overschedule because I know this.

I tried this before, but they seem to forget all the time. Is there an easy way to do this?

If anyone has their employees do this how do you do it? Do they just look at a clock? do they have a timer they start for each part and fill in a clipboard? Online?

Any ideas would be appreciated....

[244]

I would like my employee to keep track of setups/ breakdowns/ and printing times.

The reason for this is I schedule jobs in a way knowing I would get those done if I was printing. Well we are never finishing the jobs each day that are scheduled and I'm rearranging every day to accomondate.. I know I am much faster at all these then the employee, but I do not overschedule because I know this.

I tried this before, but they seem to forget all the time. Is there an easy way to do this?

If anyone has their employees do this how do you do it? Do they just look at a clock? do they have a timer they start for each part and fill in a clipboard? Online?

Any ideas would be appreciated....

don’t know what type of presses you have but if you have any M&R presses within the last 7 years punch in Production and all of the KPI info is at hand including breaks,etc.

[Flash Ink]

We use a form from SMR software to track everything. My employees just look at a clock and record their times on the sheet of paper. Its a guideline at best when they are done. There is always missing data on their forms, but they are good enough to get some rough numbers of what kind of time your employees are spending on each job. Once you have a couple of months of data you can start to see some trends and make some average calculations.

[bimmridder]

If you are tracking by having employees write down the times, I'd make sure they fully understand what you are doing. When we did this years ago I had employees fudging numbers both ways. Some wanted to look good, so they were saying set ups and run times were faster than reality. And we had others go the other way. I explained that the numbers they were giving were going to be used to make scheduling more realistic. If you say your set up for a six color job is 12 minutes, you better not be lying. That's what I will expect when the numbers  are all compiled. So make sure they understand the numbers are to benefit all involved. For us it was to make scheduling better, more accurate, and predictable.

Certainly, if machines are tracking the times it will be harder to manipulate, but probably still possible

[RICK STEFANICK]

Wel Well Well.. MR. Filip welcome back. The screen Print world has not been the same since you left. 

[Gilligan]

Echo Dot and a stopwatch "skill".

Tape the instructions to the Echo.

"Alexa start stopwatch"

"Alexa ask stopwatch to stop" and she hollars out your time.

I then have them write the setups, run times, and tear downs on the proofs then turn them in to me.

I can then plug all that data into Excel or whatever and get a running log of what it takes to do X job.

Worked well when I was making them do it.  Then I had some turn over so I haven't got back on it again (turn over was unrelated to stopwatch  )

[BP]

At one shop I had my printers punch a old time clock right on the work orders. One time stamp for start of set up one punch for start print and etc.


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[Stinkhorn Press]

we record setup times.
we record print times.
piece of paper for each job (same on that gets signed off on and records job details data).
look at the clock method.

when compiling, i separate "once around the press" jobs from "more than once around the press" jobs.

BUT THE REAL difference between "what should be done in a day and a perfect world" and what isn't is much harder to capture and eliminate (here). our setups and print times are fine. it's the EVERYTHING else time that really reduces the theoretical output.

[Maxie]

We have a kitchen timer on the carousel.
The printer calls out times to the catcher no writes them down on a form we printed, set up and printing time.
One of the office staff enter it into Excel and I get a monthly report.
I am mainly interested in total set up time and printing time.
We record how many colors and prints as well so I get average number of prints per hour.
I also see how many hours per day we actually printed.
If we had a computer behind the dryer the catcher could enter the info straight into Excel.
I posted about a program called Monday.com today, I’m trying to work out a way to record this info in this program.

[tonypep]

Again, so many variables.  Do you have 20 employees, 2 or none. Pre-press support? Staging for next jobs in either case is critical no matter what. Interruptive downtime is what is most over looked as been stated.

Either way 3 minutes per screen to tear down is fairly predictable and easily achieved when managed correctly

[whitewater]

I would like my employee to keep track of setups/ breakdowns/ and printing times.

The reason for this is I schedule jobs in a way knowing I would get those done if I was printing. Well we are never finishing the jobs each day that are scheduled and I'm rearranging every day to accomondate.. I know I am much faster at all these then the employee, but I do not overschedule because I know this.

I tried this before, but they seem to forget all the time. Is there an easy way to do this?

If anyone has their employees do this how do you do it? Do they just look at a clock? do they have a timer they start for each part and fill in a clipboard? Online?

I do have a diamondback.. 5 years.

Ill take a look


Any ideas would be appreciated....

don’t know what type of presses you have but if you have any M&R presses within the last 7 years punch in Production and all of the KPI info is at hand including breaks,etc.

[whitewater]

Again, so many variables.  Do you have 20 employees, 2 or none. Pre-press support? Staging for next jobs in either case is critical no matter what. Interruptive downtime is what is most over looked as been stated.

Either way 3 minutes per screen to tear down is fairly predictable and easily achieved when managed correctly

I agree about a lot of variables..

we have 2-3 employees back there. I know they can be more efficient.  But I feel the need to know the times..

Ill prob do 1 sheet per job to go with the work order. They can record the info I need and also put in how many revolutions and also a place for notes, maybe explain if something held them up screen wise, art wise etc.


I just want them to be efficient...

[tonypep]

It is easier to fudge the numbers in a large shop. When I left this one we were developing hand written reports. With the language barriers etc they could not even the date right. So....the data was always in question. So, much more easily done with modern equipment and a smaller more contained environment. Reasonable accuracy is the goal

[tonypep]

And I left the word "get" out! No one is perfect.

[RICK STEFANICK]

We use file maker and every press including our 3 sample presses have i-pads. There are notes put in for every job including set-up times, print times. they note everything including approval times. Then each day a report is ran with the notes and times on every press for every job. Its not a perfect system as you are relying on the notes entered but its a start