OK, I'm going to sound like a jerk here. Here's how it's done in my shop. One image per screen. I don't even allow color changes on press. If we have to change a color, we have a new screen. I know that seems very wasteful, but I don't want to stop my presses any longer than absolutely necessary. If it takes five minutes to clean a screen and change an ink color, versus 2 minutes to slap a new screen in, I'm going with the new screen. We're are all auto here, and Tri-Loc. I need to keep my presses turning, not having my printers become screen cleaners. Like I said, this is how we do it in MY shop.
I guess it boils down to where your bottleneck in production is, if the auto's are spinning 24/7 then your way makes perfect sense, get all operations that don't put ink on shirts off the press and keep those suckers spinning! I think most of us can only dream...or nightmare..
... about being that busy. For us it makes more sense to just wash up a screen as the same guy who runs the printer at any given time can be reclaiming/shooting screens, packing/unpacking product for padprinting/weeding vinyl for signage or a hundred other jobs.
I worked as Production Manager at a 24/7 shop that ran like a well oiled machine and it really opened my eyes to a lot of production ideals, but some of them don't transfer directly over to my own little graphic,parts,garment-screenprint/padprint/signmaking employee-multitasking shop in a small community.
I will say it sure helps to have those big-shop efficiency tricks up your sleeve for when you do get slammed with that huge order though, and your quoted example above is no exception. Thinking about thing differently depending on the circumstance your faced with separates the successful from the not in an economy like this.
