Staging part 3....6:00am

[tonypep]

My SP Produciton Mngr and I are in at six each morning. Heres a typical glimpse as to what goes on 90 minutes before shift starts:
We fire up the compressors and dryers. Presses are warmed up. Typically they are empty. The inks for each job have been prepped the night before on carts. DC inks already have small paper cups of pre-measured activator sitting on top. Most if not all of the screens are already in the ready racks (each press has two racks that can hold up to 40 screens.) Garments for the day are parked in carts along side the dryers. Masking tape with design name, number, and order number clearly idenify jobs so that they can be identified from a distance. Again, that has been done the night before. The schedule has been set the night before but last minute changes are enevitable so we shift things around as necessary. Next we begin to set up jobs on press. Most days we'll have a few dozen one color white discharge jobs for Resort so we start with these; often setting up several different jobs on each press.
The reason we start off with the easy stuff is obvious. Just like starting your day with a good breakfast a good day starts with a strong beginning. Production begins at 7:30 and presses spinning by 7:30 most days. No its never that mirror smooth every day but its the goal. Its the procedure.

[alan802]

Love it, that's a good system.  Very similar to how we do it, but ours is a much smaller scale.  I have only one auto and 6-8 jobs to deal with per day.

[bimmridder]

Some similarities here. We're still all plastisol. We run one shift right now, 10 hours. On three autos,we will run 35-40 jobs. I try to stage 10 +/- jobs at each auto. There are ALWAYS jobs ready to go on press, so there is no wandering off to "find my next order".  We have screen carts that will hold 15 frames, so we can have more than one job on each cart.  I have every job scheduled to print tomorrow imaged today. The screen room works at least one day ahead of printing's schedule. The product is also on each cart. (Small runs here usually) We don't often have ink on the carts because every color is a PMS match and we often share between presses. We try to have at least one job set up and ready at the end of the day. I have two set up guys that spend their days doing mostly set ups, then a number of other guys to simply follow behind and print. Everyone available helps with tear down and set up as the can be utilized. The thorn in my side is, I have two employees with a total of 14 months between them, doing all the set ups. Everyone else on the floor is a temp. We're getting it done, but it's a bit stressful some days. I know, we're different than everyone else, but that's kind of how we do it hear. Controlled chaos. 

[GraphicDisorder]

Good stuff.  For us much different since we don't have a single full time person or part time person dedicated to screen printing or any part of it, but we are getting closer all the time. 

Good to see how the big boys do it.

[alan802]

Some similarities here. We're still all plastisol. We run one shift right now, 10 hours. On three autos,we will run 35-40 jobs. I try to stage 10 +/- jobs at each auto. There are ALWAYS jobs ready to go on press, so there is no wandering off to "find my next order".  We have screen carts that will hold 15 frames, so we can have more than one job on each cart.  I have every job scheduled to print tomorrow imaged today. The screen room works at least one day ahead of printing's schedule. The product is also on each cart. (Small runs here usually) We don't often have ink on the carts because every color is a PMS match and we often share between presses. We try to have at least one job set up and ready at the end of the day. I have two set up guys that spend their days doing mostly set ups, then a number of other guys to simply follow behind and print. Everyone available helps with tear down and set up as the can be utilized. The thorn in my side is, I have two employees with a total of 14 months between them, doing all the set ups. Everyone else on the floor is a temp. We're getting it done, but it's a bit stressful some days. I know, we're different than everyone else, but that's kind of how we do it hear. Controlled chaos. 

Wow, you have that many temps with very little experience and you're still able to get that many jobs done per press?  Impressive but I can see how that would be stressful for the one training the temps and making sure they are doing things properly.  I have always listened to Dave and Tony, among other multi-auto shop owners and managers so that when we do get the 2nd press I'll have plenty of ideas to use and I won't be going into it blind.  Things are crazy here right now with two great months to start the year and my guys are tired already, I wonder how things will be in our "busy" season this year.  If it's going to be symetrical to what other years have been in relation to the slower months then I predict a 2nd auto will be installed much sooner than I had previously thought.

[tonypep]

Dave keeps threatening to visit one day when he is town. I am beginning to believe he doesn't exist
Seriously though, looking forward to it.

[bimmridder]

If you wouldn't use that "my back is killing me" excuse maybe we could. Seriously, Taco Boy or Red's next time I'm there. I'll buy. And we need to try to get Rick to come along, too. I'm trying to figure out my next trip right now.

[ZooCity]

Dave/Bimridder:  You should pat yourself on the back as you've achieved something huge in your shop.  Clearly you have your systems nailed down to the point where any employee can jump in anywhere.  The fact that you are running successfully at that size with a staff like that is amazing.  I'm sure there are headaches but still- impressive.

We're polar opposite here- totally art/craft oriented, there are precious few jobs I could randomly trust someone to perform. 

I draw a ton of that healthy "get up and go make the shop better" inspiration from you big boys on these staging threads.

[ebscreen]

Pre. Measured. Activator.

Now that's staging.

I'll be the first to admit we get a slow start in the morning. Usually due to mixing
dc inks. And the fact that I refuse to get here before 9 AM.

[tonypep]

For the smaller runs we use the little round preforated disposable paper cups for the ZFS