Staging

[tonypep]

I decided that my staging procedures needed a bit more structure. Shop has a dividing wall about halfway down that splits it in two. The rear half has no presses so that's where large order bulk staging is. On the opposite wall is bulk staging for small to medium orders by customer when possible. Kind of in the middle of the shop near the dryers; orders to be printed within the next 48 hrs are staged with goods, screens, and print instructions with work orders and samples/mockups. We can pre-stage 16 jobs in this manner. Lastly I am buying more ink carts to stage inks by job outside the ink room wall. Totally loving it as I can assess where we are at a glance.
Just sharing
tp

[Clark]

Here is my staging area..lol

[tonypep]

Funny........we get boxes like that all the time. I believe they are shipped by camelback, then thrown on a raft, then the open backed truck throws them over the side as they drive by.

[mk162]

That looks like a disaster waiting to happen.  Aside form rain, how much bird poop and bugs do you have to clean off your stuff?

[Clark]

Well, we are in a drought, so don't have to worry about rain too much.  It's been over a 105 degrees for 3 weeks, so even the birds sit in the shade all day.  Lastly, they set there for all of 6 hours yesterday while they were being printed.  After that they went into a truck to be delivered.

They were delivered dry, and bug and bird poop free.

[Clark]

Funny........we get boxes like that all the time. I believe they are shipped by camelback, then thrown on a raft, then the open backed truck throws them over the side as they drive by.

I think these were just thrown out of an airplane coming from china.

[3Deep]

Thats not staging Clark thats disturbing LOL...if I put boxes of shirts out like that it would only rain right at my shop and oh the bugs and ants!!

[mk162]

There is a shop here that stages stuff outside, when it rains, everything gets pulled in and production shuts down because they have ZERO space.

[Clark]

I would trade all those backpacks for a few inches of rain right now.  Believe me it is so hot and dry here there are no bugs, no birds, and no chance of rain getting on any of my stuff.  This is not the norm, just a funny picture I took yesterday.  I have a cargo trailer we back up to the over head door if there is any chance of weather.  We store big jobs in it sometimes to get them out of the way.  And that is staging....You can see stacks of two that can be picked up at one time by one person.  then at the bottom is the completed ones.  We printed 5K backpacks from 9am till 4 pm and that includes a 30 min lunch and a couple 10 minute breaks.... So there is a method to the madness.

[3Deep]

Glad to see your busy and having a ball doing it....it would be nice to have some warehouse space to stage and store shirts to pull on the fly for quick orders.  A fellow printer here built a new building with all that in mine (staging,storage) just to find out a year later they needed more space 

[Clark]

In the picture, I am standing in my garage, that is my storage area for blanks.  I had the garage built big so I can fit quite a bit in there.  Usually at the end of the day we would bring all the next days orders into the shop pull as needed..but there is no way I could fit 200 cases in there and move around at all.  There are good and bad things about having a small shop.  Good is it's easier to maintain and keep clean.  bad is you have to invent ways to stay efficient when it comes to getting blanks into the shop and them printed.  Big orders with more than one imprint location are the worst.  We will bring 12 cases in at time, and then 4 are done they go back to the garage and four more come out...We have to take a few extra steps and a little more work than folks with big shops, but we can flat burn throw some shirts and haven't had any real issues with production speed being knocked way down due to space.  Just gotta walk a little faster.

I have some video I'm going to post later of the backpacks being printed.  2 loaders and one unloader. 

[GraphicDisorder]

Here is my staging area..lol

Jesus man...lol.

[mk162]

I did about 800 backpacks earlier this year and they wanted a 3 color print, so we used transfers instead.  I could have 1 guy doing them and he had time to fold, stack and rebox as he ran them.  I could do about 72 pcs an hour, so about 10 hours, for 1 guy, it worked out pretty well.  Best part was, they looked awesome since the transfers gave them a really smooth print.

[Clark]

We printed 5 colors on these.  Easy-peasy.  Had to build up the front of the platens a little bit so the fabric didnt turn over on it self, but they printed fast and looked great...wish I had a better picture.

[alan802]

It just looks hot as hell there.  Driving across this state right now is depressing.  Everything is brown, it almost looks like the dead of winter but with 110 degree heat to make it that much worse.