Screenroom Manhours / Efficiency

[zanegun08]

I'm wondering what other shops man hours are along with the equipment you are running, and average screens per day.

I'm feeling we are way overstaffed, but here are the honest numbers.

We have 6.5 full time people in the screen room a day.  We produce around 175-250 screens a day.

The equipment we run, and our process.

First we have employee number 1.5 stripping tape, and scraping excess ink and loading in IT Automatic Screen Reclaimer.  Then employee number 2 is taking screens which don't get all the way clean (need better chemistry) and doing a final spray out, and then degrease and set to dry.

When dry employee number 2 is coating the screens, with a Digikote automatic coater which does two up.

Employee number 3 is pulling films (yuck) and pre-reg / taping screens for reorders but we don't have enough people in art currently to convert them over to CTS.

Employee number 4 is reading schedule and figuring out what to produce, as well as doing new orders CTS with our Spyder II waxjet.

Employee number 5 takes imaged screens to our 5k MH light and exposes 5 up.  Puts in a dip tank, then washes out and sets to dry.

Employee number 6 tapes screens, blocks out registration, as well as pulls screens for production.  This guy also is versatile and stretches screens, and works in more than one role, but when we are in full production employee 5 / 6 are washing out and taping 8 hours a day.

Some of their times are overlapping and going into night shift a little, but in general we have over 48 hours a day in the screen room to produce 175 - 250 screens a day.

I'm demoing a starlight tomorrow with our CTS / new emulsion and if it exposes in 40 seconds or less we will add a starlight so that  CTS can be printing while the other is exposing, and go straight to diptank rather than another double process.

Anyone else care to share their screens per day, man hours, ect for comparison sake?

[ericheartsu]

What emulsion are you using now? We use Saati PHU2, on our STE 2, which has a back bay of lights (that's more or less a starlight), and we expose screens 200 and less for upwards of 32 seconds.

Also if you have a CTS, couldn't you move someone into the art dept. that could schedule what screens are being made. Maybe employee number 4 could be a liason of dropping in files, but also dictating what mesh to put designs on? (something i'm looking at in our shop currently).

Also if you took just a little bit of time to convert films to CTS files, wouldn't that eliminate the job for employee 3? Or would employee # 2 be able to fill the void of this while he is coating screens?

I don't think many shops here has that many people working in their shops, let alone in their ink rooms, but it'll be interesting to read.

[DannyGruninger]

Haven't been running my larger operation long enough for good averages yet as we are still changing our processes and what not but today we did exactly 175 screens through our loop on the cts side and 8 racks of 20 screens(160 total through reclaim/coating).... On average we are around 150 per day I'd say. This consist of 3 people in my shop which all help each other essentially expect only one guy uses the cts exclusively as I feel that making the screens is key to everything. Person a runs cts, devolpes then tapes screens, and helps run the auto coater. Person b floats between taping screens, carding ink off screens, pulling tape off screens and helping person c with reclaim. Person c also helps card ink and detape when he gets time, then also coat screens. For reclaim I have a dip tank and long table top booth system for two people to work in a line using a pump system with ink removal and one part degreaser. Another key is having the auto coater because anyone can operate it and achieve exactly the same screens. Plus coating 1 over 1 is quick for us. The only down fall to having a small efficient crew is when one guy is out then you create a major backlog super quick which also happened today. I have another guy plus myself who jump in to make it jam better when we can which helps us do quite a bit. Having cts with built in exposure creates a big increase in ease/workflow as well but in a nutshell that's what we do.

[zanegun08]

What emulsion are you using now?
Also if you took just a little bit of time to convert films to CTS files, wouldn't that eliminate the job for employee 3?
I don't think many shops here has that many people working in their shops, let alone in their ink rooms, but it'll be interesting to read.

We were using Kiwo VersaTex, but they released a new called Kiwo MultiTex that exposes much faster, so I'm hoping the starlight will work for us.

The plan is to eliminate number 3, but we lost two in art so had to train new in the busy season, and now we are up to speed to be able to do that.

The only down fall to having a small efficient crew is when one guy is out then you create a major backlog super quick which also happened today.

I would like to get down to a 3-4 person crew, I think with the tools they have, they could get the same amount of work done.  Just not enough oversight.  And now that it is getting manageable, and I've trained two new artists, and can step away from my desk I can start looking at each department and figure out where to increase productivity.

[mooseman]

 do it like Henry Ford would have done it, example Ford produced EXACTLY the same product in a straight as possible line, each stop in line had a well defined task and when the product left that stop it was fully prepped for the next process.
look at your process is it "a straight line " process or are there backups and overlaps ? What happens at each "stop". If you identify the same or similar process happening in more than one stop there should be an opportunity to streamline / condense process.
It could be as simple as relocating a machine or process in the sequence.
The advantage you have is the process is exactly the same every time so the variables are few or none at all
mooseman

[jvieira]

I would like to get down to a 3-4 person crew, I think with the tools they have, they could get the same amount of work done.  Just not enough oversight.  And now that it is getting manageable, and I've trained two new artists, and can step away from my desk I can start looking at each department and figure out where to increase productivity.

I run a 2 person crew in screen printing (plus another 2 in dtg/transfers) and we were as inefficient as one could be. I had to step away from my desk and redefine everything. We're still in the process of learning everyones new tasks but I already see a lot of good changes.
Spend a couple days with them, be their shadow. You'll be amazed with your findings and I'm sure you'll manage to take at least one person off the equation.

[alan802]

We average 30 screens per day and I have 1 part-timer dedicated to our screens.  He works Monday through Wednesday and catches shirts from the dryer and de-tapes, reclaims, coats, exposes and tapes all the screens M-W, then my full-timer takes over exposing screens on Thurs and Fri but doesn't reclaim or coat and we have a pile of screens by Monday morning for Joe to start on.  Just to put a nice round number on it without breaking it down like I normally do, I would think a full-timer for every 60 screens per day would be about right with the way we do things and our current equipment.  I should probably spend some time evaluating that to be certain but I feel confident that I could do up to 75 per day if I were the screen guy and didn't have to catch shirts or other non-screen related stuff. 

[Sbrem]

We are smaller, 30 - 40 screens a day, 1 full-time guy, that's his only job. Reclaims, coats, burns, develops, touches up, sends to the presses. He has 30 years in the trade.

Steve

[jamiem]

Zane, sounds like you might have at least .5 too many.  Agreed to above about machine placement and flow.  We are right in the middle of changing this at our place right now if you want to come over and check it out, before we finish

[alan802]

I think he's got about 2 too many but I'm frankly out of my league when it comes to that type of productivity because larger shops have to operate differently.  Just because a one auto shop can have one guy doing 50 screens per day doesn't mean a shop doing 200 screens per day would need 4 people.  It could work that way but I wouldn't know and so I keep my mind open to the idea it might not be a linear progression. 

[Screen Dan]

Agreed to above about machine placement and flow

This. To A Tee.  When I took over the screen department we were "short" two guys...we operated lean while I got trained up and learned everything and figured once I was up to speed on how to run things we would hire two more...I also was given a chance (and budget) to do some renovations.  I sat down and looked at the process and the space I had.  We took this hodgepodge designed-by-accident department, knocked down some walls, built some new ones and carefully placed everything in a manner that reflects the flow of the work. 

I made sure that the drying room spit screens out as close to the taping table as possible, the racks for the pre-taped screens are next to that, further down the line we have our CTSs, the most commonly used machine is the closest.  Then down the line is the exposure unit.  Right next to that is the staging area for masked and exposed screens.  The wet room in the back has two doors, one for the reclaim guy to go through, another for the guys developing to go through.  The coating room is right next to the drying room. 

I tried to eliminate crisscrossing paths as much as possible and make the workflow linear in a physical sense.  The only overlapping path I couldn't eliminate was to the drying room...we only have one.  I can live with that.

All said and done?  Never had to hire those two guys.  I have 3 guys processing 175-200 screens a day on the reclaim side, putting 100-150 screens a day out on the rack ready for press.  They work four tens, Monday through Thursday.  When the job-flow kicks up and the shop is pissing through screens faster than we can physically output them I have them come in for a few hours (or all ten) on Fridays...that way we can get a leg up on the pile and slowly but calculatedly bleed out until the next Friday.  When we have ginormous press-cloggers with prints the tens of thousands we run out of screens and the shop is stacked for work for months I keep one guy on for cleaning, maintenance and replacing screens and let two of them leave early...I always give them the option of getting at least their 40, but they usually prefer leaving early.  With the OT they get other times of the year it balances out for them.

The only downside to this is that if someone calls out I have to step into production.  If two guys call out it's an emergency.  One day last year all three guys called out, I had to borrow two guys from the print shop and have a less-than-lackluster day.  Luckily my guys are happy, motivated and reliable.

[TCred]

I am trying to visualise your workflow ScreenDan, would it be possible to post a mud map sketch?

[tonypep]

I prefer not to look at the screen making process as an assembly line but rather as a closed, continuous-loop cycle; which in turn serves the Production Facility. I look at prepress departments as sub assemblies which very often must react to the ebb and flow of production. For the Screen Department, interdependent variables such as run length, number of colors, mesh count requirements, frame size (to name a few) need to be taken into consideration. Therefore staffing, equipment, and raw materials may often change and flex.
Most textile printers are Mass Customization Facilites; regardless of size.

[Screen Dan]

I am trying to visualise your workflow ScreenDan, would it be possible to post a mud map sketch?

Pardon my hideous penmanship.  In middle school my handwriting was so bad that my parents got me a computer and printer so I could do homework...I've been typing ever since, 25+ years now, so my penmanship has degraded exponentially.  Sorry not sorry.  Also, somehow I managed to fax this onto the board, apparently.

Anyway, if you follow the life cycle of a screen once the shop is done with it you'll see how the screens move along the outside edge of what is essentially a horseshoe shape...then once coated they move along the inside edge of a reversed horseshoe until they get back out to the shop, which would be a far more gigantic square on the lower left of all of this.

Also, the screens on the reclaim half of the loop live on rolling screen racks from as soon as they are washed up until they are masked and exposed.  Aside from special circumstances, everything happens in 24 screen racks or 12 screen half-racks.

[jamiem]

We are in the middle of this project right now.  This is only the imaging and prep area.  Reclaim is all linear in different rooms before this.  We will have 4 people working here with around a 200 screen average depending on production demand.