Screen Printing - February/March 2018 - 9

You would be shocked at the number of companies that
don't plan for what to do down the road. They buy equipment
or hire an employee without thinking about what they are
going to do with them, like a kid with a shiny new toy. Great
companies are forward minded. They're proactive, which
means anticipating both the good and the bad consequences
headed their way.
They know how they are going to react when business
slows down or speeds up. When they buy an automatic
press, they know they will have people who have been
trained to operate it effectively. They know how many more
screens they'll need to make to keep up with the increase
in productivity. Before they bought the press, they wrote a
business plan to make sure they could feed the press work
on a continual basis.
If you want better use of time during your day, start by
planning for what's around the corner.

ELIMINATE DISTRACTIONS AND PROBLEMS
We are constantly being bombarded with distractions
throughout the day - emails, phone calls, questions, and
all manner of things that don't really matter. You know the
symptoms. Employees on the shop floor using their cell
phones or scrolling through their music lists. Meetings to
review information that could have been handled in an email.

GREAT COMPANIES ARE FORWARD
MINDED. THEY'RE PROACTIVE, WHICH
MEANS ANTICIPATING BOTH THE
GOOD AND THE BAD CONSEQUENCES
HEADED THEIR WAY.

Staff members that move like zombies on Monday mornings
or Friday afternoons.
Whatever is going on, put a plan in place to eliminate or at
least minimize these distractions. We're all social creatures.
A business should have a good culture that is fun and team
oriented. If you rule the company with an iron fist, you'll have
employees who don't want to work there. But you can set the
tone and help eliminate distractions.
In any printing or manufacturing setting, there will always
be problems. Challenges pop up and we have to deal with
them. However, when you find yourself solving the same
problems repeatedly, it means you have a time suck that
needs to be obliterated.
For example, let's say you have noticed that your press
crews spend a lot of time taping up pinholes in the screens.
What's causing that? To find out, you do what's known as
root cause analysis - a fancy term that means putting on
your detective hat to systematically figure out what's wrong.
Your research eventually leads you to the screen reclaiming
process, and you learn that a new team member there isn't
degreasing the screens properly, causing the production
issues on the floor.
When you don't interject that problem solving work into
a situation like this, nothing gets fixed. Think about the time
that is wasted every day. The lost output adds up, and too
often, no one even notices. This is why having a continuous
improvement program is vital to increasing your shop's
efficiency. There is only so much time in a day. Every
moment that your staff isn't adding value to an order is time
that is wasted.

SOLVE YOUR TIME CRUNCH
There are a number of ways you can improve time management throughout your company. Personally, I like to use a
three-step process called "Identify, Discuss, Solve."
Identify Gather your team together and spend some time
with a whiteboard or even a legal pad. Brainstorm the challenges they are facing and the issues that result. List every
challenge. Some may be silly or appear trivial, but that's OK.
Get everything out in the open.
Discuss Next, spend some time discussing the list.
What stands out? Are there any similar issues you can
combine? Eliminate ones that can't be worked on or are
not relevant at the moment. Then, prioritize the list with
the team. Look for ones that, if solved, could improve
other challenges on the list. Get buy-in on which are most
urgent. Discuss and strategize each one, then number the
top choices.
Solve Look at the most urgent item and make it a priority
to figure out how to address it. Do you have to buy something? Do people need any training? Develop an action plan
to solve that problem so it never happens again. Use your
team to implement and agree on this change. You'll create
more tactical uses for your staff's time by getting better.
FEBRUARY / MARCH 2018

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Screen Printing - February/March 2018