Impressions - July/August 2010 - (Page 48)

HANDS ON >> SCREEN PRINTING >> HANDS ON TECH TIPS HANDS ON >> HANDS ON For Screen Printers Only SCREEN PRINTING HANDS ON TECH TIPS HANDS ON Maximizing Production in a Small Shop Learn how to get the most from your screen printing operation. It’s a screen printer’s worst nightmare: You have a job that needs to get done right away, but the garments haven’t arrived yet because they weren’t ordered in time, and your press operators are sitting around waiting. Or it’s almost the end of the day, you’re only halfway through a huge job and you have yet another job waiting to get done — and they’re both due to the customer today. From running out of supplies to scheduling snafus, there are countless potential problems that can put a big crimp in your shop’s production efﬁciency. Small shops are especially prone to such problems, since they typically don’t have the resources (extra presses, supplies and employees, for instance) to make do when a problem arises. That’s why it’s so important for small-shop owners to learn how to get the maximum amount of efﬁciency out of every step in their production process. A CENTRAL HUB Perhaps one of the most important steps to maximizing production efﬁciency is to have a central hub where any employee can check the status of a job during any point in production. This way, everyone in your shop is on the same page, sharing the same information, and you have a record of what happened when. At our shop, each job is entered into a database and assigned a particular status. We looked at industry-speciﬁc production management programs but couldn’t ﬁnd one that met our speciﬁc needs at an affordable price. Consequently, we designed our own based on Filemaker. This customized program is what we used to track jobs from start to ﬁnish. For example, when we’re ﬁrst talking to a prospective customer about his order, the job is listed as being in the “estimate” phase. After we collect a deposit and esti- With the advent of ﬁlm-positioning systems and direct-to-screen printers, there are plenty of products to help speed up setup time. We use a ﬁlm-positioning unit, which helps save time and increases accuracy. All photos courtesy of Forward Printing, Oakland, Calif. mate approval from the customer, the job moves to the “quote” phase, at which point the art department creates a mockup and a PO is issued for the garments. The job will remain in this phase until garments have been received and the customer has approved the mockup. Next, the job moves into the “work order” phase. Production works with the art department to determine the best mesh counts and print method, which will often inﬂuence how the artwork is separated. Films are printed and sent to the screen room to be burned. Ideally, all of this happens a few days before the job is set to print so there is ample time for the screens to completely dry and be prepped. We print a job ticket for every order that is conﬁrmed. This ticket is posted on a job wall — a white board that shows all of our working orders for a two-week period. The job ticket has all of the relevant details for the job and also serves as a scratchboard for employees to record notes and relevant details about the job. We update the job wall every day so that we start with a complete overview of where everything in production stands. Since 10 business days also is our stated turnaround time, the two-week spread on the job wall also gives a good visual indication of how close we are to capacity. PREPRESS STAGES Of course, there’s much more to maximizing efﬁciency than just keeping a central database. In fact, you can take steps throughout the entire production process to increase efﬁciency. During the sales stage of an order’s life, your goal is to get as much information as possible from the client. Think of the relationship between you and the client as a tennis match: You want the ball in his court, so that any mistakes are the client’s responsibility, not yours. By asking ample questions, you can determine from the client precisely what he wants upfront instead of after the fact. 48 Impressions >> July/August 2010 impressionsmag.com http://www.impressionsmag.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Impressions - July/August 2010

Impressions - July/August 2010
Contents
First Impressions
FYI
Product Gallery
SFX Solutions
SFX Decorating: A Hands-On Experience
Grown-Up Fashion Drives Kidswear and Teen Trends
Design & Digitizing
Production
Graphics and Design
For Screen Printers Only
Tech Tips
Adding Digital Garment Printing to Your Shop
Online Directory
On Design
Business to Business
Classifieds
Ad Index

Impressions - July/August 2010