Impressions - February 2011 - (Page 42)

HANDS ON >> SCREEN PRINTING >> HANDS ON TECH TIPS HANDS ON >> HANDS ON Graphics & Design SCREEN PRINTING HANDS ON TECH TIPS HANDS ON Developing Your Art Department Workﬂow From job evaluation by multiple employees to standardizing tasks within your art department, here’s some advice to improve production in your shop. How many times have you had a job on your screen printing press that had to be torn down and redone because of a problem with the artwork? By establishing efﬁcient, quality-conscious procedures for your art department, time-wasting problems like these can be reduced and your shop can make more money. If you consider everything involved, garment screen printing is a complex procedure with many variables, which provide opportunities for a breakdown in the process. Consistent art separations make the press operator’s job much easier. Since Forward Printing was founded six years ago, I have been the sole production artist. I am self-taught and have gained considerable experience doing high-end separations on a tight timeline while maintaining other roles in the company as a co-owner. By necessity, I developed an efﬁcient workﬂow for the art department. As you develop a workﬂow for your shop, or if you want to improve on your existing model, the ﬁrst step is to identify and remove bottlenecks. One of the best tools for this is tracking time. Time tracking has become a big deal in our shop. It works best when the entire organization is involved in tracking times for their respective duties. Knowing how long it takes to accomplish tasks is invaluable when you are scheduling jobs, providing accurate turnaround estimates, and evaluating bottlenecks before they become a problem. Do you know how long it takes to print a foot of ﬁlm? How long does it take to separate a spot-color design or create a mockup? Every shop owner must ﬁnd the best workﬂow that works for his company, but here are a few procedures that have helped improve production in our shop. If you want to reduce mistakes, have multiple people inspect every work order. At our shop, both the owners and the production manager meet to review job paperwork to spot potential problems and ensure all the necessary information is in place. All photos courtesy of Forward Printing, Oakland, Calif. JOB EVALUATION When possible, it’s ideal to have multiple sets of eyes on every aspect of a job. This helps to catch mistakes early when they 42 Impressions >> February 2011 are still easy to correct. Is your salesperson or customer service representative the only person to see a job before it enters the production queue? If so, you may experience problems, since it is unlikely that this person can catch every potential production or artwork problem. A good example is fabric type. Your salesperson may conﬁrm an order for a special-effects print on tri-blend garments, but the production manager should know that these garment types do not fare well when being ﬂash-dried multiple times on the press. Given that information, you can go back to the client and choose a more appropriate garment rather than just or- dering the garments and creating a production nightmare. We ensure the production manager, salesperson and art department all look over each estimate together. Some people would consider this overkill, but this is part of what keeps our customer satisfaction levels high. We look at the chosen garments to ensure the size, fabric and color will work with the print methods. We review the print location so we can inform the customer of any potential print inconsistencies due to seams and hems. This also is a good opportunity to review prices to ensure the client is being accurately charged for our services. impressionsmag.com http://www.impressionsmag.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Impressions - February 2011

Impressions - February 2011
Contents
First Impressions
From the Show Director
FYI
The Embroidery Machine Evolution
Versatile Wearables Boost Profits
Behind the Big Top
Production
Graphics & Design
For Screen Printers Only
Tech Tips
Setting Up Volume Digital Printing Production
Online Directory
Business to Business
Classifieds
Ad Index

Impressions - February 2011