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screen printing => General Screen Printing => Topic started by: Maxie on November 14, 2019, 08:34:24 AM
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We talk a lot about saving time in printing, fast set up and break down, prints per hour.
There have been a lot of video clips on the web lately showing diffetent print shops, Printavo have a few.
What struck me is the amount of time spent preparing the shirts for printing. Receiving, unpacking, checking and then repacking and getting ready for shipping after printing.
I think we need to start timing this process as well, looks to me that a lot more time is wasted before and after printing.
I understand that if you have limited printing capacity the printing speed is critical but in the costing of the job the rest is, in my opinion equally as important.
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Amen, there are times that I wish I had atleast 1 more employee to help with folding neatly to place back in the boxes. It take a skilled employee to fold as neatly as they came in so that they fit in the boxes just like they were received. It's definitely worth consideration in the time study.
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I’m working on tracking our job times but my goal is to see how much time we spend printing versus changing over. I feel like if you get the rest of the processes dialled in then the actual printing becomes way easier.
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IMO having a over all vibe in your shop that "we All work with a sense of urgency every day" and leading by example is far more valuable over time than telling a catcher needs to box 72 shirts in 3 minutes. Pressing thresholds makes for hurried work.
There is never enough time to it right the first time, but, there is always time to do it over again when it has been done wrong.
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It is indeed important to understand the whole picture of labor involved in the job, not just print times. One example which comes to mind is the choice of whether to let shirts pile up at the end of the dryer to fold & stack later, or catch & stack as they come off the belt. Letting them pile requires sorting & straightening, which is work that can be omitted with a dedicated catcher. Granted, your overall workload can determine whether the gained efficiency is worth the cost, but that's the kind of the thing that's worth looking at. Even with a tiny shop, it's helped me in pricing to consider all that's really involved in getting the job in the door and back out, not just the time spent on press.
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we have a catcher at end of dryer. As they come out they fold an box up as they are coming off the belt. So when the last shirt comes throught the dryer the order is all set. So we have not spent any time boxing really.
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IMO having a over all vibe in your shop that "we All work with a sense of urgency every day" and leading by example is far more valuable over time than telling a catcher needs to box 72 shirts in 3 minutes. Pressing thresholds makes for hurried work.
There is never enough time to it right the first time, but, there is always time to do it over again when it has been done wrong.
Totally agree. You want people to ship defects? Keep them so pressured they're scared to slow down to address QC. A shop attitude of "done quickly, yet done right" is going to ultimately be better than a nonstop, breakneck pace.
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Good timing on this post. Once had an 80K shirt job for a major retailer. Owners took to the bank without doing due diligence. Oops 12 designs on different colors with a pre-pack. Oops individually hangered with size labels that needed to be attached to the hangers. Oops 80 different ship to destinations with their own different requirements. Oops all designs needed to be completed to meet the deadline so we had to farm out to a local printer which oops, required renting a truck and of course pay the printer. Oops I had to rent a warehouse and hire 40 temps to put it all together. So oops, who did not make out on that deal? Pre-op and post op costs should never be overlooked. It got done and on time but there was a lot of sweat effort.The printing is usually easy. Material handling has a cost that many overlook.
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we have a catcher at end of dryer. As they come out they fold an box up as they are coming off the belt. So when the last shirt comes throught the dryer the order is all set. So we have not spent any time boxing really.
This is something we don't do is fold shirts right after they come off the the belt and box, what we have is a fan in a area where we stack shirts and let them cool down before boxing, plus it gives us time for a recount then we label each stack... example 12 m, 25 L, 4 2x etc and then place in the boxes. Each shop has there own way and I guess if we had 12 plus auto's and thousands of shirts being printed at once and tight deadlines things would be much different, but the one constant we all have to manage large or small is TIME!
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Very well said! Time management does not always apply to the cycle speed of a machine. It certainly is a factor although far too often I see money literally left on the table.
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It was expressed to us years ago that you'll never run at 100%, the press stops running for all kinds of reasons. So, look over your physical actions, and see where you can cut a few minutes out; involve everyone to maybe get them feeling involved. Suppose you can run at 50%, the rest of the time it's setup and breakdown, startup, emergency maintenance, not enough help when the press operator has to pee, etc. How can you shave minutes off those times to increase the actual output in the same 40 hour week? All of that added production time translates into money that can be shared with the employees as bonuses; they get their regular pay based on goals being met, and if with extra hustle, produce more for the company and therefore themselves. In my very first screen printing job, the company was running 2 shifts, and not doing as well as they would have liked. So, they called in an "efficiency expert" type of firm to observe the normal functions, and then make suggestions. They ended up with a single shift, with the best producers, and increased their profits immensely. I was just a kid really, but learned a lesson from it. So, keep the damn press running!!!
Steve
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Consistency before speed. I had a boss once who held a meeting every morning showing us the index speed of each press and our daily yield. He was not a printer, just a "numbers" guy who felt running at 60% of index speed was a failure. As production managers we would walk him to the floor and do the math. That one is at 70%, another running at 60%. Not good enough. Of all the things that can go wrong in a shop, putting pressure on a system that is consistently pumping out shirts, winds up crashing the job. In the morning our goal was to get the press in balance. Pallets warmed up, inks warmed up, squeegees running at 60% of stroke speed to get the ink warmed and sheared, flashes with a bit more delay due to the cold warehouse all of which dropped us to 50-60% of index speed. Gradually increase squeegee speeds, lower cycle dwell to zero as pallets hit 160-190 degreees depending on the job. After hitting 0 on the index knob the white base squeegee was the speed control. Gradually speed it up to increase yield and made sure it cleared the image. Knock out 4000 full backs in an eight hour shift on an MHM with a 12 color sim process job. Still not good enough, should have been 6k or higher according to the accountant, numbers don't lie. This company is no longer in business all due to trying to hit unobtainable numbers. No loader, or press operator can run at 0 dwell and max squeegee speed on every job all day long and produce quality.
Every job has its own yield speed. Put a 110 solid white down vs. a 225/40 halftone and the machine will run slower. There is max speed and then there is reject speed.
It's a tortoise and hare race. The tortoise has a press in balance, it will run the same print for days without stopping. The hare keeps pushing the press, the squeegee speeds, press running too fast to put on tack correctly, no time to stir the ink and shear it, and so on. Reject rate for the tortoise: .02%, the hare? 4-5%. Haste makes waste is very true with press speed.
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I agree with Alan when it comes to running the press, I want consistent quality from the press, not maximum speed.
Having said this there is a lot that can be done to improve daily production, for example I have one guy start early. He gets the days inks ready and sets up so when the rest of the staff arrive the machine is ready to print, oven hot, etc.
But we’re back to the press, the post is really about what else happens in the shop. We all want our presses to run fast but maybe we need to spend more time checking everything else for efficiency.
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It is often referred to as interruptive downtime. Not often tracked but largely overlooked. The reasons and causes are sometimes necessary but not always so.
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IMO you should utilize KPI's in each department. You should have an idea of how many impressions a press can do in an hour (factoring setup times, etc.), and try to hold your press operators at or above that number. Same goes for each department. Screens burned or reclaimed, orders processed, garments received/checked in, garments packed/shipped, etc.
If you have a solid process established already, do some time trials and get a general idea of how many should be done per hour, then get your employees to understand that number and have something to strive for. This helps you track employee performance as well as make the process more efficient.
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Some ways to minimize garment handling:
1. Have a good receiving/shipping manager. Know the day the shipment arrives what you are short, he should be able to send manifest updates from shipping to get the missing items. Nothing worse than being set up on a difficult job and find out the goods are short and the job will be set up again.
2. Have dedicated order pullers who handle shirts all day long. Ours counted in each dozen and then arranged to print by color way and size, larges first. then XL then M/S.
The reason? on a 1:3:5:3 scale we could afford a few rejects on large and rejects tend to happen in the beginning until the job is balanced and can run as near non stop as posslble. One other area that cost money is your customer sending in over dyed goods in large plastic bags that you get to turn inside out and lay flat and figure out how to get the wrinkles out of!! Only way is send them through the oven and stack for a few days, but nothing we got paid for!. I tried to get .10 to .25 every time a shirt got handled and counted in the print run, not always a given, but some customers, did understand.
3. Large orders: You can get 1440 shirts on a pallet in dozens and shrink wrap it but does that help printing or slow down printing? IMO it slows it down. Laying out dozens to print by the loader is a huge waste of time and is often a slack period that the workers take advantage of. I like laying out shirts perfectly flat with an emphasis on lining up the hems. 300 pcs one way, 300 pcs the other. On ring spuns it flattens the fibers a little, on open end it presses the slubs into the fabric enough the ink covers them and doesn't pick them up. I trained all employees to flip load. Why? The loader sees both sides of the shirts for holes, threads or slubs and we found it centers the shirt better. Use a pallet lifter so the loader only has to hit a foot peddle to raise the shirts to his load level.
4. Floating workers - One of the most coveted jobs in our shop was the floater. This person steps in and loads on bathroom breaks, water breaks, or for a breather. They also push inks in, tell the ink dept before they run out of ink they need more and help get shirts to the loader or clear empty pallets, keep boxes and shirts moving to the print area. They can do this for 2-3 presses.
5. Catching is one thing boxing and manifesting is another. Catchers can be overwhelmed looking for rejects, ( unloaders placed them sideways on our belt to tell the catcher, but the catcher is the last QC you may have on a job. That should be the extent of their efforts. We had assigned personnel to count the dozens and neatly pack the boxes and manifest. One could do two lines off the back of the table accurately. We had and extension at the end of the oven that allowed for hang tags and price stickers.
6. Individual fold and bag. Buy an Amscomatic auto folder and bagger. Go for all the bells and whistles you can afford. Auto sticker and sizing strips, auto bag. We also had a scale under the box they fell into and when the weight for the size was correct it kicked the box off and the person running the press had ample pre made boxes to drop on the scale. Complete box went into a gravity feed ramp and auto taper. You can also get a robot to pick it up and make the pallet, but that beast costs the same as an auto.
7. Short runs went to a separate pack and ship area for hand fold, our own hang tag, and packing and shipping. The invoicing justified the extra care. Put in catalogs, stickers, promo stuff, it brings em back. If I had it still running today I would have a digital printer with auto cut and make them some promo stickers with a price list. Find a local guy to job this out to when it becomes an order. Easy money.
8. Pre-Packs. The easiest way i ever had was to make or purchase a conveyor belt. All sizes teed into this cover belt. 1 person for each size station. Box goes on belt, workers pack their scale quantity 1:3:5:3 - box gets autotaped and shipping docs adhered to box and manifested by another worker to keep up. In today's bar coded world it is even easier to do the manifest electronically. All address stickers add up to the order, no extras should be left. Quantiiy, PO, amount all on sticker, stickers have box 1 of 2 of and so on.
9. Garments on hangers. When you get your first order this is a lesson to buy rack and rail in your shop. There simply is no easier way to handle large volumes of shirts on hangers. Think of it as a rail road yard. Each print style gets 4-5 tracks, S,M,L,XL,XXl for example. Each track holds trolleys that hold 144 shirts on hangers. Somewhere itn the middle of this system are baggers who simply take the hung shirt, put it on a hook, and pull a bag over it. (these are pre made stations holding a thousand bag roll that is directly over the work station. Worker puts in on a trolley on the other side and with the push of the hand moves it down the line. Of all the things I purchased to handle shirts the rack and rail system is the best tool I have ever had. They get real complex, with bar codes for the trolleys, switches to move shirts onto their tracks. One worker can push a thousand shirts by himself. We colorcoded the sizes with plastic cards on the trolleys. Change switches, push them down the correct rails. AT the ends of the rails we did pre packs. We used gravity racks here to. XXls first, XL, L, M, SM into the box and down hill to the taper and manifester who had all labels for order, labeled and onto the pallets. You can have spurs going to the end of each press hung from the ceiling so fork lifts and traffic can go underneath. You can hang and bag at the end (which we found took too long), or just get on a hanger and onto a trolley. We would also rubber band by dozens, (also helps to prevent the shirts from disappearing). Once trolley was loaded it could be pushed and glide away to the main rack and rail area. We had 20 to 50 jobs at a time in the rack and rail area. Some were just dead ends holding an entire order. All could be pushed easily to the prepack rails. Then for real efficiency there are cool motorized trolley lifters that can put them on a second level to wait for shipping. Then a boom to go in the truck and just push the trolleys in and the driver hangs them on ropes. Sears shipped this way, many other higher paying, higher quality customers pay well for this, and to me it is the only way to handle prepacks on hangers.
Then last, I wish I had the bar coded systems I see in the shops today. Some monitor the entire PO from receiviing shirts, to pull, to stage, to ink/screens, to press ready, to pre-pack to shipping with it all tying into a master database for sales and owners to know where any order is exactly. (Great job to Jack Meola and his crew on this system I saw.) With Zebra printers at needed points tied to the system you know for sure where you are when you walk in every day.
Sorry for the long reply, but this handling is 75% of your labor sometimes with prepacks, staging, shipping, manifesting, documentation, pallets, and did I mention warehouse space needs? It takes 50% space (and its tight at 50%) to store enough shirts to keep presses busy and shipping space as well. We opted for 66-75% space for fulfillment and receiving and only 33 to 25% for the presses, but that all gets eaten with growth and becomes a costly bottleneck if the flow isn't instananeous to a pallet to be wrapped and scheduled for shipping asap. For some reason customers expect packinging with the print, one drawback of being the low bidder on the print is not catching all the required extras. Watch out for the hanger and size clips costs, as well as bags and boxes. We made more on fulflillment than printing, don't let them get it for free.
Tony we lived the same world, sales would take orders based on work, and not making a dime! The contract world is a penny dime business, when your shop is large enough it is a necessity to keep the bills paid along with what I call spec work, your own line, package printing, but in contract printing, fulfillment is either a headache or a money maker if down super effiecient.
Have a great Holiday eveyone
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Wow this is great advice and information - sure glad I don't do production anymore !
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Good timing on this post. Once had an 80K shirt job for a major retailer. Owners took to the bank without doing due diligence. Oops 12 designs on different colors with a pre-pack. Oops individually hangered with size labels that needed to be attached to the hangers. Oops 80 different ship to destinations with their own different requirements. Oops all designs needed to be completed to meet the deadline so we had to farm out to a local printer which oops, required renting a truck and of course pay the printer. Oops I had to rent a warehouse and hire 40 temps to put it all together. So oops, who did not make out on that deal? Pre-op and post op costs should never be overlooked. It got done and on time but there was a lot of sweat effort.The printing is usually easy. Material handling has a cost that many overlook.
But your owner got to tell all his friends and post on websites and talk about his 80k order at the hotel bar during ISS.
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Good timing on this post. Once had an 80K shirt job for a major retailer. Owners took to the bank without doing due diligence. Oops 12 designs on different colors with a pre-pack. Oops individually hangered with size labels that needed to be attached to the hangers. Oops 80 different ship to destinations with their own different requirements. Oops all designs needed to be completed to meet the deadline so we had to farm out to a local printer which oops, required renting a truck and of course pay the printer. Oops I had to rent a warehouse and hire 40 temps to put it all together. So oops, who did not make out on that deal? Pre-op and post op costs should never be overlooked. It got done and on time but there was a lot of sweat effort.The printing is usually easy. Material handling has a cost that many overlook.
But your owner got to tell all his friends and post on websites and talk about his 80k order at the hotel bar during ISS.
Actually some of these types are now being paid to do seminars so you can hear these claims right at the show!!
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Indeed.
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Indeed.
Just saying, I’d listen to you talk about waterbased printing! Someone needs to have you on a podcast or something. I wanna pick your brain about ink rheology.
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I certainly have the time but would want to take the time to do it right and be fair. I have a brand new Hopkins manual and screen equip/film output. Fairly entry level but I can make it all work rather well once the contractors replace the ceiling and tidy up the coating/coated storage room (No,not coating on the floor of the bathroom!)New flash but alas no dryer. Need to develop some revenue but being a shirt monkey not on the top of the list) did that for 35 ys usually Head Monkey in some form or fashion so get the trials and tribs of production all too well. The "dry studio" is for works on paper using a book press, Intaglio press and oil, tempera. and water in oil inks. Pastels as well. All for fun right now. Again, need to generate revenue though.
Happy Holidays to All!
TP
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Tally up the numbers of generated revenue if all of your employees simply were at there work stations running with in a minute or two of ending break times and lunches. I dont know the number but I'm assuming 10 minutes a day are wasted by most team members commuting to and from breaks and lunches. just sayin all thinks considered