ImagesMagUK_February_2021

www.images-magazine.com 38 images FEBRUARY 2021 BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT Less than 25% of the orders were lower than the minimum order of 288 pieces per single set-up. The factory created retail goods, offering a six-month ‘sample to production’ turn. The product included special effects on at least 25% of the orders from the factory’s largest volume customer. The method There are six unique data points that contribute to the success (or failure) of Factory A, and each of these data points has a percentage of weight in the overall success of the outcome. These included waste at 40%, which is the largest contributing factor to the success of the model; usages at 10%, which includes consumables used daily by each department; testing at 5%, which includes durability results and non-retail or ‘B’ grade products; inventory at 15%, which includes M oneyball’ screen printing is a method used to improve productivity and profitability through data collection. We used this method to improve a factory’s output and profit – without any further capital investment. Read on to find out how we achieved this. Factory A: the background Factory A is a Central American factory, an 11-press automatic shop. It has four 12-colour/32-station oval automatic presses, and seven 18-colour carousel automatic presses. When we initially went to the factory, it had severe workflow issues and low performance. Its large labour force was mainly unskilled and lacking in reading, writing and computer skills. We first carried out training to allow them to establish proper data collection methods and to place personnel in key roles. Using data to make your business more efficient may sound dry and complicated, but it’s simply a case of measuring and tweaking different processes in order to maximise your output and earnings. It works for any size of shop – from the smallest set-up to a giant multi-carousel factory – and all without any capital investment. Michelle Moxley, innovation director at The M&R Companies, explains how her team successfully used the ‘moneyball’ approach to increase a print shop’s productivity and profit inventory for samples and pre-printed samples for reorders; and finally, set-up times at 20%, and ‘other’ at 10%. ‘Other’ includes several important key elements. For example, the print information sheet included screen count, flash count, equipment requirement, cost and price, image size, and special effects. This data, when compiled, allows for accurate scheduling at any stage of the process, meaning we could avoid bottlenecks. ‘Other’ also included things such as shipping costs on consumables, and machine maintenance. Data collection Factory A collected data on the set- ups, including the data points ‘screens per day average’ and ‘flashes per day average’ for water-based and plastisol Michelle Moxley Moneyball screen printing Using data to improve efficiency