ImagesMagUK_October_2021

www.images-magazine.com OCTOBER 2021 images 77 KB BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT Graphing your data What’s great about having a production log is that it allows you to graph your production data so your production management team can elevate problem-solving. Imagine the impact of having your shop’s production numbers updated and available for your leaders and crew to view! In the example graph above, take a look at the KPIs (key performance indicators) listed. How could you use this in your shop? For instance, the shop has set a goal of printing at a rate of 400 impressions per hour. This is easily achievable on an automatic screen printing press with a full crew of trained staff. But in this case, they are underperforming. Sure, with the two automatic presses, they have produced over 13,000 units in four days, but how many more orders could they have printed if they were meeting their production speed goals? This is a lost profit opportunity. The ramifications of this could be a production schedule that isn’t on time. Maybe extra shipping charges to get the goods to the destinations on time. Are customers getting irritated that their orders are late? That’s not good. By getting accurate and, more important, timely numbers it’ll allow your production management team to insert themselves and solve these challenges. Your next step Here’s what you need to do. First, have a discussion with your team and determine what are the most important areas for the department to track. Set-up times. Run times. Totals. Downtime. Errors. Then, talk about and establish goals for each. What is a good number for the shop? Make sure it is realistic and achievable. Sure, you are going to want to improve it... but you need a baseline to establish a foundation. Discuss with your production team the importance of gathering and making sure that the data is accurate and represents reality. Don’t round up or guess. Use real data. Acquiring the data for your shop should be part of your production team’s daily duties. When starting this type of programme, be patient and communicate your intent. You can do this. To read about Production Tracker, a new app developed by Marshall Atkinson with technology software specialist Grid, turn to the news pages in this issue. out of touch with what is really going on in their business. For example, how did you build your pricing matrix? For a lot of shops, it is based on “what other people around me charge” and not on what it actually costs to run the business. What if everyone around you is unprofitable? Guess what? Now you are too. Everything needs a number Let’s get back to that efficiency thing. For any process in your shop, you need to know two things: 1. Capacity How much we are capable of doing in one shift. 2. Velocity How fast we are, on average, able to do something. This is in all aspects of the work your team cranks out every day. This could be with orders entered, or screens burned, or boxes received, or jobs printed or embroidered. It doesn’t matter. For those tasks, what is either the capacity or the velocity? Do you know those numbers? If you do, great. But if the answer is no, start measuring. Once you have established these and everyone agrees that they are accurate, the next step is to improve them. You can’t manage what you don’t measure Getting your numbers is the hard part. For starters, it has to be accurate. You don’t want to be basing business decisions on guesses, right? It also has to be easy to acquire. For that, you need to start pulling in your data from a few key points in your shop. The easiest way is to use some sort of production log. This can be a manual paper-type form or an automated system that is device- enabled. Either way, here’s what you want to track in any department in your shop for any task: How many on average? This could be a total per day or an average per hour. This helps determine your capacity. Time How long does something take? Whether it is a set-up or the total time it takes to handle something, start measuring. Mistakes Tracking your errors helps you understand how big your quality control problem really is for your shop. If you want to increase the profit in your business by developing better efficiencies, you first have to establish how to collect your data. Whatever you do, make it as easy as possible for your team to record the data. When anything is labour-intensive for tracking, people quit doing it. The simpler the better. Marshall Atkinson is a production and efficiency expert for the decorated apparel industry, and the owner of Atkinson Consulting and co-founder of Shirt Lab, a sales and marketing education company, with Tom Rauen. He focuses on operational efficiency, continuous improvement, workflow strategy, business planning, employee motivation, management and sustainability. www.atkinsontshirt.com Top-line sales are vanity, bottom- line sales are sanity