Images_May_2020_Digital_Edition

www.images-magazine.com 30 images MAY 2020 BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT H ave you ever stopped and wondered why you do things in your shop a certain way? Of course you have! After all, problem solving is a big part of any garment decorating operation. S o, let’s have a look at the way you organise the flow of work through your own shop. Be warned – what I’m going to suggest may seem counter- intuitive, but stick with me and we’ll see if there’s more than one way to do this! Batch and queue versus one-piece flow As humans, it’s natural to try to organise work in distinct stages. As a result, batch and queue is the default method of organisation for any type of work. Examples of batch and queue in a screen printing shop would include: ■ Keeping a cabinet/warm room full of coated screens that are ready for any work that comes through ■ Spending a morning doing filmwork for several current jobs, so it’s queued up ready to shoot ahead of production ■ Ordering garments for jobs several days ahead of production schedule, so they can be organised into their respective piles and worked through as the week progresses ■ Queuing up printed screens after production, so the whole lot can be cleaned and reclaimed at once, at the end of the day These are just a few examples of how print shops batch and queue work, so that like processes are performed together. It’s how process work has been organised since Henry Ford’s time, and it works – there’s economy to be had by ordering garments all together on one consignment, for example; keeping extra coated screens on hand means you have spares if an exposure fails for any reason, and so on. In this way, inventory is ‘pushed’ through the system, queuing material up for when the next step is ready to pick it up. But is this the only way to do it? And is it really the best and most economic way to do it? Now, let’s look at a concept called Will Pearson of Phantom Screenprint explains how he uses a ‘pull’ system to organise the workflow in his print shop Gowith the flow Phantom’s traffic light has a colour for each of the value-adding parts of the shop’s process, with the print and despatch light at the top. The lights are lit when there is inventory in each section and go out automatically when inventory is moved on from each section. This signals to everyone the status of production and which section needs immediate replenishment, with priority given to the highest unlit light