Screen Printing - June/July 2019 - 27

M

uch attention is paid to identifying bottlenecks within
the production workflow, but there seems to be less focus on
what happens after the order is printed. For some shops, that's
where the wheels completely blow off the bus. They do a great
job getting the order entirely produced, but for that long list of
"extra" steps that come after printing - folding, polybagging,
hang-tagging, drop-shipping, bundling, relabeling, stickering,
etc. - it's often a mess.
You don't want to be one of those shops. Let's go over
some ways to streamline your post-production workflow - so
you'll be operating like a well-oiled machine in no time.

START WITH THE BASICS
A critical concept to address right away? Time. How long
does each step in your post-production process take?
Is there a time difference between hang-tagging shirts into
the neck label, and doing the same work in the armpit seam?
Oh, yeah. Considerably more, sometimes.
Work with conservative time averages for these steps.
Sure, you might have a few rock-star employees who can
bang out a hefty amount of work quickly, but what happens if
they're tasked with another project and a rookie steps in? It's
best to build in a moderate estimate for the time it takes to
complete a job.
Grab a watch (or your phone) and time the action being
performed for a bit. Not just one or two shirts, but observe
a whole stack. Understand what happens if you add two or
three more people to the project.
Use this time average at order entry to estimate how long
your shop needs to perform these tasks. If the order is large
enough, it could take an extra business day or two to handle
this step.
If you don't build in time for every step of the process, the
post-production team is often left scrambling to complete their
jobs when a deadline is looming and production isn't finished.
Consider using real ship dates on your work order forms.
In most shops, the ship date usually is made up or padded
"to give extra time," which is what every production manager
will say. The truth is that everyone knows there's more time
so the "deadline" is missed.
If you use the real ship date in your system, the pressure is
on to complete tasks earlier. Get your employees trained on
this and change your system.

GET IT EARLY
To get ahead in the post-production stage, you need to
start and finish production earlier than you might think.
Small orders don't seem to clog up the works as much as the
big ones.
This is going to be a team effort. You'll need the art created
and approved faster. The goods ordered, received, and staged
earlier. The screens prepared. The job on the press and printed
a few days early. If the entire process shifts, the shirts will be

decorated and ready when the post-production team reaches
for that project.
How is communication in your shop? Does your team
work together, or is there plenty of finger pointing and
blaming if something is amiss?
Your customer doesn't care who did what. All they're
concerned about is if their order looks great and ships
on time.

THE IMPORTANCE OF ERGONOMICS
Watch how people work. Where do they struggle? If you have
to do something back-breaking and repetitive all day, by the
end of your work shift you are going to be exhausted.
Elevate the work so it's comfortably accessible by using a
table, not the floor. If the team needs tools, make sure they're
handy and within reach.
I've been to shops that have an area for kitting orders,
and they use gravity roller conveyors to simply push the
packaged orders down to shipping as they work. When not in
use, they're put away.
Why is this important? Because their team can focus on
getting the packages assembled instead of spending time
trudging boxes back and forth to the shipping department.

THE P RULE
Proper planning produces peak performance. This applies
to every department of your shop, but most certainly in
the post-production area. I'm a big fan of scheduling work
properly at order entry.
This means that if you have a 500-piece order that needs
relabeling, hang-tagging, folding, and polybagging, 100
percent of that work is scheduled in advance in order for the
department crews to complete their tasks.
Let's revisit the time tracking mentioned previously. If
you have these in a spreadsheet or table you can refer to,
you'll know the approximate amount of time it should take to
handle that workload.
Back up your decoration production so the order will be
ready for post-production on the appropriate day. Everything
needs to be scheduled out at order entry - not two hours
before the UPS truck is backing up.
This also means other departments have to adhere to
this schedule, too. The art department has to keep up with
their end, just like receiving and purchasing. Again, it's a
team effort.

MANUAL OR AUTOMATED?
Think about eliminating steps in your process. How would
you do it?
Some shops lengthen their dryer belt on the back end
so the shirts coming down the belt are hang-tagged and
stickered there. With a manual flip fold, they've been squared
away and polybagged. In a few moments, they're in a box.
JUNE / JULY 2019

27
Screen Printing - June/July 2019

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Screen Printing - June/July 2019
