Date Published: 2010-06-01
Process Control 5: Looking after your most valuable asset
In his latest article on process control in screen printing, Will Pearson, of Phantom Screenprint, focuses on achieving smooth workflow in your printshop, and how to get the best out of your staff…This month, I'm going to move away from the technical ins and outs of the screen printing process itself, and focus instead on how your shop operates as a whole, and how to get the best out of your most valuable asset – your staff.
The ultimate aim of any printshop is to have a continuous stream of work delivered to the press, with each job running without event. So far, we've taken a close look at some of the most critical areas that need to be controlled to ensure smooth processing and to get the maximum efficiency from your investment.
However, creating extra capacity in this way, and moving a high volume of work, can bring its own issues, such as…
- 1) Equipment maintenance
- 2) Adequate supplies of raw materials
- 3) Achieving good workflow
- 4) Keeping staff motivated and constantly increasing the levels of
- training.
So, let's look at each of these in turn.
Equipment Maintenance
The rules for this change a bit depending on the size of your shop. It's certainly true that systems that work well at one level of workload won't necessarily hold up when that workload increases. So it's important to develop systems that will be relevant now and in the future; to keep a critical eye on how your systems perform in busy spells; and to implement changes when necessary. The first thing to do is identify the tasks needed for routine maintenance, then make a checklist and ensure that your staff keep to it. Routine is the key and it's a good idea to set aside a time each day, (usually at the end of the day), to perform these checks. Make a maintenance sheet that lists the jobs that need doing daily, weekly and monthly, with tickboxes for each day/week/month, and hang it in a prominent place on a clipboard. This will allow everyone to see instantly whether the maintenance scheduled is adhered to, or not.
Supplies
When a shop is very busy, it's easy to forget to order a particular item, to allow an ink colour to run out, or to fail to replace cartridges for your film output printer in time, resulting in unnecessary downtime and stress. The re-ordering of inks, chemicals and sundries is usually left to the manager in small shops, and is often haphazard and occurs in a reactionary fashion. For example, placing an order for one can of ink or a roll of film on its own is inefficient and costly in terms of time and carriage costs. Again, the key, here, is to make re-ordering a part of a routine, and to delegate the task to a staff member who can set aside time each day to keep up to date. Time, then, for another clipboard and check sheet! List all of the sundry, ink and chemical items that your shop uses, and next to each, write a minimum quantity to be held in stock, with a checkbox beside each one. If you have a specific area where all sundries are stored, it's now an easy job to check stock levels and mark anything that needs topping up. It's not good enough to have a roll of film in the machine and re-order when it looks like its running low – there should always be one in the machine and one on the shelf.
Achieving Smooth Workflow
Workflow can be one of the trickiest parts of management to get right, and often systems don't allow for mishaps or unforeseen circumstances. Hopefully, getting taken by surprise on a job won't happen too often as you are now getting your process under control. Nevertheless, it is screen printing we're talking about, and we all know that anything can happen, and most likely will! Common things that fall out of anyone's control include customers changing their mind at the last minute; short orders of garments coming in the door; staff being away ill… The challenge, then, is to build in as many contingencies to your management as possible. Learning to delegate tasks is key to achieving a smooth workflow. To be able to delegate effectively, you need to build in a great deal of transparency to the way you work. Often, when a shop makes the transition from being a one-man band to needing to employ people, the thing that gets in the way of progress is the fact that the way the shop is run exists entirely in the owner's head: they can run the shop extremely well, but an outside observer has no way of knowing or understanding their methods. In the previous articles, I've worked on standardising the process itself, which in turn creates transparency in the process. It's possible to reduce the whole screen printing task to a series of 'flow diagrams' or 'choice boxes' – if artwork 'A' conforms to rule 'B', mesh selection, coating routine, exposure and so on will equal rule 'C'. Now you need to apply the same control to your management of jobs.
It's a fact that the longer a job sits in your shop, the harder it is for it to get on to the press, as it is superseded by newer jobs with tight deadlines. We call this 'maturing' and, again, it's to be avoided at all costs. By managing workflow effectively, a typical day might go something like this: 8 am: The first jobs are started using stencils that were made the afternoon of the previous day; the stencils for today's work are processed.
11 am: The shirts for today arrive; the stencils are ready; the shirts are unpacked and sorted by job using your job sheet.
3 pm: Today's shirts are complete; order quantities are doublechecked, packed and ready for the courier pick up at 4 pm.
3-4 pm: Jobs for tomorrow are separated and some stencils made; today's used screens are reclaimed; the daily maintenance schedule is carried out; and stock checks and orders are made.
Getting the best from your staff
Your staff should be your most valuable asset, and your aim should be to create and maintain an environment that is easy and stress-free for them to work in. Developing a highly skilled workforce takes a lot of time and training, so you will want to hang on to good members of staff, and avoid having to retrain new recruits every five minutes. When morale is high and employees are highly trained and well motivated to work within the system, staff turnover is very low. Conversely, when the shop environment is hard to work in and incentives are low, employees feel undervalued and staff turnover is high. How you manage your staff will depend greatly on your own style; however, it is worth bearing in mind that good management of people is a learned skill. There are many books on the subject – some great, some next to useless – but whichever teaching resource you use, (books, DVDs, training courses), as a manager, its essential to be proactive about learning the skills required to get the best out of your team. Much of this goes hand in hand with process control: a poor manager tends to blame his staff when things go wrong: usually, it's not their fault, it's the system that is failing them. In fact, in a poorly managed system, your staff is on a crash course for failure. The lack of standard practice and procedure and transparent systems means it's hard for them to do anything but get it wrong. Imagine the following scenario: a job of 100 shirts is printed and ten of the prints exhibit poor registration, blurring and so on. The manager takes the press operator to task for this, blaming him for not using enough spray tack, not clamping the screens properly, or any one of a dozen other 'mistakes'. The worker feels bad about this: he knows he tried his best, but he has no idea why ten of the shirts were misprints; and he is blamed for it anyway. Now he feels uneasy about the next job he prints, his set up-time increases as he double-checks everything unnecessarily, and he slows the press down in an attempt to avoid making the same mistake. This time, he prints 50 shirts, five of which are rejects. Again he gets a grilling. He goes home at the end of his shift wondering if it's time to look for another job and dreading the next day. Production is down and everyone feels bad. In fact, it was impossible for him to have done his job well: it turns out that one of the platens on the 10-station press is out of parallel and calibration, and this is causing a misprint on every tenth shirt that's processed. These issues of poor system control lurk everywhere – exposures, coating, ink mixing and so on. In a poorly managed system, the worker will fail. In the controlled system, the worker is given the opportunity to excel and produce great work quickly and efficiently, which in turn increases morale and productivity. If you are the manager, it is your job to manage, and to build a system that allows everyone to do their best. Ultimately, if there are problems in your shop, provided your staff are in a fit state to do their job, these problems are your fault! It's also important to routinely make time to listen to your staff and to encourage them to point out problems they are having or things they think aren't quite right. They probably know your equipment better than you do, as they are the people working on it each day. Here's a quick list of things to implement with your workforce : 1) Spend some time with your staff going over the previous week's triumphs and disasters. Listen to what they have to say, ask if the equipment is performing as it should, whether there are any suspicious noises and so on. Try to isolate any problems. This is also a good time to mention jobs that went particularly well.2) Weekly training schedule Set a little time aside each week to do some training, or to make staff aware of a new development or method that you are introducing. These sessions need not be extensive: half an hour or so each week is plenty to go over a topic that perhaps came up in Monday's shirtsleeve discussion, or to go over how to avoid an issue that occurred on a job the week before.
3) Incentives Look to reward good work, and particularly good months. This could involve taking everyone out for a cooked breakfast, or a trip to the pub at the end of the week. Pay reviews are a great way to make sure your staff stay motivated and stay with you. Remember, if you're operating more efficiently and getting in more work to fill the extra capacity, there should be some budget there to improve your staff's wages.
4) Praise in public, criticise in private This is an old one, but a good one. Don't embarrass or belittle a member of staff in front of his colleagues. Discuss issues you have with them in private; keep in mind that the reason for poor work or attendance may be a social problem that is outside of the worker's control, so try to be sympathetic and act as someone they feel they can trust. A member of staff who has recently been bereaved, for example, is unlikely to be totally on top of their game, and a dressing down at work wont help matters! Conversely, if someone does well, make sure they know you appreciate it and the praise should be delivered in front of their colleagues. You'll probably know much of this stuff already. But speaking personally, I'm not naturally gifted at people management; it is something I have had to learn and I'm constantly trying to improve my own techniques. There's an awful lot written about management theory out there and it's worth repeating that, for those of us who aren't natural born leaders, it's a good idea to read up! One of my favourite books for providing clear insight into managing a production-oriented business is Out of the Crisis, by W Edwards Deming. Take a look: it's certainly taught me a thing or two.
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