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AUTOMATION and WORKFLOW

S

Sortrac

New Member
Hey guys! I’m trying to figure out the best way improve my shop’s workflow, wether it’s by automating some processes, or finding a better process than having hundreds of work orders printed out and scattered around the shop.

Here is the basic layout of my shop (after sales, quotes and graphic design). I go more on depth in the large format department, because i feel that this is where i have the biggest bottleneck that keeps us from scaling further:

Paper production :
-xerox printers + all the finishing equipement (mostly older equipement)

Large format :

3x roland r2r printers (2x vs-540i / 1x VG2)
1x roland plotter (gr2 540)
Rollsroller laminating table
1x r2r laminator

Added equipment for aluminum signage:

48’’ shear
Hydraulic knotcher
Hydraulic hole punch
Peen engraver (logo+date of fabrication)

The rest is all manual equipement for finishing, like grommet presses, tracksaws etc.


If you found a « must have » process/tool/automation that could slide in somewhere in my production line, please let me know!

I was looking for a flatbed uv printer and a automatic cutting table, but that’s pretty much all I found regarding automating processes.

Thanks in advance!
 
cmoist

cmoist

New Member
Seems like a lot of people here use Trello or similar that allows employees to update jobs so everyone can see the status. This removes the need to go looking for a job on the floor. It may require adding workstations that are used to update the status of a job throughout the shop.

Regarding equipment, I don't have much to add other than it needs to be arranged in a way that eliminates walking across the shop repeatedly to get to the next machine. Otherwise you have employees bumping into each other and wasting time and energy.

I'm interested in seeing where this conversation goes.
 
H

Humble PM

Mostly tolerates architects
Production control.

I'd argue that you're now at the stage where a smart person could help you with software to book, log, track production, and foresee bottle necks. If you know you have Xnumber of Ytype orders, and only Zstaff/machines/space, then swapping production of orderB for orderA might make that bottleneck wider.
Computers/tablets with a barcode scanner to check ProductionPhase at each stage to track progress and see bottlenecks.
Barcode can be integral to print related products, until trimming, or could be a sticker for non-print elements (should that be a decal?).

Sounds like a filemaker solution in your future.

Bottles, Bars.
 
G

greysquirrel

New Member
Take a look at Onyx Align…complete view of your business production and inspire into your true costs. Your going to need a software tip to drive your new flatbed printer and cutter..add this to the front end and you can drop jobs right into your top as you open a work order….
 
C

ColorCrest

All around shop helper.
The OP mentions hundreds of work orders in progress at the same time. I know that displaying such amount as Kanban cards (Trello & Align) appear as a jungle to users. In the trade of database design, it's known as "angry fruit salad" and is not a good look, especially for sign makers. I know Trello offers a more appropriate list view and I think Align might also.
 
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C

ColorCrest

All around shop helper.
A primary goal of any sign shop software is to provide "a single source of truth." It should be apparent if hobbling together separate software apps from different providers that the single source notion doesn't even start on the right foot and will likely become problematic sooner or later. (Ask Airtable customers how that's working for them.) Also is a very important question; "Do you care much if certain vendors are actually in your business?"
 
M

mbasch

New Member
We use Filemaker for our work order system. It allowed us to build custom work orders for our product mix, track all work, bill our work and it does a little automation for us. For example, we use an applescript/msdos script to create a folder structure with order number, name etc with subfolder for Supplied, Working, Proofs and Ready to print. Once an order is billed the job is archived. We also use 3rd party services to tie in to fedex with NRG Software, an extension to allow us to process cc's and another to post our invoice to QB using QBConnector. We run Onyx which has some hot folder functionality for a little hot folder functionality for ripping files. I am currently looking a using Switch by Enfocus which is a customizable hot folder workflow and can be combined with PitStop to automate some of the preflighting. I think this shows the most promise, but I haven't had the time to really dig in. As with any system, you won't be able to automate every file, but you can at least filter our the easy stuff so operators don't have to process and then kick out exceptions to be handled manually.

The downside of any automation is you will never find a canned solution that will do everything you want or need and all automation implementations will take a lot of labor. If you can allocation it internally, that helps or if you are willing to invest capital, you can hire someone to implement for you. I spend some time at Print United talking to the folks at significans.com. They are workflow consultants that can tie all the tools together.
 
Stacey K

Stacey K

I like making signs
I use SignTracker. You can check out their site and I think there's a free trial. Each employee can be loaded in and assigned daily tasks. There is a super easy work flow board, calendars, etc.

1700153716366.png
 
C

ColorCrest

All around shop helper.
White Haus said:
It was enough to scare me off, but we're a smaller shop/team. I want to say $2-3k setup then something like $15 - 20k a year?
Click to expand...
Not a surprise to me after calculating some numbers. Any recollection if they mentioned how many seats at that rate or if they charge per, or ???
 
C

ColorCrest

All around shop helper.
To the point of the OP’s topic of automation and workflow, as many things are in life and business, it’s often a balancing act. A shop only has so much pie to give or get.

If Onyx or any other provider is asking their price of $xx,xxx per year, if it makes sense so far as a reasonable percentage of the pie, the costs may be fine. The slice of pie is a very different size, however, if comparing a 5-person shop against a 25-person shop against yearly revenue.

We don’t know the OP’s volume of certain work. It’s not prudent to recommend an automatic cutting table mentioned in the original post without knowing more of the OP’s actual affordability or capacity for such a machine. Of course, the jump starts with some actual calculations of genuine numbers when looking at automation and workflow.

Then again, sometimes decisions are not a balancing act at all. That's when certain situations scream for a remedy.
 
C

ColorCrest

All around shop helper.
I might say about Onyx Align seemingly coming in at the high end. I think most shops of a "more than small" size are likely to already have a good solution in place. The older shops, out of necessity, have created their systems one way or another, and some of those have been around for a very long time. So, there's that.
 
Pauly

Pauly

Printrade.com.au
You need something like this. This is a 5 minute demo board i created for visual purposes. But it has the basics.
This is basically a database / spreadsheet style board.
Great thing is, you can have multiple views per station, So in the quotes, they can filter the "quotes" or the prepress area will only filter the "Prepress" When it's ready for the next department, you can just change the bubble.
You can use checkboxes instead as a progress. After each step is completed, you can check it off. You can set a filter to display "if quote and prepress boxes are checked" for the print area.

With this particular app NocoDB - https://nocodb.com/
I like nocodb as it's API is amazing and if self hosted, you can connect it to any database you want.

You can a form so who ever is filling out the table can have a form view for simplicity to input jobs.
You can upload files
Contact list and link them to the jobs.


Screenshot 2023-11-17 022555.png
 
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C

ColorCrest

All around shop helper.
MGB_LE said:
DANG!
Click to expand...
Earlier I wrote that Onyx Align seemingly comes in on the hight side. It begs the question; "What percentage of the shop's pie is allocated to a tool, which in this case, might be a very important and central business component?" 1%, 2%, less, more?
 
S

Sortrac

New Member
Pauly said:
You need something like this. This is a 5 minute demo board i created for visual purposes. But it has the basics.
This is basically a database / spreadsheet style board.
Great thing is, you can have multiple views per station, So in the quotes, they can filter the "quotes" or the prepress area will only filter the "Prepress" When it's ready for the next department, you can just change the bubble.
You can use checkboxes instead as a progress. After each step is completed, you can check it off. You can set a filter to display "if quote and prepress boxes are checked" for the print area.

With this particular app NocoDB - https://nocodb.com/
I like nocodb as it's API is amazing and if self hosted, you can connect it to any database you want.

You can a form so who ever is filling out the table can have a form view for simplicity to input jobs.
You can upload files
Contact list and link them to the jobs.



View attachment 168342
Click to expand...
Thanks for the assist! It seems i can’t open your link. Do you mind sending it to me by email? I’m very interested in checking it out!

Renaud@sortrac.com

Thank you!
 
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