Sops or Work instruction Help

[wayneNjane]

The company I work for recently made me the sign shop supervisor. I have zero experience on this field. I've just been good at managing my department. Now I need some help on with SOPs, if you have any you can share and then I can adjust them as needed. We have 2 HP 700W, a Graphtech 9000fc, a seal 62 base laminator, a seal 600 s laminator and a Rollover Flexi application table. All of the sign shop techs quit before I took over and I currently only have 1 tech left. He has a lot of experience just not the time to help me create sops, work instructions and etc because he is focused on production. Any help would be greatly appreciated

 

[Johnny Best]

I can’t help, do not know what a SOP even is.

 

[James Burke]

I can’t help, do not know what a SOP even is.

SOP = Standard Operating Procedure(s).

Hint: An equipment operation manual is not the same.

With that said, there is no such thing as a universal set of standards. And the best ones are written by administrators who were once part of a well-seasoned rank and file. For starters, effective SOPs are highly dependent upon knowing a company's inner workings and then creating standards to mitigate weaknesses and vulnerabilities. Essentially, they serve as a set of guard rails to make sure everybody produces homogenous results.

Your most difficult tasks will be discovering those things, documenting them and then keeping everyone on board.

Good news, you have a superpower: it's the fact that you are a fresh set of eyes in this position. If you're wondering where to start, conduct a SWOT analysis and then begin creating SOPs for your most troublesome or profit-draining areas first.


JB

 

[Johnny Best]

SOP, create artwork, save it, turn on printer with material loaded, open RIP and bring in saved artwork, click print, take off machine and laminate.

 

[wayneNjane]

Johnny, a

SOP = Standard Operating Procedure(s).

Hint: An equipment operation manual is not the same.

With that said, there is no such thing as a universal set of standards. And the best ones are written by administrators who were once part of a well-seasoned rank and file. For starters, effective SOPs are highly dependent upon knowing a company's inner workings and then creating standards to mitigate weaknesses and vulnerabilities. Essentially, they serve as a set of guard rails to make sure everybody produces homogenous results.

Your most difficult tasks will be discovering those things, documenting them and then keeping everyone on board.

Good news, you have a superpower: it's the fact that you are a fresh set of eyes in this position. If you're wondering where to start, conduct a SWOT analysis and then begin creating SOPs for your most troublesome or profit-draining areas first.


JB

A SWOT analysis is a great idea, I started by spaghetti mapping the shop. I ended up moving all the equipment around to help save on wasted time finding print media, vinyl, and our various types of laminate. Laminate. The flow of the shop seems to work well now.

My hopes is to have sops ready and worked up before we finally start getting new staff and the shop. That way they can be trained and on board from day 1.

 

[CanuckSigns]

I've often thought it would be nice to get my hands on FastSigns training and on boarding documents, I imagine they are really good at getting someone with no experience up and making something that resembles a sign pretty quickly.

I've started making SOP's at our shop about a year ago when I get time, basically my goal is to have a set of instructions for each step of production of our products, so if the printer operator is on holiday, the engraving guy can figure out how to run 200 decals. I recommend using Google sites for this, you can make an intranet that everyone can access, plus you can then inset youtube videos (there is a youtube video for almost anything) which is much more conducive to learning, a 3 minute video of how to load the laminator is much better than 6 pages of written instructions.

 

[Megagrafix]

Good helpful post!