Discussion What specific systems or strategies does your company employ to enhance productivity?

[Ryk]

My friend told me that my company should implement a system to increase productivity and transparency. For instance, we could use a system to track production status or check stock levels.

I just finished my degree and I'm thinking of returning to my parents' company, specifically their sign business. However, they haven't implemented any systems so far. Typically, they only order raw materials when the staff informs them that we're running out, without having a proper stock checking system in place. Additionally, they struggle to determine the status of sign projects.

I would appreciate any suggestions on the systems you have implemented in your own company.

 

[CanuckSigns]

We had a custom program written in filemaker for us to track the status of jobs and to quickly create work orders, it's been working really well for us, definitely better than the old paper copy floating around the shop!

As for inventory, we've tried various ways of tracking inventory, but nothing has worked, the problem is that we buy in full sheets/rolls and sell finished product that is made up of various materials put together, and there are far too many variables to make it easy for software to track.

What we did start doing recently is sending out an automated email once a week asking everyone to review the jobs they have and reply with and materials they will need to order to complete them. We've found this to make the employees more proactive rather than reactive. Before we were always getting the production people coming to us with a work order saying they don't have enough of this material to do the job that has been in house for 2 weeks already at this point lol.

 

[brdesign]

I've started using ShopVox and it's been a big help with making estimates, tracking jobs, collecting payments. Signtracker is another good one to check out.
I first started with Trello and Invoice Ninja to stay organized.

 

[myront]

We've been using Trello for about 3 years now. We have purchased Cyrious and will soon bring it online. We have a "Inventory" board in trello that has various lists of substrates and such. It's a condensed list. Also have a "Need To Order" and "On Order" list. We have 1 employee designated to track inventory and do the ordering, among their other duties. Each employee can see and use the board from their workstation. As a job comes in that requires more than what we keep on hand they drop a card in the "To be ordered" list with the particulars i.e. Qty 2 4x8 sheets of white ACM. Once it's ordered the card gets moved to "On Order"
About once a week the Inventory is checked and the board is updated accordingly.

 

[FlorenceC]

Our franchise has some internal software that issues invoices, tracks sales, as well as work in progress. With that said, we have varying degrees of adoption of this program outside of invoicing. The WIP tracker handles basic categories but isn't specifically intended for sign tracking and thus isn't terribly applicable to my department. We also have some large format jobs coming in and going back out again too quickly to bother with it.

Personally, I've fallen back on a daily handwritten journal tracking all jobs in my department and sometimes jobs in others if coworkers are away for some reason.

 

[garyroy]

Ask you parents for advice first, they're the one who have run the company.
Is your friend in the sign business, or does he run a similar business?
If not, I might consider his free advice worth about that much.
Learn the business from the respected parents first, then make changes, slowly.

 

[DL Signs]

For inventory, some shops do enough of one thing, be it decals, banners, road signs, or whatever, using the same materials where you can do inventory planning. Most sign shops are basically job shops. Jobs and materials vary to the point where other than a few of the most used materials, it's near impossible to maintain a running stock of everything you need. In this situation, the ones who do the work usually control their own inventory and just order (or inform whoever does) of what they need on a job by job basis as they come in. I only have a handful of vinyls that are used often enough where I make sure I always have them on hand. Every other job I calculate out what's needed and have the owner order based on what's needed, like by the yard rather than full rolls that might never get used up... Unless you run the same things all the time, the ones who do the work are best at determining what's needed, if they're competent, it works, and is a common practice. I worked for a company that went away from that process, and suddenly I'd have a pallet of something where only a few sheets were needed, full rolls of vinyl that I'd use maybe 10-15 feet of for a job, and the rest would sit until we found a use for it, often it collected so much dust, got damaged, or vinyls went past expiration and into the dumpster. Look at the process before changing anything, if it ain't broke, don't fix it, the people who do the work will know what should always be in stock and what shouldn't.

 

[Ed. C.]

Create a stock level for your different materials and substrates. determine how much you want to keep in house for example 5 rolls of banner 5 rolls of ij35 etc. have a designated inventory check person for a once a week check of materials and stock levels, we have a re order point when material goes under a certain amount. if the work for the week doesnt look too heavy in terms of material usage we dont re order until the next inventory check. in terms of order making order tracking and statuses we use core bridge. our work orders move through the pipe line from sales to design to production and other sub statuses in production making it easy to follow the orders and you can assign responsabilities to individuals giving them full responsability of projects. once projects get past finishing . they go to qc for inspection and then to shipping... and is all moving through the system to track order status.