Discussion What's your shop's typical day like in terms of shop efficiency?

[Pewter0000]

I'm curious as to what other sign shops daily routines are like or if anyone has found some helpful ways to keep efficient, or reduce waste (both media and time) and avoid errors. Does your team have meetings? Do you have a dedicated designer? A large team? Do you track your waste?

Our typical day is a short morning meeting to discuss priorities, followed by printer set-up. I try and fit all of the design in while it's printing the first batches, and then the afternoon is generally production/lam while it prints more stuff (hopefully!). At the end of the day I like to start RIPing tomorrow's jobs so I can just hit "go" the next morning. Since I'm responsible for all of this, I find it particularly important to keep my time efficient.

 

[Boudica]

We have a very small operation (owner, me and a part time marketing person who also helps me with finishing) - but we do have a morning meeting to go over what's on the "plate". After our meeting, I like to get as many printers going as I can - from files ripped just before I left the day before. Or I'll start prepping and ripping what came in overnight to get the printers humming. then design if there is any to do so I can get proofs out. Then I laminate everything to be laminated - and the rest of finishing. 3 days a week I have a helper who can cut stuff down, so I try to get things she can work on ready. Then as projects trickle in throughout the day, I jump back and forth. I'm usually found bouncing around the studio like ricochet rabbit - I'm good at multi-tasking.

 

[signheremd]

We have one weekly meeting, which includes installers, designers and production.

First thing I do each morning is pull all the job tickets and group everything together by machine in order of due date.

Typically, in production we try to work ahead. Doesn't sound like much, but once you are ahead if you keep it up it gives you the flexibility to respond to emergencies and to take on some jobs that have to be done the same day, on next morning, which you might not otherwise be able to do without running another job late. Another bonus is that you never feel pressure - you know, can I get all this work down by Friday...

Printing Roland jobs is a morning priority to allow time before laminating and putting the cuts on. Flatbed UV printing is grouped together so that once the machine is up and running we can run jobs back to back. Vinyl is sent to plotters between these so that we keep several machines working at a time. Weeding and assembly fill in time - we have a crew of three in production. Sometimes we weed jobs before substrate arrives; such jobs are rolled up and stored in racks and masked the day we are to apply. I do like to rip jobs at the end of the day so they are ready to go in the a.m.

On days with vehicles, we usually pull the vehicle in our bay in the a.m. and start cleaning/prepping it. Applying vinyl usually starts after 10am, once things are warmed up. Lettering or wraps are prepared the day before and are ready to go. While we wait for the vehicle to warm up, we jump on a few jobs.

While big jobs bring in big bucks, you make more dollars by learning to work in small jobs. For instance, if I am printing on reflective and have other jobs due next week that also need to be printed on reflective, I print those jobs back to back while the material is in the machine. Same with banners, magnetics, or vinyl.

FWIW

 

[Texas_Signmaker]

Every morning I look at my list and say fuck this is a lot... I'll get done what I can get done and the rest will wait till tomorrow!

 

[myront]

9 employees
1 Owner/Operator, 3 sales staff, 1.5 designers (I'm the 1), 1 print tech/IT, 1 accountant/sales, 2 productio/installers
Monthly meetings - totally worthless but I don't mind the effort
We use trello to track orders so first thing is to pull that up and see what's in the lineup and grab jobs and begin the work.

 

[myront]

Here's a snip of my trello board. Note the tabs for the other boards

 

[eahicks]

I'm curious as to what other sign shops daily routines are like or if anyone has found some helpful ways to keep efficient, or reduce waste (both media and time) and avoid errors. Does your team have meetings? Do you have a dedicated designer? A large team? Do you track your waste?

Our typical day is a short morning meeting to discuss priorities, followed by printer set-up. I try and fit all of the design in while it's printing the first batches, and then the afternoon is generally production/lam while it prints more stuff (hopefully!). At the end of the day I like to start RIPing tomorrow's jobs so I can just hit "go" the next morning. Since I'm responsible for all of this, I find it particularly important to keep my time efficient.

Sounds exactly like my day. With several interruptions with rush jobs that throw off my flow.

 

[unclebun]

Typical? What's that?

 

[Pewter0000]

We have a very small operation (owner, me and a part time marketing person who also helps me with finishing) - but we do have a morning meeting to go over what's on the "plate". After our meeting, I like to get as many printers going as I can - from files ripped just before I left the day before. Or I'll start prepping and ripping what came in overnight to get the printers humming. then design if there is any to do so I can get proofs out. Then I laminate everything to be laminated - and the rest of finishing. 3 days a week I have a helper who can cut stuff down, so I try to get things she can work on ready. Then as projects trickle in throughout the day, I jump back and forth. I'm usually found bouncing around the studio like ricochet rabbit - I'm good at multi-tasking.

Wow, sounds just like us. It's just me and my two employers, one of whom does the bigger production (building sign surfaces/cradles, larger installs) and one who does all clients/payrolls/quotes/sales and some production with me. It's a small set up but I really enjoy having autonomy. I'm the only one who touches the design or the printer and I enjoy my domain

Sounds exactly like my day. With several interruptions with rush jobs that throw off my flow.

Oh yeah, I definitely didn't include the "Last minute order!" or "This is messed up we gotta fix-its" or "Our Grimco order isn't here yet"

Thanks for the replies everyone - glad to see we patchworked together something that actually resembles the industry

 

[Andy D]

The one thing I can say for sure is it tends to be more efficient and less mistakes when people specifically do one or two things rather than taking a couple projects from beginning to end.

 

[Jester1167]

I am install only now so I am drawing from memory.

We had a policy where we would have someone else look over a proof before it was sent off to a customer or to print. Whether your writing an essay or setting up a sign, we tend to see what we thought we wrote/designed. Saved my butt a few times, keystroke errors and typos...

Always design with a reasonable amount of bleed. Trying to save a dollar here and there will eventually cost you hundreds.

If you have the ability to design full size, do it. It is so much easier when you depend on multiple people for design and output. If you can't (Adobe people), design everything at one scale.

"When in doubt, talk it out". Never ignore concerns "it might be," "I wonder if." Solve them up front.

When someone want's to give you a list of names or things over the phone, ask for an email to protect yourself. I used to a lot of ADA signs and we learned quickly not to take lists over the phone. Get your customers in the habit of sending lists as emails and cut an paste the copy. With an email you have proof it's not your fault!

We also used to have a saying, "Problems come in threes." If something goes wrong, everyone needs to be on look out to spot the next potential problem.

 

[Pewter0000]

We also used to have a saying, "Problems come in threes." If something goes wrong, everyone needs to be on look out to spot the next potential problem.

This seems so true - seems like some projects that start off on the wrong foot tend to snowball, and then other projects start to suffer

 

[MikePatterson]

I just come in every day and yell "Welcome to the Shit Show"

 

[WhiskeyDreamer]

I have a wall where we put our clipboards. They're divided by days of the week for sign work with apparel and outsourcing having their own sections. I have a dry erase three week schedule that shows vehicles, installs, time off/in lates for employees. Finally, I have my planner. I basically run the shop, so my planner is our daily schedule. I have proofs and production planned. I have lists for estimates to do and follow up on. I have orders that need to be placed. Handwritten works best for me, so no digital planner.

As a group, we usually go over the schedule 1-2 times per week just to make sure we're all on the same page with projects.

 

[ColorCrest]

Here's a snip of my trello board. Note the tabs for the other boards

Are any of the cards from your board duplicated to any of the other boards? Do you use job numbers and due dates?

 

[myront]

Are any of the cards from your board duplicated to any of the other boards? Do you use job numbers and due dates?

We do duplicate cards in order to hold a place for install dates and also if multiple substrates are required for that job. So we might have the orig card for just rta and a duplicate for the print vinyl.
Don't use job numbers - we file by business name or last name both in trello and our network files
We do assign due dates to most cards.

 

[Lindsey]

I use an Excel spreadsheet to keep track of projects. I spend about 10 minutes at the end of the day updating the spreadsheet. And then a quick 5-10 minute meeting in the morning to review priorities.

In the spreadsheet I include:

-new quotes to do (including date received, date due, & date done)
-quotes completed (keeping a record of # of quotes completed vs. # of jobs awarded)
-quotes to follow up on
-new jobs (date received, date due, & date done)
-jobs completed
-to be invoiced
-invoiced

I start a new spreadsheet each month, bringing along any leftover items from the month before. I save the spreadsheets from each month, so that if needed, I can quickly look up when something was quoted, or billed, or installed. When I have the time, I analyze the spread sheets from the current & previous year, to forecast what a given month next year might look like. Or to find patterns, such as "lot's of orders for banners in the month of May", to help with marketing/sales strategies.

As for the waste, if the garbage bin is full of liner paper & vinyl balls (from weeding), I know it's been a productive day.

 

[Texas_Signmaker]

As for the waste, if the garbage bin is full of liner paper & vinyl balls (from weeding), I know it's been a productive day.

That's the only time I feel satisfaction taking the trash out.

 

[Boudica]

We have a trailer in the vehicle bay for putting garbage bags and other scraps in. It's been nicknamed the "Trailer of Shame". It's fine to have appropriate garbage in there, but it's sad when it's full of things gone bad. I hate adding shame - to the "trailer of shame".

 

[Stacey K]

Mostly, I'm normal, like everyone else but...some days I do the work of 5 men in 8 hours. Other days, I do the work of a small child. If I'm in the mood to work and get stuff done, I'll work 12 hours with little break. If I'm not in the mood to work, I might as well go home. It all gets done on time, just strange how I get there some days LOL