The Transfer Print Column
How often do you audit your productivity?
Heat printing with transfers is the most efficient and cost-effective way to decorate garments. But when was the last time you audited your process to see if you could be even more efficient? Andy Rogers, marketing manager at Target Transfers, provides some top productivity advice.
W
hile speaking in The Decoration Advice Suite at Printwear & Promotion LIVE! this year, the first question I always asked the audience was ‘Do you know how long it takes to fuse a T shirt?’.
It was surprising how many did not know how long this process takes on average. It’s 41 seconds by the way.
The time a garment spends on your heat press is one of the most important metrics in your business. Once you understand this, you can unlock your full potential and start to make incremental gains. Here’s some productivity hacks to get you started.
What are your bad habits? How many things are you doing in your business because ‘we’ve always done it like that’. Your business could save hours, days and weeks a year by following the recipe. One of the biggest mistakes printers make is adding their own steps into the process when they don’t need to. How many of you are re-pressing your transfers after peeling the carrier? This step adds between five to 10 seconds every time you fuse, but has no benefit to the application of the transfer. A high-quality heat transfer only requires a three to five second pre-press, followed by a 10 to 12 second. Depending on the transfer type. By eliminating the unnecessary second fuse, you can make a 30% to 50% time saving. Increasing your capacity and bringing down your turnaround time.
What these incremental gains really mean
We recently conducted a productivity audit for one of our customers, a large UK decorator. On a recent job that had a diagonal print placement, we found that they were spending 20 to 30 seconds
www.printwearandpromotion.co.uk By carrying out an audit on your processes you could save days of time a year per operator
on each garment checking each other’s work. Because they were nervous about getting the placement right across the whole job. But if you have two press operators spending 20 to 30 seconds checking each other’s work on every garment that is a lot of time wasted. If they are fusing 100 shirts a day, that equate to loss productivity time of 355 working hours or 46 days per year. For each person.
By auditing their process and getting them to user their laser guidance tool on their press properly. They were able to bring their transfer placement time down from 30 seconds to five seconds per garment, saving 36 day per year, per person. Imagine what your business could achieve if you had 36 extra days per operator.
How to audit your process First step is to empower your team, it’s important to get buy in from them. It will make their life easier too. Get some of your most common transfer types and
garments along with a stopwatch. Time how long it takes to fuse each of those combinations, this is your benchmark. Now take a step back and questions your process. Do you have any bad habits? Are you adding any unnecessary steps in? Refer back to your transfer fusing instructions and time again. This is your new benchmark. If you saved just five seconds here and you fuse 100 shirts a day, you will have already saved back four to five days per year.
Next, make sure your heat press and its accessories are working for you. For instance, are you using a quick slip cover on your bottom platen? Our tests have show that this alone can save 11 seconds per garment. Or a threadable stand for your press, this can save another five seconds every garment.
If you are fusing 500 shirts per day, can save you 55 working days per year per operator.
Every second counts with transfers, the better you understand your process the more successful your business will be.
May 2023 | 69 |
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