We all want fast! We all want the jobs to fly in the door and fly out the door with as little effort as possible! While that sounds like a dream scenario there are some very small steps that you can take that will increase your production in your Embroidery Business is a huge way! Here are 9 tips that will help you increase your production drastically!
- Keep your machine clean and maintained daily and you will have fewer issues, less down times and fewer tech costs. You need to clean out the bobbin area every single morning and oil it. You need to oil it again at noon or after every 4 hours of running time. This will help you keep your machine in tip top shape with far less downtime. Your production time alone will increase through this daily habit.
- Set up sharp needles on half of your machine and set up the other half of the machine with ball point needles. This will save you a lot of time when you have to switch from knits to woven fabrics. It is much faster to change a cone of thread than to change a needle!
- Keep the colors of thread closest to each other for your thread changes in your design. Example: If the design has 3 colors, place the 3 colors next to each other so that the machine will have less travel time from one needle to the next as it changes colors.
- Time all of the steps in each of your processes. Keep track of these times and try to better your best at all times. Encourage your employees to do the same. Maybe an incentive will help to make them move a little quicker with each step.
- Add the job to the schedule or tracking sheet as soon as it arrives or the order is taken. You may not have all of the information to complete the job at that time, but it needs to be logged in and kept track of immediately!
- When each step of the job is completed, add that to the tracking sheet to see the progress.
- When you have all of your information and the job is ready for production, assign the jobs to certain machines and put the schedule on the machine where the work will be completed. This schedule should be created the night before the job is to be run and the schedule should be placed on the machine that it is assigned to.
- Pay attention to the time that it is taking your operators to do the job. If your schedule is formatted correctly, the time allotted for the job will be right on the schedule. Make sure that it is being completed during that time frame. Employees seem to move faster when they know that they are on a schedule and are being timed.
- Plan your production so that you are running like kind jobs. If you have your machines set up for caps, run all of your cap jobs at one time instead of breaking down the machine for each individual order. Plan 1 day a week for caps and stick with it unless you do not have any caps for that week. Do not plan by date order. Plan it by type of products, hoop size and colors that you have on the machine at the time.
Following these tips will give you the fastest way to increase production in your embroidery business and you will be able to get more products out in a weeks‚ time using this method. More products out each week, more money in! This can greatly increase your monthly bottom line!
I have developed a simple and complete Embroidery Production Tracking & Scheduling Form‚ that will help you to keep track of each step of your production and give you the time that it should be completed in. This form is part of the How To Price Embroidery Program and will soon be available as a stand-alone product. It is a simple form for you to use and will help you to keep total track of your embroidery that is all formatted and will automatically figure the time that it should take for each job!