Commercial Embroidery Scheduling: Become A Master Juggler!

Effective scheduling in commercial embroidery is what separates a company with a healthy bottom line from a shop in total chaos.

Now is a good time to revisit your production scheduling habits, make a few changes and keep your shop running smoothly, and your customers satisfied.

Scheduling is the lifeblood of a commercial embroidery shop.  With global competition and increasing customer demands, an efficient workflow will be critical to your success. You must have the supplies and manpower you need, when you need them, to get your product to the customer on time.

Good production scheduling balances customer needs with available resources and restraints in capacity.  As your commercial embroidery business grows, so does need to meet strict deadlines. Late shipments are simply not acceptable.

Without a realistic production schedule, you will always play catch-up to keep your customers happy.

Proper production scheduling is more than an important to your business; it is the beginning of good business development and growth.

What are the basics for a good commercial embroidery production schedule?

A functioning production schedule determines delivery dates and anticipates maintenance downtime.

It also gives workers, sales staff and customers a reasonable expectation of what is expected. Production schedules also provide a framework to measure performance and efficiency.

Another consideration in production schedules for commercial embroidery is inventory. Works in Process (WIP) inventories are minimized, and resource conflicts are resolved quickly.

For example, you want all your Avancé 15 Needle Embroidery Machines running at peak efficiency, so you need the exact color embroidery threads and garment blanks in stock when you want them.

Traditional scheduling has not done much to improve workflow, especially with the newest generations of high-performance commercial embroidery machines. The problem is that most production schedules fail to take in account the unexpected, something that is part of every commercial embroidery workplace.

Uncertainty makes flexibility critical in planning, and manageable production scheduling is accomplished through simplicity. You have to keep it simple and willing to change course as the need arises.

Supply-chain management can be both fast and responsive, with a healthy dose of common sense. The perfect production schedule will link directly with both the buyer’s and your supplier’s schedules.

Take a look to this site intended for additional information with Embroidery.

Why have an updated commercial embroidery production scheduling system?

Several key decisions are easier after improving your production-scheduling system:

•             Holding and preparing jobs for production

•             Setting a preference for projects that involve different resources, such as metallic threads, rhinestones and other decorations

•             Assigning the right people, supplies and equipment

•             Moving resources between similar jobs

•             Determining when projects should begin to meet production deadlines

•             Interrupting jobs that should be stopped to accommodate rush orders

Production scheduling is based on allocation of resources and prioritizing tasks. These two will  deliver the highest quality products and services, especially in commercial embroidery. Scheduling by hand alone can make it extremely difficult to understand the interactions in a high-volume shop.

Scheduling commercial embroidery means embracing technology (but don’t ditch the whiteboard)

Spreadsheets have long been used in scheduling systems, but often only during planning. They are great for setting up a thumbnail of production flow, but are are quickly forgotten in the heat of an important deadline.

If you truly want to maximize production, you need to take spreadsheets out of the planning stage, and put them into action on your shop floor.

Yes, the real world is different from computerized models, but that doesn’t mean that they should be ignored in favor of seat-of-your-pants production schedules.

Spreadsheets to model and simulate are only the first step in designing an advanced planning and scheduling system. Today’s spreadsheets are as easy to use as they are powerful so complete estimate of capacities can be pre-loaded into an operating plan. Use them for everything from ordering supplies, scheduling workers and dovetailing one job into another.

This doesn’t mean you have to ditch your trusty dry-erase whiteboard. In fact, the most valuable part of your scheduling system is creating a single way for all members to have access. Whiteboards are perfect to accommodate a plan where everyone who needs information gets it in a glance. With a visible schedule, everyone keeps an eye on each other.

It is difficult in commercial embroidery to sew shirts if the blanks are not ordered. Production scheduling helps us all know limitations and capacities, and can make reliable projections a reality.

Scheduling commercial embroidery is a group effort

Cooperation is the foundation of any scheduling system, your staff is the essential element. Regular communication, through daily or weekly meetings with each department, keeps everyone informed and on the same page.

Schedules in commercial embroidery should see your production as a part of an intricate flow of information and decision making. What it is not is an isolated optimization problem, waiting passively to be solved.

Production is not just one job. It is filled with variables that affect the outcome. A scheduling process must take in account all significant constraints that exist in commercial embroidery. It should help you achieve the relevant activities for an unpredictable environment, so it can be used to solve unexpected and unpredictable events. (That almost never happens, right?)

Scheduling with a system of checks and balances in a visible system, can be more like a symphony than a circus act. Deep down, scheduling is only a juggling act, but an act that gives you all the expertise of a master performer.

For more information about efficient commercial embroidery, visit www.ColDesi.com or call 877-793-3278 today!