SUCCESS STORIES IN THEIR OWN WORDS

first question for Marshall Atkinson is about production scheduling. And we've figured out how to map out how long each job should take on average. And we have all of this down. And obviously, we want to fill every minute of the day up with printing. And we do this, we block it all off. But is the age-old problem of customer service always wanting to take more orders than we can produce? So, my question for Marshall, is how do we handle rush orders the best? And how do we make sure that we have time to do rush orders that pay well and serve our customers well? Marshall Atkinson That's a very interesting question, Brett, thanks for asking that. So, my answer to that is first off is about how you're just doing production scheduling in its entirety. And I'll get into rush orders after that. So, what I like to see and what I think really works best is that when orders come in, let's say today's a Monday, as orders come in on Tuesday, what we're going to do is we're going to schedule all the jobs that came in yesterday, to the date that we want to run the job on could be next Thursday or something to the actual machine we're going to run the job on. And we know that from data analysis, how long our setups take on average on that machine, how fast that machine normally runs. We can also say that in between each job, we can allow 10 or 15 minutes of turnover time. And that way we can accurately account for exactly the averages of everything that works. Now, knowing that -- some jobs are faster than others. A left chest is going to screen-print faster than a full front, and you're going to run a T-shirt faster than you do hoodies. But if you're keeping accurate data, you might be able to get the data on those different types of setups and garments to have averages that are applicable to those exact scenarios. So, when you're trying to schedule you know that a left chest runs at 600 an hour, but a full front might run at 400 an hour. But there's the same amount of colors. So, your setup time still might be 10 or 15 minutes depending on how fast you do things. For rush jobs, what I always recommend is that there is a way in your system to mark- demarcate those with a special code, with a special color, with a special something. So, it's kind of like the Disney FastPass. They go to the head of the line in every department. So, if you have a rush job, they're purchased first, they're received first, the screens are burned first, embroidery digitizing happens first, everything happens first in each of those departments. It moves to the head of the line so there is no waiting on it. Because of that critical circumstance of it being a rush job. Then, when it comes down to production, what we're going to be doing is the day before production, let's say its next week on that Thursday that we've been scheduling stuff too, on Wednesday, we're going to look at our schedule of all the jobs that we have to run tomorrow, on Thursday. And what we're going to do is we're going to do the scavenger hunt today. This means we're going to get the shirts, and the screens, and the thread. If it's embroidery, we're going to find the samples, and the mock- ups, and everything that we need. We're going to pull all that together. And we're going to stage it by the end of the day on Wednesday, for Thursday morning. And those rush jobs are the absolute first things that we're going to do. And that way, they're knocked out first. And if there's any way possible to do them Wednesday, at the end of the day, before Thursday, that's even better, that's great. Because you've already knocked out the biggest part of your job was just to get the rush jobs out first. So that's the answer to my question. Thanks, Brett. Brett Bowden Alright, so my second question for Marshall has to do with the receiving department. I know all of our companies have had a lot of issues over the past year with garments having come from multiple warehouses and also multiple vendors. So, we receive hundreds of boxes a day from UPS and FedEx. And what we know is, we're not going to receive all the garments today that we might need to receive for our order. So how do we keep our warehouses nice and organized and know that there's still product coming for this order? And it is, we don't know what day it's going to come. It might be coming in the next few days. How do we keep all that stuff organized, knowing that the full shipment has not arrived and it is not available to print yet?

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