Whether you like it or not, the day you decided to become a garment decorating entrepreneur, you also became an event accommodator. As a decorator, you are creating products for people to represent their brand, organization, team, company and so on. More often than not, apparel or printed products are used for events. Therefore, as a decorator, you are forced to accommodate your business to deliver products for your customer's events. The entrepreneurial nightmare looms as to what will happen if you miss delivering products for an event. Given that customers are procrastinators, we have to deal with it. Here’s how to handle production scheduling in your print shop. ----------- Try Printavo: https://www.printavo.com

1. How To Handle
Production Scheduling
In Your Print Shop
Printavo – Simple, online shop management software
www.printavo.com

2. Introduction
Whether you like it or not, the day you decided to become a
garment decorating entrepreneur, you also became an event
accommodator.
As a decorator, you are creating products for people to represent
their brand, organization, team, company and so on. More often
than not, apparel or printed products are used for events.
Therefore, as a decorator, you are forced to accommodate your
business to deliver products for your customer's events. The
entrepreneurial nightmare looms as to what will happen if you
miss delivering products for an event. Given that customers are
procrastinators, we have to deal with it. Here’s how to handle
production scheduling in your print shop.

3. Get a tool that schedules production!
- Have a whiteboard at your shop or a written chart with all
orders due for the week.
- Get digital quickly. By having a digital calendar to increase
shop transparency and accountability.

4. "In-Hand Date"
- Get used to this term. Otherwise known as the-date-the-
customer-better-have-their-products or-else-you-have-major-
issues, an in-hand date is critical for you to have clearly labeled
on every order.

5. In-Hand Date ≠ Customer Due Date
- It is dangerous to schedule a customer due date as the in-hand
date.
- Schedule a projected customer due date that gives you a buffer
in case anything happens.
- Producing jobs earlier than customers want creates happy
customers!

6. Know your production capacity
- You need to know what you are capable of producing in a given
timeframe.
- Set aside time to create a production budget so you can plan
your jobs out accordingly.
- Do not stretch your production capacity too far.

7. Produce larger jobs earlier in the week
- Don't wait until Friday to produce your most important jobs.
- Make sure that you do the hardest jobs first.
- Create a goal to have all your work done by Thursday so that
Friday can be used for small simple jobs for the next week!

8. Communicate often
- At the beginning and end of each day have a team huddle. Go
over everything that needs to be done for the day, and plan for
tomorrow.
- Get your employees bought into the schedule, and incentivise
them with rewards for finishing earlier.
- Prepare your team for emergency jobs that will arise.

9. Track each week's performance
- Every week, you should track your production and see what
you could do better.
- Start to look at jobs that were more time consuming and work
with your sales team to sell jobs that are production friendly.
- Figure out how many jobs your team completed and celebrate
with them.

10. Don't go crazy
- Recognize that you do have a limit, so while saying "no" is a
very hard thing to do, spend time educating your customers so
they know what you are willing to do for them. They will still
appreciate you and will bring you better orders earlier.