Te and team change their printing setup from one design to another whenever necessary to respond to orders. It takes a full day to do the changeover – in a busy month, they can lose a full week in changeover time. Te and team realise how inefficient this make-do approach is and decide to get more flexible.
First, they look at sales trends and customer insights to see when the demand for different designs changes. They realise there are two consistently popular designs all year round. They also notice that new designs become dominant only when advertised and the demand lasts for a month. They also see that sales volumes increase over Christmas.
They decide to have four production lines.
- Line 1 — for the first of their popular designs
- Line 2 — for the second of their popular designs
- Line 3 — for whichever design they’re currently advertising
- Line 4 — ready for an increase in demand over Christmas
The team changes Line 3 every month, with the goal of completing the changeover in 6 hours. This is down from a previously unpredictable amount, sometimes as high as 40 hours a month.
Line 4 isn’t running all the time, but they calculate it’s cheaper to have an unused production line year-round than to store all the finished tee shirts until the Christmas rush. They only have to change this line over three times at most during the busy season – a maximum of 18 hours.
Over the busiest time, Te’s Tees hires some extra help. Employee induction is mostly focused on training for production line changeovers. The team draws some simple process maps and also films the changeover. They then show the maps and videos to the new employees and let them practice the changeover. Importantly, Te stresses just how crucial the changeover is to the success of the business and the new employees’ roles.