“Part 5-Organizing Your Embroidery Business – Setting Up Your Finishing Area With The Right Tools & Equipment!”
Next on our journey of “Organizing Your Embroidery Business” is the Finishing Department. Setting up the finishing department with the right tools and equipment is very important if you want to present a high quality finished garment to your customers. Most of the tools are very simple and easy to gather. The only real equipment needed is a commercial steamer and a steam iron.
When I say commercial steamer, I mean just that and not one of the hand held ones. They do not do the job that the upright steamers do and my favorite brand of steamer is the Jiffy steamer. The reason for that is the amount of time that it lasts and the ease of being able to get parts for them if something does need to be replaced.
The only other piece of equipment is a table. Depending on the size of your area or business, you will need at least one table in your finishing department. It is best to have one area for the trimming & steaming and another area for the packing. If this is not possible you will have to go through one entire process before you can start the next process. This is not an issue if you are a one person organization, but if you have more than one person in your finishing department, they will each need their own area or table.
The tables can be very simple but they need to be high enough so that the employee is not bending over too far to do the job as it can be very tiresome by the end of the day. Cover the tables with some type of cloth backed plastic or a piece of heavy canvas. If you are using the plastic covering you will need a towel or some type of terry cloth to lay down on the table during the steaming process.
The basic tools that are required for your Finishing area are:
- Terry Towel
- Shout Wipes
- Liquid Dish Soap
- Textile Marking Pens
- Fray Check
- Lint Roller
- Clothes Brush
- Wash cloth
- Nail Clippers
- Scissors
- Trimmers
- Plastic Bags
- Scraps of Topping
- Commercial Steamer
- Large Trash Can
- Steam Iron
All of the small tools need to be kept in a plastic drawer or some type of container so that they are all easily accessible and not scattered around. I make sure that each one of my departments has their own tools so that there is no wasting of time searching for a tool.
Embroidered Garments Go From Embroidery Machine To Finishing
When the embroidery machine operator removes the garments from the machine, she also removes the hoop and then places the garments into a basket, bin or on a cart. This basket, bin or cart is then taken to the Finishing area.
The process for the finishing is as follows:
- Remove the backing
- Trim the top threads if this is necessary
- Stack the garments in a pile by size
- Steam the topping off and remove the hoop mark
- Fold up the garment and place it in a size stack
- Count the finished garments in each sized stack
- Bag the individual garments if required for the order
- Place them in a box
This box of finished goods is then sent to the shipping department.
I have found from my own experience that the employee works much faster if she or he is standing during the entire finishing process, but if it is necessary for health reasons, the employee can be sitting for trimming and removing the backing but they need to be standing for the steaming, folding, counting and stacking the garments into the sized stacks.
A quick and easy way of removing the topping is to remove it with a topping ball as you are steaming the garment. Steam your garment thoroughly and then dab the topping ball on top of the embroidery to remove the topping. It may take a 2 or 3 tries to remove all of the topping but it removes it even in the tiniest areas. I have heard of and tried many other solutions for removing the topping but none are to my satisfaction and quite often leave a wet mess behind. This is not acceptable to me. When that garment is finished, I want the process to be finished, not waiting for it to dry; plus the steamed finished garment looks more professional!
I will include a video that will show you how to create a topping ball.
Download Video: MP4
Please leave me a comment below to let me know that this has helped you to get your Finishing department set up for finishing your garments efficiently in your Embroidery Business! If you leave a comment below, I will send you access to a bonus video showing you how to Remove the Topping!
Joyce Jagger
The Embroidery Coach
“Part 2- Organizing Your Embroidery Business – Receiving Area – Receiving The Orders”
In part 2 of this series on Organizing Your Business I am going to start talking specifically about the individual work areas or work stations within your embroidery shop. In this article I am going to start with the first area in your business after the order has taken. That area is Receiving.
In part 1 of this Organizing Your Business series, I showed you a floor plan that is below on this page. This is a small shop with 2 embroidery machines and the square footage for this shop is about 1,000 square feet. I drew
up this basic plan, but it is not drawn perfectly to scale. This plan was to show how you can lay out your shop for a good work flow and not specifically for an exact floor plan.
This is a basic floor plan that I had when I had a 6 head machine and a 2 single head machines. The single head machines were sitting next to each other and in the floor plan it is listed as one machine. At the time I had 5 employees, 2 machine operators, 1 hooper, 1 person finishing, and 1 person doing shipping & receiving.
It does not matter how large or how small your shop is, what matters is how you have it laid out and how many steps you are saving going from one area to another. Each one of your areas or work stations need to be laid out in such a manner that it is physically easy for the person working in that area and efficient for the work flow.
One of the main concerns for employees is the table height that they are working at. It must be the right height for the person so that they do not have back aches and are not wasting time with the movements that are required for them to take as they are performing their tasks.
Received Orders Ready for Processing
Whether you have a large shop or a 1 person at home embroidery business, you must follow the same type of a system in order to be efficient in your work flow. The first process that occurs after the order is taken is the Receiving of the order.
Your Receiving area needs to consist of a large table preferably with a back (like a short wall) built on it so that you have a place to hang your orders that are not complete in one form or another. The tools that you need for this area are a Copier or Computer and Printer and Plastic Job Folders for your orders. If you do not have a wall that you can hang the orders on, you can file them in a file box under your table.
As soon as the Order Processing is completed you are ready to Log in the Order. This is the first step in Receiving. You can Log the order in on the computer and then print out a copy daily and place it in a 3 ring binder. This binder will be stored on the Receiving desk. If you do not choose to Log in on the computer, you can create your Log in Form, print out the blank forms and fill them in as the orders come in. If you are an embroidery shop where you have someone that receives the orders specifically, you can have them fill in the form as they receive the orders and at the end of the day, it can be input into the computer. This is the process for many small to medium sized shops. The Log in form should include the following information:
- Date (the order came in)
- Job Number
- Customers Name
- Job Name
- Item Description
- Quantity of Pieces in Order
- Process (embroidery, screen printing, twill, heatpress)
- Date Due
- Date Goods Arrived from Distributor
- Date Shipped
The work order may come in from the customer by phone or email without the garments. If you are working with a Retail customer, you will be the one that is ordering the goods. The garments are shipped in separately from a distributor or manufacturer. Log the order in, assign it a job number and attach a copy of the order to a clip board marked “Waiting for Goods”. When the Goods come in from the distributor or manufacturer, you pull out the Work Order and match it to the packing slip from the distributor. The order must match exactly.
- PO Number
- Quantity
- Item Number of the garments
- Color
- Sizes
You need to physically count all of the items and check to make sure that the color and sizes are correct and that there are no damaged goods. Notify the customer that the garments have been received and that there is a complete match or that there is a problem with the order and it is up to the customer to make whatever corrections there are to be made with the distributor or manufacturer. If it is for a Retail customer, you are the one that has to solve the problem with the distributor or manufacturer.
Design Work Can Begin As Soon As Job Is Logged In
After the goods have been successfully Logged In and even before the Goods are received the process for the design can begin. The design and sew out can be done and approved by the customer while you are waiting for the Goods to arrive. Many times the entire job can be ready for production as soon as the goods arrive from the distributor. I will talk more about the design process in another article.
Once you have all of the information together and you have all of the correct items, place all of the information along with the order inside of a clear plastic Job Folder and tape it to the front of the box that has the goods inside of it. If there is more than one box label each box with the Order No., Job Name and Box 1 of however many boxes in the order. It is now time to place the order in Staging area of “Received Orders Ready for Processing”. At that point the order can be picked up by the next person that is going to process that order. In the case of the Embroidery area, the next stop is Hooping. In our next article I will talk a lot about the Hooping area. This is a big subject with lots of variables!
Part 4-Organizing Your Embroidery Business To Run Smoothly-Shipping & Invoicing Information
In Part 1 of Organizing Your Embroidery Business, I talked about organizing your information that you use in running your embroidery business. In Part 2 I l talked about your customers design information. In Part 3 I talked about your Production process. In Part 4, I will go over the information for Shipping and Invoicing
The completed order, customers order form and production form goes to shipping. The shipping information is added to the production form. This shipping information includes the weights of boxes, shipping costs and time allowed for this process. The packing slip is filled out with all of the items listed that are being shipped to the customer. A copy is then made of the packing slip and attached to the production form and customers order. These forms are all sent to billing.
The person doing the invoicing pulls the original customer order and uses the production form to do the invoicing. The production form is then detached and goes back to the production supervisor to be analyzed and see what could or should have been done or what other method could be used to save time and money.
These forms are very important. The original customer order is attached to the invoice created and filed in the accounts receivable drawer. After payment has been received, the paperwork is then filed in a paid file drawer or cabinet inside of the customers file by order number or date.
Organization is not hard, but it does take some time and thought. You need to go through each process of your particular business and put an organization plan together. If you take the time to get fully organized, staying organized is very simple and you will save time in your total business operation.
I hope that this series on Organizing Your Embroidery Business has been helpful. I would like to hear from you about any areas of your business that are troublesome for you to organize.
Joyce Jagger
The Embroidery Coach
Part 3-Organizing Your Embroidery Business To Run Smoothly-Production Information
In Part 1 of Organizing Your Embroidery Business, I talked about organizing your information that you use in running your embroidery business. In Part 2 I l talked about your customers design information. In Part 3 I am going to talk about your Production process.
The first step of my production process is to log in the job on the log in form, make a list of new artwork that has to be created and either gives that to the person that creates the artwork or sends it out to the digitizer. If I have to order anything for the project, I do so and put a copy of the original customer order in a plastic sleeve and hang it in the receiving area waiting for the goods to come in. A production form is filled out with the customer and job information on it that follows through the entire production process. The original order is placed into the customers file folder in the office. I connect that order and the production form with the goods when they arrive.
After the design is ready, I place that with the order and it is then placed onto a shelf ready for hooping. If you have employees, it is best to have at least one job hooped ahead of time. This creates a smoother and faster production flow. When I had my large embroidery business, I have all of the jobs hooped the day before they were placed onto the embroidery machines. I had 24 dozen hoops of the most popular sizes (12 centimeter and 15 centimeter) so that this was possible, unless the order sizes were larger than 24 dozen. Sometimes this was the case, but at least the first 24 dozen pieces for the job was hooped ahead of time.
At the time for embroidery, the baskets of hooped garments are moved to the embroidery machine area and the machine operator can start the embroidery process. The design is loaded into the machine by whatever process you use to get your designs into the machine. The garment are then loaded onto the machine and embroidered. After they are embroidered, they are removed from the machine, unhooped and placed into another basket or bin and moved to the trimming area.
The trimmer will trim, steam, fold and pack the garments ready to be shipped. In a large business this will be more than one person. You will have a person that trims and steams and another one that will fold and pack the garments ready for shipping.
The production form is filled out by the operator with all of the information about each process as it passes through production.
Part 4 of Organizing Your Embroidery Business will be about shipping and invoicing procedures.
Part 1 Organizing Your Embroidery Business To Run Smoothly-Business How To Information
Organizing your embroidery business to run smoothly is not a hard job. Organization is a huge subject in itself but there are simple things that I do to keep myself organized. In this first part I will talk about how I organize all of my information that I have collected and use to my embroidery business. Most of this information is used in running your embroidery business.
I have all of the information that I need organized in notebooks and they are stored in the area that it is applicable, such as hooping. I have a large notebook that contains all of my hooping information that I have compiled and is easy to grab when I run into a problem and etc. I have it divided up into sections such as Placement guides, hooping techniques for different types of garments and etc.
I started going thru the magazines many years ago and tearing out the articles that I wanted to keep and filed them in a folder marked “whatever the subject was”. I have them on every subject that would be applicable to the embroidery business and business in general. I then throw out the magazine. I do not keep them at all anymore. I had boxes of magazines that were not doing me any good because I did not know which one to grab when I needed it. I still do that to this day. Most of the articles that they have today have been repeated so many times that I don’t even bother with most of them anymore but this is not true for the new embroiderer.
I treat the information that comes into the computer the same way. I print out a copy, I cannot read on the computer directly, and file it within the same file folders as the articles from the magazines.
Stay tuned for Part 2 of Organizing Your Embroidery Business. Tomorrow we will get into organizing the customer design information for your business.
