Project Scope and Process:
The goal of this project was to build binders for one of our clients who wanted to specify our glazed porcelain tile. Each binder shell has three sections to it with a total of 73 colors to the overall palette and then folds over into a trifold.
Once we got an estimated time of arrival for the binder shells our client had ordered to get shipped to our production studio, we needed to figure out a way to make it easiest for our production staff to pick the tile off of the mesh sheets, sort through each colors, glue them down and then have a place for them to dry until ready to ship. All together we needed to make 100 binders; 50 that were matte finished and 50 glossy finish.
After sitting down and talking to my production manager, we agreed that the best way for our production staff to do this project was to have a fixed amount of each of the 73 colors sorted out into shoe boxes, which were then surrounded in the order around a gluing station (as shown in pictures.) This way the person working on the project doesn't have to go back and fourth to pick specific colors for gluing, and they would have it in front of them to comfortably grab and glue down.
In the beginning we set up two work stations side-by-side, one for the glossy finished tile and one for the matte finish. After looking at the set-up, me and one of our inventory coordinators decided that it would be more efficient to have them facing each other, so this way it was less likely for the anyone to have to work around one another when putting a binder down on one of the drying racks. With this, each shoe box had around 10 colors in each with cardboard dividers to separate each color. This helped because not all of our production staff are well versed with our glazed porcelain color palette and finishes, and it helped with minimizing questions and also confusion on colors getting mixed up and misplaced on the binders. We also gave each station a carbon fiber straight edge so they could line up the rows and columns properly. After a production worker completed a binder, they would then stack the binders on a drying rack near the station and use foam sheets to separate each one.
We calculated out how long each binder should take with this set up we created, and we found that this method would cut the average build time for these binders down about 15 minutes a piece for each binder built, taking the time from 45 minutes per binder to about 30 minutes. We wanted to have production staffed on this project for full shifts, but because of the other projects we had in the pipeline at the time, we simply couldn't. So what we did was we had production staff rotate over the course of a week on these binders for half of there shift (4 hours), which then got the project done within a weeks span.
After the project was completed, we had to set up a freight shipment for the boxes to be sent off on. In total we had about 10 boxes, and one portion of the shipment was sent off with the founder of Artaic for a meeting with our client in New York, while the other portion was shipped to a separate office.
Overall this was an interesting test of time management and coordination, and with the help of others in production and our office space, we were able to fulfill this order no problem, and leave our client satisfied and excited for their new binders.
