When touch-up is a step back
I am probably asked more questions about shirt touch-up than any other single
subject. I suppose that makes sense.
The pursuit of the “perfect shirt” is why we have someone to inspect shirts and they, when the need arises, try to
bump up the quality a notch or two. There is nothing wrong with that, if all
goes according to plan.
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1. You have equipment that is well maintained and works like the manufacturer
intends.
2. Your pressers know exactly how to operate the shirt pressing equipment and they
do so consistently.
3. This results in a top-notch shirt, hot off the press. Nine out of ten shirts
have no pressing defects that require touch-up.
4. This is confirmed by the qualified, objective inspector who clears 90 percent of
the shirts. They are good to go.
5. The one in ten that do need touch-up are remedied and brought up to standard,
then moved to the inspection arena once more where they are approved and sent
along for assembly.
Any questions? I bet you have one, and I bet it sounds like this: “Why doesn’t it go like that in my plant?”
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At first thought, many feel that this describes their scenario to a certain
extent, they just don’t buy into the one out of ten needs touchup idea. It’s more like nine out of ten that need touch-up.
That is a heck of a gap and a gap that could easily cost you 20, 40 or 50
thousand dollars or more per year. That is some serious coin. Recouping that
money is very do-able, but it will require some dedication and some effort.
First, let’s identify the problem.
Shirt equipment gets fixed when it breaks down. That is, it gets fixed when it
can’t press shirts any more.
Preventative maintenance doesn’t get done. Little things don’t get fixed.
This results in a slow but steady decline in quality. It is often not a quality
dip that you can perceive on a day to day evaluation, but eventually the
pressing equipment has a slew of things wrong with it, perhaps the squeaky
wheel gets the oil, but otherwise as long as the machine works (sort of), it
becomes a bucket of deferred maintenance — a euphemism for “I’ll fix that some other day.”
It might be easy to believe that your equipment doesn’t deserve this moniker, but you might be surprised because this comes on
gradually — ever so slowly — and suddenly you find yourself thinking that “They don’t make ‘em like they used to.”
Perhaps not, but you aren’t helping. This is when it becomes very important that you be qualified to
evaluate pressing defects. (Actually, that has always been important.) If you
notice a pressing defect and you correctly determine that the cause is
equipment-related, doesn’t it make immeasurably more sense to make a mechanical adjustment, order a part
or call in a service man or whatever is necessary, than to pay a touch-up
person to fix the defect with an iron forever and ever at the cost of $300 per
week into perpetuity?
So, sometimes the maladies with a piece of equipment are minor. Other times, not
so minor, but the reality is if your equipment doesn’t work perfectly, don’t expect that the shirts will be pressed perfectly.
Your presser knows how to press on your equipment and consistently proves it by
doing a good job.
This is a tough one because the tremendous majority of production managers have
no idea how to press, so frankly, they have no idea if Mary is a good presser.
Mary makes the grade as a “good presser” because she comes into work, doesn’t call out, plays well with others, doesn’t smoke in the bathroom and does a decent job pressing shirts.
It doesn’t matter that her production is way off and she is the Queen Mother of “padding the time clock.” Does she do as good a job as the fine-tuned equipment allows her to do? Who
knows? I can’t tell from over here. But you won’t know how good of a job she does do or can do if your equipment is faulty. That
leads us back to item 1.
But, hey! It’s not that hard to tell. Stand right at the shirt unit and look at each shirt as
it comes off the unit. How are they? Pretty good, huh? (I know what you’re thinking. “Hold your horses.” I’m getting to that.)
It amazes me how good some pressers are! And fast! I was at a plant last month
that had several Ajax Classic double bucks. Each one, it appeared, had a foot
in the grave. They were bought new 13 years ago and had pressed a lot of
shirts. Millions.
In spite of that, the units put out a great shirt and the pressers regularly
pressed 100 of them per hour. Ten percent needed touchup.
That unit is not particularly good at pressing very large shirts. But, still,
hot off the press, the shirts were great. I know. I was there.
And I know that you’re thinking. You’re thinking, “Oh sure, they always do a good job when I am standing there.”
I have heard this a thousand times. I have a couple of problems with this
statement. Let’s presume that it is 100 percent true for a minute. That means that Mary usually
does a substandard job, but when the boss is standing there, out the window go
the mistakes and everything is done correctly — good shirts, good production.
Honestly, that doesn’t seem plausible. Mary can shift gears that easily? Why does Mary go back to
doing a bad job after you leave? What’s in it for her? She may remember to do that one little thing that you barked at
her about a few days ago, but to go from one extreme to the other? I don’t buy it.
Sometimes I report to a manager/client that the shirts off the unit look great
based on my observation. I think that they have responded with “That’s because you’re standing there” 100 percent of the time.
How can I intimidate a presser that much? I don’t sign their paychecks. The fact is, your shirt presser probably does a better
job than you think. The shirts look best hot off the press, but the subsequent
handling is what deteriorates the quality. I firmly believe this. Sure, you can
have a presser who simply doesn’t know how to use the equipment, but referring back to my five-point list, that
isn’t the case.
The quality of the shirts is confirmed by the inspector who clears 90 percent of
them.
Here’s where you stop believing me because the inspector clears 10 percent of them
and shuffles off nine out of ten for touch-up.
Why? Well, perhaps there is some sort of minor defect that causes the inspector
to reject a shirt.
I have been around long enough to make the following statement: Show me a shirt
that you evaluate as “perfect” and I’ll show you three things wrong with it.
Not one of those things would irritate a customer, but they are technically
defects: a minor wrinkle in the sleeve gusset; a curl in the tail; a tiny
wrinkle in the pocket.
Now the touch-up segment of the operation takes over and the quality of the
shirt is very rarely improved. In fact, most of the time, the quality of the
press job takes a dive. This is a very sad story.
Assuming that you’re with me on this, you paid 20 cents to get the shirt pressed (two pressers on
a double buck at $10 per hour each divided by 100 shirts per hour). They
produced a good shirt, maybe even a very good shirt.
Now it goes to a touch-up person where you spend 40 cents per shirt (a touch-up
person that makes $10 per hour and can touch 25 shirts per hour) to, arguably,
drop the press quality a notch or two, partly due to excess handling and partly
due to carelessness.
Look at the photographs on the preceding page. These are all shirts that were
rejected by an inspector, subsequently mangled by a touch-up person and then
sent on to be assembled and bagged!
Some of these shirts are really bad! And remember, someone paid three times as
much to get them to look like this. They came off the unit looking good, or “OK” for 20 cents. Now someone decides to triple the labor cost so that the shirt
becomes unwearable! Does that not sound stupid?
OK, a couple of disclaimers:
• Not every shirt that a touch-up person will handle will get as bad as these and
there are times that a touch-up person will improve the quality of the shirts.
• Do not dismiss this as something that can’t/doesn’t/won’t happen at your place. Please! I have seen this many times all over the world.
It is possible that you need a full-time touch-up person, but this will likely
be because you have an equipment issue or ill-trained employees.
Almost always, however, a touch-up person doesn’t understand the job. They think that the job is simply to handle every shirt
and do something to it. They can’t just stand there, can they?
They need to justify their jobs — their very existence on payroll. This may not be how they were trained. You
never said that, but somehow, they morph into someone who takes every shirt and
massages it with an iron or mangles it on a hot head, so much so that they may
not be able to keep up and you need another touch-up person!
But there is almost no necessary touch-up in the first place. This is quite
bizarre. But the topper, of course, is that the quality of these shirts isn’t improved. Too often the quality deteriorates from too much handling.
Do yourself a favor today. Inspect the shirts, yourself, immediately as they
come off the press. Ask yourself: “Do these shirts warrant the amount of money that I am spending on touch-up?”
If they don’t, re-train or reassign your touch-up person. If the shirts off the unit, based
on your evaluation, do require significant touch-up, find the real problem and
fix it!
“If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you always got.”
