Is your print-on-demand business running on outdated reporting? 📊⏳
In this week’s video, Andrew Smith explains why real-time performance dashboards are essential in a volatile POD environment. Traditional reporting is too slow—instant insights at the team and management level drive efficiency and profitability. Learn how real-time data transforms operations. Watch now!
Transcript
Print on demand is unlike any other form of manufacturing. It’s uniqueness means that there’s a really different approach required to, firstly, how businesses access and use their information, and secondly, who gets to see that information. And the reason for that is that POD is inherently volatile. Order combinations change constantly, demand jumps up to 3 to 1 from low to peak, and actually even higher in apparel. And weekly ordering cycles create unpredictable production loads. And even more challenging, cost of goods sold can vary widely between your different SKUs, meaning you actually change how you respond to different file reasons. So the problem that that creates from a data perspective is that traditional reporting cycles just don’t work. Waiting for monthly or even just getting weekly performance reports is just not good enough. You’re responding too late. You have to access your information in real time and respond immediately. And our view is that the best solution is real-time performance dashboards. Firstly, tailored dashboards for individual teams, giving staff instant feedback on their performance, work volume, file reasons and so on. And then secondly, beautiful dashboards for the supervisors and management team, giving them all the key KPIs of the business. And what this does is it means that everybody’s got this circle of information around them that’s based upon what’s actually happening live on the production floor right now. It also changes how people manage because you end up doing a walk of the factory and each of the teams have performance dashboards that tell you exactly what’s going on in each of the individual cells. The bottom line is that fast information completely transforms, completely transforms how you go about running your business. So if you’d like to know how we could go about helping you achieve fast information embedded with how you run your business, reach out. We’d love to talk with you about it. Thank you.
