From my experience, a print-on-demand facility can manage up to around 75 units per day using manual workflow methods without too much trouble. But once you exceed that volume, the usual disruptions—machines failing, staff absences, stock outages, and other industry challenges—start to interfere with production efficiency. This raises the question: what is the most efficient way to manage work in progress at any given time?
And, of course, once you’re handling hundreds—let alone thousands—of items per day, staying on top of everything can become a monumental challenge.
We typically see two broad approaches to managing a print-on-demand factory:
Option 1: Staying on Top of Everything
This approach relies on big-picture reporting views, filtering data across different parameters, sorting and reviewing orders, and ensuring there are no exceptions disrupting the necessary production flow to meet SLAs. It involves using dashboards to flag potential issues, prompting further investigation. This method benefits from matrix-oriented views that highlight exactly what needs attention, keeping all production stages under close monitoring.
Option 2: Managing by Exception
This is a completely different philosophy. Instead of monitoring everything, the goal is to define a predictable and structured rhythm in your factory—one where the natural workflow ensures production meets quality and SLA requirements. Rather than micromanaging the entire production pipeline, you only focus on the exceptions—the items that are falling behind the required flow rate for on-time shipping.
To do this, we define what we call dwell time—the maximum amount of time work should remain at any process stage. This method prioritizes items tracking slower than required, presenting the data in three simple categories:
- Overdue – Items that are already behind schedule.
- Due Today – Orders that must be completed today to stay on track.
- Upcoming – Orders due in the near future.
Which technique is best for your business depends on production volume and complexity. However, in our experience, once production scales into the hundreds of units per day, managing by exception becomes a vastly simpler and far less stressful way to run your factory.
If you’d like to learn more about how we implement these two approaches, reach out—we’d love to discuss it with you.
