The Holes in Your Actual Production Capacity Are Hiding in Plain Sight

Plans Verses Reality

Photo by Andrej Lišakov on Unsplash

If you are struggling to keep a sales floor full of fresh merchandise, step back and look at where planned production hours actually end up going. 

Production is labor hours X pieces produced. Production is sorting, prepping, and sending donated stuff to the sales floor.

Simple, not so simple. 

It is labor hours actually dedicated to that specific task. 

• It isn’t the hours written on a schedule. 

• It isn’t the hours people were punched into work. 

• It isn’t the hours dedicated to side projects.

• It isn’t the hours spent covering for another person. 

• It isn’t the hours spent in meetings.

• It isn’t the hours dedicated to breaks and meals.

• It isn’t “water cooler” hours.

There are so many things that move the needle in production capacity. The top three are competent trained staff, efficient processes, and staff focused on actually doing. production for their shift. 

Today is about hours actually dedicated to production. 

Let’s use the fictitious Lynn’s Charity Thrift as an example.

Lynn needed 8,000 pieces produced for the sales floor last week in order to keep it fresh and full. 

Lynne scheduled textile producers for a total of 100 hours, based on his benchmark of 80 pieces per producer hour. In theory, production needs would be met. Even so, they only produced 5,000 pieces. 

Let’s dig a little deeper into that 100 hours. 

Lynn’s has 2 full-time 5 day 8 hour employees and one part-time 4 hours 5 day week employee dedicated to textile production. They are scheduled for a total of 100 hours and are experienced, productive, and dependable. 

Experienced, productive, and dependable staff are difference-makers and should be compensated accordingly. 

Employees are not paid for lunches, so the full-time staff are at work 8.5 hours a day.

They are paid for two 15-minute breaks for an 8-hour shift and one for a four-hour shift. Right off the top that takes off 6 hours and 15 min.

Then there is the mandatory 10 min huddle each day. Another 2.5 hours. 

Then a weekly department meeting for 30 min. 1.5 cumulative hours. 

There is 3S time at the start and end of each shift. Another 2.5 hours. 

All of those things are worthy, useful activities that are not directly productive work. Still, over 10% of their time is taken up with other necessary things. 

What else dropped actual production?

A cashier called in sick, since producer Chris knows how to run a register she works there for the day. Gotta check people out! 

The production staff is located adjacent to donations so they cover breaks, lunches, call-offs, and pitch in when a donor line forms. Though it’s often a few minutes here with an occasional extended stint, it easily averages two hours a day. Another estimated 10 hours a week. 

When someone has to stop their job, jump into another and go back to what they were doing there is a lag. Mentally and physically reorienting has a time cost. We won’t even count that today, but it is real. 

Last week the sales floor staff was also short. As a result prepared racks piled up until they were all full. Whenever that happened producers stopped production and worked the racks to the sales floor. It isn’t something they are particularly fast at, or happy to do. More lost production time.

When everyone is responsible for everything no one is responsible for anything.

Then there is hanger sorting. Producers are responsible for stocking their workstations. They have to sort and stock hangers for their shift before they can get to work. This can easily take more than the few minutes dedicated to daily setup. If you have ever sorted and filled a hanger production rack you know what that means. 

These are all operational realities that every thrift store deals with on a regular basis. I am not discounting those challenges. They add up to a substantial hidden cost and solving them can be a game changer. 

Let’s recap where we are at:

• 100 hours scheduled

• -8.5 breaks

• -2.5 huddles

• -1.5 meetings

• -2.5 3S

• -8 covering for a cashier

• -10 helping in donations

• -2 hanger sorting 

• -2 merchandising on the sales floor

All that drops actual production work to about 63 hours. moving production to about 5,000 pieces that week. Not enough to sustain a fresh and full sales floor. Basically, only 63% of producers' time went to their core tasks. 

What’s the cost of 3,000 pieces not produced? 

If half of what is put on the sales floor ultimately sells, and half of that sells in the first week, 750 potential sales were missed that week and another 750 were missed in the life of that rotation. (your mileage may vary)

1,500 lost item sales at Lynn’s, at an average of $5 per item is $7,500 in sales. Admittedly it’s a theoretical number. Some customers might have settled for something not quite as fresh. 

Time and time again I have seen stores get production going consistently and, Shazam, sales go up. 

There are a whole host of reasons production goals can be missed. Figuring it out is a lot like eating that proverbial elephant. Best to eat it one bite at a time. 

In Conclusion

I suggest first insuring production experts are able to focus on their role. In many cases, it’s a matter of leadership prioritizing the work and running interference for them. It may mean adding hours elsewhere in order to increase real production, and as a result, sales. 

One Easy Fix

Piles of unsorted hangers in carts or bins are a massive waste of time. At Lynn’s cashiers did just that, it was up to production staff to sort them out. 

The most efficient time to sort hangers is at the cash register with small racks that allows them to be sorted right there. The closing cashiers might even be tasked with filling producer hanger racks before they go home. Productivity is added at a negligible cost.

Thanks for reading!

Thrift Retailer