Issue link: https://nbm.uberflip.com/i/1491554
1 6 G R A P H I C S P R O • M A R C H 2 0 2 3 G R A P H I C S - P R O. C O M M A K I N G S H O P M O V E S | H O W A R D P O T T E R Howard Potter has worked in the promotional industry for 20 years, from designing to building brands and a family-owned business. He is the co-owner and CEO of A&P Master Images LLC with his wife, Amanda. Their company offers graphic design, screen printing, embroidery, sublimation, vinyl graphics, and promotional items. Howard, his family, and the business reside in Utica, New York. For more information, please visit masteryourimage.com. Making Moves While Expanding Rethinking your entire shop layout to maximize efficiency A s we all know, moving a piece or two of equipment while keeping production going can be difficult enough during the best of times, but opening up a new build- ing to supplement our current space as we did recently takes it to a new level. Over the past months I have created layout plans for equipment and office and production space. For the most part everything has been on point. However, we were able to improve those plans as everything started to unfold. Something I thought would take eight to ten hours has taken roughly two weeks. At first, I was getting a little frustrated with myself, because it was not moving along as I would have liked it to as it had in the past when I expanded. A big part of the problem was that I was also conducting 80 interviews to fill two open positions. So, I sat in my office and just broke the plan out into smaller chunks so that it was easier to handle. We ended up moving our vinyl graphics, A P P A R E L D E C O R A T I N G This is the updated printing room, which holds a wide-format printer, two laminators, a plotter, and the DTF machine. Our expansion allowed us to build a logical, efficient workspace in our current shop area and the expansion building just adjacent to it. sublimation, a couple of designers, and laser engravers into the new building, which is just ten feet away from our cur- rent space on the land we own. Unpacking DTF Our new DTF machine from ColDesi also arrived during the move (the DTF-24H4),