i need help please with organising my work-load?

[Graeme Harrold]

Get your self a massive board and list the jobs on them with target completion dates. While you are getting your head round time management, allocate each task with an estimate and also keep track of actual time taken. Track the progress of each job from estimate to completion and delivery/fitting if required, Im sure Rob posted a picture of one of his "Work in Progress" boards a while back.

If you are busy and getting short notice work, charge a premium for quick completion. Main thing, get your to do list big and bold so you can see what you have in production at all times.

[Phill Fenton]

I have a simple order book system.

I use an A4 size note book to record all my work. This book consists of lined paper. Each job is placed in the book as soon as it is given the go ahead. Each job takes up a single row on the page – these rows are divided into vertical columns as follows.

The first column is the date. The next (much wider) column is a description of the project. The third column is the price quoted, the fourth column gets a tick when the job is completed, and the fifth and last column gets a tick when the job is invoiced or receipted.

In addition:-

Each day I write a "to Do" list.

Top of the list is signs to make
Next in the list is signs to fit
Next is any other daily things I need to attend to (e.g materials to order)
Finally – quotes and designs

Between using my order book and my daily "to do" list I can keep track of all the projects that are ongoing. The order book also reminds me which jobs are the oldest and so these get priority on the daily "to do" list.

Any items not done each day get transferred to next days "to do" list.

Works for me. And the order book system means I have a permanent record of all the work that passes through my hands. It also ensures I never forget to invoice a job when completed. I can also check out the value of all work in progress to see how we are doing at any point in time.

Works for me and Alison – but then there’s only the two of us working together. I would probably need a different system if there was a whole bunch of us working here 😀

[Arslan mostefa kara]

thank you all for your advices I will try it mañana as soon as I get to workshop and see if I can get my self organize. thanks again

regards

Arslan

[John Childs]

When a job comes in we write a job sheet and put it in the IN tray in the workshop. We also write it up on the big whiteboard so that everybody is aware of what needs doing.

Jobs are not done in rotation, but rather the order of the importance of the customer to us. That means the priority is constantly changing throughout the day as orders might come in from important customers, which move lesser ones down the list.

We can usually juggle things (overtime, subcontractors, etc) to keep everybody happy but the situation can arise that an unimportant customer can’t get his job out of us. Sometimes to the extent that they get pi55ed off, tell us to stick it in our ear, and then go elsewhere

I know that’s not ideal, and I’m not proud of letting people down, but the cold hard reality is that if I am going to disappoint anybody I’d far rather it be somebody insignificant than a customer who spends many thousands of pounds with us every year. Fortunately it doesn’t happen very often, but if it never happened I would have to wonder whether I was over-staffed.

[Craig Bond]

Agreed John

I have 4 or 5 big spenders and they get priority no matter what. But I hate letting people down and find myself working late and over weekends quite often.