How WISPI’s obsession with efficiency helps control costs and improve quality, adding lots of value for customers
WISPI has been around for over 50 years. Heck, several of our current employees have been here for more than 25. We’ve developed quite a few “tricks of the trade” with all that experience, and it hasn’t happened by accident. At WISPI, coming up with better and faster ways of doing things is a focus every day.
So without further ado, here’s a look at the Top 5 WISPI Tricks of the Trade that drive efficiency for WISPI, and add value for our customers.
#1: Roll it up right
When a graphic is being prepped for shipping, we roll it so the printed side is on the outside. That’s because the inside gets a little “pinched” when you roll it. “By rolling it the way we do, we make sure there are no imperfections or ripples when it gets to the customer,” says Lance Hoff in customer relations.
The other thing we do is create a tab with a piece of tape. We’re careful to place that tab so it’s going with the decal and pre-mask. Then, when the customer grabs the end of the tape that’s sticking up to peel it back and unroll the graphic, they can’t go the wrong direction and peel back the mask layer.
#2: Can a roll of masking tape really reduce labor cost?
WISPI prints a ton of aluminum signs for many different customers. Each sign starts off as a blank plate with a protective cover. Needless to say, our employees have a lot of cover-peeling to do before those plates can be printed and shipped to customers.
“To do it quickly and efficiently, we just wrap a piece of tape around two fingers,” Jim Gavigan, our operations leader, says. With the sticky side on the outside, it’s easy to grab a corner and peel the protective cover back.
“When you try with just your fingers and you’re working on an order for 3,000 signs, you could end up putzing with it for hours and hours,” says Frank Meiland, president. “The faster we can perform tedious tasks like this, the better we can control our costs and offer very competitive pricing to our customers.”
#3: Catalogs add a layer of convenience
WISPI’s OEM customers typically order a variety of decals, signs, etc. on a frequent basis. That’s why our in-house graphic design team started creating customized parts catalogs for OEM customers.
“We send catalogs to customers so they have a physical copy of all their parts,” says Michelle Hunt in the graphic design department. Each catalog contains a photo of each part a customer tends to order, along with the part number, dimensions, and any other pertinent information that helps streamline the ordering process by removing the guesswork.
#4: Using a weight scale really counts
Many of WISPI’s customers order different types of decals for different types of machinery. Furthermore, they typically want a certain quantity shipped at a time, often packaged in smaller bundles, i.e. 50 per bag. Many of those orders are really large. Can you imagine counting decals one by one when you’re filling an order for several hundred? Jodi Lopez, who works in sales and shipping, doesn’t even want to think about it.
“We use a scale to weight-count decals,” Jodi says. “It doesn’t take as long as counting them by hand. Once you calibrate the scale for the decal you’re counting, you just start adding piles.”
“You set a sample size of maybe 30, weigh that to calibrate the scale, and then the scale knows by weight how many decals are in each stack you add,” Frank explains. “It’s the same kind of thing a pharmacy does when counting pills. It takes literally seconds to count out a huge order. The time this saves is unbelievable, which helps us ship orders faster while ensuring accuracy.”
#5: A super fast way of sizing fleet graphics
WISPI does a lot of fleet graphics for many different types of customers. We run into just about every type of vehicle imaginable. We always want to get things 100% accurate, but we also want to be as efficient as possible to help save time and money. The answer?
“We subscribe to a vehicle template service that allows us to access all kinds of templates for any kind of standard vehicle,” says Sarah Savagian, WISPI senior graphic designer. Each vehicle template includes illustrations of that vehicle from different angles, complete with dimensions and required graphic sizes. This makes it easy to lay out a vehicle’s graphics package because a designer can make sure everything will fit where it needs to fit. And it’s so much faster and more accurate than going out and physically measuring a customer’s vehicles by hand.
So there you have it, the Top 5 WISPI Tricks of the Trade that help us improve efficiency and add value for our customers. Our talented and experienced employees have plenty of other tricks up their sleeves, and they’re coming up with new ones every day. Maybe we’ll share a few more down the road.