Life before SPEEDlabel®
Life can usually be summed up in three simple words: live and learn. Lived experience helps make all of the everyday tasks more efficient and less (if we’re honest) annoying. It’s true at home, school, and on the job. For countertop fabrication shops who are constantly juggling material, specs, piece counts, and project updates, life before SPEEDlabel® is organized chaos. But that’s easily remedied.
When a process is efficient, it reduces waste in materials, labor, and—most importantly—time. If something can be done right the first time, workers are free to move on to the next task with minimal frustration. If you’re labeling the five to eight pieces of a standard kitchen with tape or some other make-do product, there can be problems down the line.
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Ted Lambert, Western Regional Sales Director for SPEEDlabel,® says that he’s worked with companies who’ve used “wax crayon, white-out, masking tape, blue tape, and paper labels.” These rely not only on the materials’ stickiness (and ease of removal when done) but the ability to read the rushed, occasionally illegible handwriting of the technician before you.
And even if you can decipher what’s written on the tape or paper label, you run the risk of smudging notes, dimensions, and edge geometry with handprints, rain, sweat, or just by brushing against it. SPEEDlabel® products are made using a “custom proprietary label,” says Lambert. “It’s a synthetic material that won’t tear, its printer ink will not smear, and no ink used to write on the label will bleed through to the stone. It’s waterproof and has a special topcoat that makes it writeable when wet and a unique adhesive that will keep the label adhered through fabrication but is easily removed after install with no residue left behind.”
Going paperless thanks to SPEEDlabel® is easy. Set-up includes a color laser printer with an automatic cutter that is used with continuous label rolls. These print both face and edge labels at the same time. Replacement labels are sent every month, so you don’t need to remember to reorder.
Since no two businesses or workshops are the same, Lambert says that SPEEDlabel® can be “totally customizable to each customer’s needs.” Data fields can be adjusted to match pertinent job details like the install date or final edge profile. One label is printed per part, and it can be placed anywhere the team decides. There’s even a quality control signature box for accountability and a drawing of the actual part to reduce fabrication errors.
With so many manufacturing slowdowns due to regional and international shipping and delivery issues, anything a company can do to expedite a customer’s order is worthwhile. Tastes may change depending on which HGTV renovation show is currently in high rotation so being able to keep up with trends or quickly adapt to new ones helps too.
SPEEDlabel® is happy to set up a call, Zoom chat, or in-person meeting to provide a demo of the ways their labels can streamline the process. Sure, the old tried-and-true methods may work just fine. But why not learn more about how their process ups the ante by eliminating wasted time, material, and effort? You’ll be surprised at how saving a few minutes here or dollars there benefits the bottom line.
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Visit the SPEEDlabel® Learning Center for informational videos and a photo gallery of their product in the workplace. There are training videos highlighting the entire process or focusing in on specifics like hand drawing, creating custom field templates, adding color bands, and how to generate face and edge labels. The gallery offers real photos of the product in a variety of real-world situations showing how it clearly keeps track of all the parts, pieces, and notes that each job requires.
We learn not only from our mistakes but also from day-to-day experience. There are often steps and routines that can be rearranged, combined into one, or skipped altogether. Thanks to SPEEDlabel,® shops find themselves with the luxury of knowing exactly where everyone is in the process. Gone are the days of rummaging everywhere for a misplaced post-it note. Or, worse yet, derailing progress by cutting to the wrong specification because someone transposed a number or read a 3 as an 8.
Waste is bad for efficiency, budget, and morale. Keep operations running smoothly by accepting suggestions from staff and workers, reading up on industry updates, and finding products like SPEEDlabel.® You’ll be surprised how easy it is to live and learn something new every single day.