Help Topics NWCA

12 Important Production Skills a CSR will learn their first week

10 am to 3 PM (first week)
  1. 1

    Embroidery Basics

    1. Thread
    2. Needles
    3. Backing
    4. Hooping (different sizes of hoops)
    5. Embroidery positions (left chest, right chest, full back, etc)
    6. Estimating Stitch Counts in a design. The difference of an 8,000 stitch logo to a 20,000 stitch logo.
    7. What we can' embroider


  2. 2

    Embroidery Placements

    • Review all the different logo placements
    • Look in shopworks and see what we call each location.
  3. 3

    Stitch Count/How long a logo takes to stitch.

    • Time the machine time for an 8,000 stitch logo. (use the stopwatch on your smart phone)
    • Time the machine time for a 12,000 stitch or bigger logo.
    • Time how long it takes for an operator to setup a new job and thread the machine with new colors. 
    • When working with a customer you can explain to them why there logo is easy or difficult. 
  4. 4

    Reading a thread chart

    • Review available threads on the shelf
    • How to read our thread chart and pick out design colors.
    • Explain rayon vs. poly thread.
    • Why we can't match exact PMS colors.
  5. 5

    Basics of digitizing and thread sequences


    1. How to look at color sequences on the compute
    2. How the machine runs according to the run card.
    3. How we send designs to Qdigitizing
  6. 6

    Cap Embroidery

    1. What good cap embroidery looks like.
    2. Limitations with cap embroidery. (How big of design can you put on a cap)
    3. Why is it difficult to do small lettering on caps.
    4. Why detail on caps is difficult.
  7. 7

    Shipping Methods

    • Fed Ex, UPS, Post Office.
    • Difference in freight costs Ground vs. Next Day Air.
    • How much an average box of t-shirts costs to ship ground via Fed Ex.
    • Why the shipping info must be correct. 
  8. 8

    Reading a Work Order

    • How to read a shopworks work order. 
    • How to read the design info and thread color breaks in shopworks. 
    • Why all the information on the work order needs to be correct. "Garbage in, garbage out"
  9. 9

    Good Embroidery

    1. Why bold block- lettering works better than small lower case lettering.
    2. Explain how much detail you can get with embroidery.
  10. 10

    Production Flow

    1. How the production manager assigns orders to machines?
    2. How does the production manager keep track of due dates?
    3. How to logically find an order in production, without running all around?
    4. How does the production manager create mockups
  11. 11

    Trimming

    1. How does trimming work?
    2. What do the trimmers look for when it gets to the trim dept?
    3. How do you properly fold a shirt and put it in a box?
  12. 12

    Sampling

    1. Why do the artwork forms need to be filled out properly?