When you purchased your machine, you were no doubt blown away by the fact that it could crank out 1,000 stitches per minute, according to the salesman. That’s great in theory, but in practice, it's not likely that a 4,000-stitch job will be done in four minutes; it will probably take around nine minutes. Get out a stop watch and find out how much time it really takes—learn your “true run time.”

Once you’ve found out your true run time, you can use this information to price jobs more accurately, but also to evaluate your shop’s productivity over time. You may discover that you can usually do four left-chest designs in an hour, but sometimes production dips down to three—a sign it’s time to get back in the production area and see what’s causing the delays.

—Kay Brooks, Floriani Commercial