"The old way was faster. Can we go back to the tickets?"
That message came from a senior print operator at a Hutt Valley print shop¹, nine working days after the shop replaced paper job tickets and a spreadsheet with a job-tracking system. The owner had heard the same thing from two other staff that week. She had to decide whether to push on or roll back, and she didn't want to decide on mood.
Every new system gets this message at some point. Sometimes it's right, and the new tool really is slower. Often it's half right: one task got slower for one person while three others got faster for someone else. The only way to tell is to time the work. Here's how the shop did it, and the rule it used to decide.
Pick five tasks and time them
The owner chose the five tasks that took the most time or caused the most complaints:
- Logging a new job when an order arrives
- Finding a job's status when a customer rings or emails
- Recording a reprint
- Preparing the day's delivery list
- Monthly invoicing to trade customers
For each, she needed the time per task and how often it happened. Old times came from a week of timing the paper process before the switch, which she'd done as part of the brief. New times came from timing the same tasks with a stopwatch in week two and again in week six.
Timing without making people nervous
Staff can feel watched when someone stands over them with a stopwatch. The shop kept it light:
- Say why first. The owner told the team she was timing the system, and that the results would decide whether it stayed.
- Let people time themselves. Each person kept a tally sheet for their own tasks for two days and noted start and finish times.
- Use averages. A single slow job with a tricky artwork file says little; ten jobs say a lot.
- Time the same people in week two and week six, so the comparison is fair.
- Share the raw numbers with the team, not only the summary.
Two days of tallies took each person about five minutes a day, which is a small price for a decision that affects every working day after it.
The five timings
| Task | Per day | Old (min each) | Week 2 (min each) | Week 6 (min each) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Log a new job | 25 | 4 | 6 | 3 |
| Find a job status | 12 | 5 | 1 | 1 |
| Record a reprint | 3 | 3 | 5 | 4 |
| Delivery list | 1 | 20 | 8 | 5 |
| Monthly invoicing | – | 360 a month | not yet run | 90 a month |
Daily totals:
Old: (25 × 4) + (12 × 5) + (3 × 3) + 20 = 100 + 60 + 9 + 20 = 189 minutes a day, a total of about 3.2 hours
Week 2: (25 × 6) + (12 × 1) + (3 × 5) + 8 = 150 + 12 + 15 + 8 = 185 minutes a day
Week 6: (25 × 3) + (12 × 1) + (3 × 4) + 5 = 75 + 12 + 12 + 5 = 104 minutes a day
Why the operator was right and wrong
In week two, the shop as a whole was saving 4 minutes a day. Hardly anything. But look at who did each task. The print operators log new jobs and record reprints, and both had got slower: logging went from 4 minutes to 6, on 25 jobs a day. That's 50 extra minutes a day landing on the people at the presses.
The saving on status checks, from 5 minutes to 1, went to the front office. The operators never saw it.
So the complaint was accurate for the person making it. The shop-wide picture was different, and by week six it had changed again.
What closed the gap
Logging a job dropped from 6 minutes to 3 because of one change: templates for the shop's eight most common job types, such as 500 business cards or an A1 banner. An operator picks the template and fills in three fields instead of twelve. The builder added it in week three, in about two hours of work.
The reprint form went from 5 minutes to 4 after two fields were made optional. It's still slower than paper, by a minute, three times a day. The owner judged that acceptable, because the new form records the reason for each reprint, which paper never did.
The monthly sum
At 21 working days a month:
Old: (189 × 21) + 360 = 3,969 + 360 = 4,329 minutes = about 72.2 hours a month Week 6: (104 × 21) + 90 = 2,184 + 90 = 2,274 minutes = about 37.9 hours a month
Saving: 72.2 − 37.9 = about 34 hours a month
At an average of NZ$40 an hour across the staff doing these tasks:
34 × NZ$40 = NZ$1,360 a month, or NZ$16,320 a year.
The rule for pushing on or rolling back
The owner wrote this down before week two's timings were in, so the numbers would decide:
"We keep the new system if, by week six, total time on the five tasks is lower than before, and every task that's still slower has a fix planned or a reason we accept. We roll back if total time is higher, or if a slower task can't be fixed."
A rule like this does three things. It sets a fair learning period, because week two is always slow. It looks at the whole shop as well as each person's job. And it gives the people who complained a clear answer: their slower task either gets fixed or gets a stated reason.
What to tell the team
The owner shared the table at a Friday staff meeting. Three points made the difference:
- Thank the person who complained. Their message led to the template fix.
- Show where the time went. Operators saw that the front counter was answering customers in a minute instead of walking the floor.
- Ask for the next slow task. Two more small fixes came out of that meeting.
When rolling back is the right call
Going back to the old way is sometimes the better decision:
- Total time is still higher after six to eight weeks and the builder or vendor can't say why.
- A safety or quality step got harder. In a print shop, anything that makes it easier to send the wrong job to the wrong customer is a reason to stop.
- The system can't do a task at all that the old process handled, and no fix is coming.
- Nobody owns the new system. Without someone to collect problems and push for fixes, slow tasks stay slow.
If you do roll back, keep the timings. They're the brief for the next attempt.
Time your own five tasks
- Pick the five tasks with the most time or the most complaints
- Record how often each happens per day or month
- Time the old way, ideally before the switch
- Time the new way in week two and again in week six
- Work out totals per day and per month
- Note who does each task, so you can see where time moves
- Write your keep-or-roll-back rule before the numbers come in
If your timings point to small fixes like the shop's templates, that's how a system Thogits builds for you keeps improving: fixes and small changes after launch are part of the service, so a slow step your team spots in week two can be gone by week six.
¹ The Hutt Valley print shop, its job volumes and its timings are illustrative. Hourly staff costs carry no GST.