Record Keeping

Keeping good records is a boon to any weaver. With production weaving, however, it's an absolute necessity.

Ten years ago I tried for the first time to set up a crafts business. I would wash, dye, card, spin, and knit beautiful one-of-a-kind wool hats. I had no infrastructure for keeping records and hence no way to assess my business' functioning. I can tell you how many dollars went out and came in, but that's about all I know.

The big mistake that many beginning craftspeople make is in setting a fair price for their work. The thinking often goes like this: "The materials cost $10, so if I charge $30 I'm doing great!" What's missing from this equation? Time. Many people who do account for time don't account for all of it. "I can weave a yard an hour, so I only need to charge $20/yd for my time." This is neglecting to consider all of the setup time. I've been guilty of these mistakes and more.

Trying to learn from my past, I decided to set up a database for my weaving production. Here is what I wanted out of it:
1. Project details: How was the loom set up? How much warp thread did I use? How long did it take?
2. Piece details: What weft did I use? How much of it? What was the total material cost? How long did it take to weave? How much setup time does this piece need to pay for?
3. Trends over time: How many hours a day do I actually spend working? How is that time spent? How much time is spent *not* working? Why?
4. Wage: How much do I really earn per hour?
5. Equipment decisions: If I spend money on a new tool, would it really speed up the production? Is the task actually big enough to warrant a new tool? And the big question: how long before the tool pays for itself and I see a return on my investment?

As much of a Luddite as I may seem, choosing a mechanical loom, etc., I love my technology. I chose my database platform for features, ease of use, flexibility, and portability. I decided on a two-tier database approach. The main Filemaker database resides on my computer. This is where all the heavy lifting takes place: complex calculations and reports. I realized early on that walking to the computer for data entry would not be feasible if I wanted to collect fine-grained information. I chose Filemaker because there is a bridge app called FMTouch which lets me do the actual data entry on my iPhone.

This means I can be at the loom and away from electricity all day, effortlessly keeping my production records up to date. I sync those records wirelessly, usually once or twice a day, whenever I want to see updated stats on that day's productivity.

The software is fairly expensive, but well worth the investment. With a little ingenuity, this investment in infrastructure will pay off handsomely by allowing me to spot errors in production logic, make accurate capacity predictions, and set my prices fairly.

Now, on to the database itself...

Each project (beam) has a full set of data stored in a format that makes it easy to use.


Each piece within a project contains its data, too.


Every morning I create a new Day record to hold notes about that day and to give daily productivity statistics a place to be calculated.


The moment-to-moment use of this database is simple. Time is entered into a series of Timecards, which link it to the correct Piece and Task. Whenever I start a new task, I duplicate the previous Timecard (so I don't have to re-enter the Piece and Date) and enter a new start time. When I stop, I enter the end time and any notes. (Like which section on the beam lost a thread, for instance.) The data entry takes 5-10 seconds per record.


And from the simple habit of fastidiously collecting Timecards, I have access to an unbelievable amount of data that spans all apects of production. First, you can see a synopsis of my weaving speed and wage at the bottom of the timecard screen. (I'm blanking my wage out because I need *some* level of privacy!) This lets me hone my habits on the fly.

At the end of the day, I generate a daily report to show me a better picture of how my time was spent.


And, when I finish a piece, I have a complete record of what went into producing it. This report was designed so that my boss/mentor can gauge how much time is going into each task and help me spot problems in the workflow.


Every piece that is cut off the loom gets a tag so we can correlate problems that appear in the final cloth with the records of what was happening during production.

I have yet to design the reports that will show me trends over time, but the data is all there waiting for me to create them. You'll notice by the word DEMO splashed across my reports that I also have yet to pay for the graphing software, XMChart. Soon I'll have that money, but for now I just look past the watermark.

I'll be continuing to work on this database as time goes on. It's far from finished. If you already have Filemaker installed and you'd like to play around with a copy of the database, drop me a note and I'll strip my data from it and send it on. Of course, there is no manual to document the features. It's definitely not for the feint of heart.