🔒 Private — prepared for Briana and Cindi (RCB principals). Not for staff.
Overview / Session Notes / Production Floor — Checklists, Machines, and Workflow

Session Notes: Production Floor — Checklists, Machines, and Workflow

2026-06-01 · Rachel Plunky + Nate St. Pierre

Overview

This session was a conversation with Rachel Plunky, a production floor operator who has been with RCB Awards for roughly nine to ten months. Rachel primarily runs UV printers and laser engravers. The conversation covered the Microsoft Forms-based checklist system that production operators use at each machine station, the physical setup of the production floor, and a general check-in on how Rachel experiences her day-to-day workflow. Nate also asked directly whether Rachel uses or sees potential for AI tools in her role.

The session ran about 30 minutes and was largely observational — Rachel walked through the checklist system on her laptop, showed Nate the puzzle and laser engraver forms as examples, and gave her honest read on what works and what doesn't.

The Checklist System

Production operators use a set of Microsoft Forms checklists — one per process type — to track their work at each machine. The forms serve a dual purpose: they embed step-by-step setup and run instructions (functioning as the SOP for each process), and they collect structured data about each job (start time, stop time, quantities, notes). This data feeds into a master spreadsheet that tracks labor time across all production activity.

Rachel carries a personal laptop to each machine station. The laptop runs the checklist forms and gives her access to Antera Advance for order information. Each machine also has its own dedicated production computer that runs the machine's specific software — these are separate from the laptop and from each other.

Rachel showed two checklist examples:

Puzzles: The puzzle checklist is, by Rachel's description, one of the better-organized forms. It's divided by process stage — printing covers, printing puzzles, shrink wrapping, box cutting — and each stage has its own start time, stop time, and quantity fields. During the busy season around Christmas, when volume can hit 300 puzzles per day (compared to under 80 on a slower day), the ability to track time across different stages of the process is genuinely useful. The form is also designed to accommodate switching between stages during the same shift, so an operator doesn't have to submit 30 separate forms in a day.

Laser engraver: This one is more problematic. There are four different laser engravers on the floor, each with different settings and controls, but there's only one laser engraver checklist. The instructions in the form are written for a specific machine configuration, so when Rachel is working on a different laser, some of the instructions in the checklist don't apply to her setup. The form also has a large number of checkboxes — Rachel mentioned it as one that takes real time to work through.

The "Trained Operator" Option

Some of the checklist forms include a "trained operator" option. When selected, it skips the step-by-step instructional content and takes the operator directly to the data entry fields — start time, quantity, notes, end time. Rachel described this working well on the plaque checklist she was currently using: experienced operators don't need the full setup instructions, so the trained operator version keeps things fast.

The challenge is that "trained operator" is binary: either you see all the instructions or you see none of them. Rachel described situations where she's somewhere in between — she knows how to do most of the process but can't remember a specific setting for a particular machine. In that case, neither version is exactly right.

Rachel mentioned that roughly half of the current forms have a trained operator option; the other half only have the full version.

Friction Points Rachel Described

Machine-checklist mismatch: Because there's one laser engraver checklist for four machines with different settings, operators working on a non-default machine have to mentally filter out instructions that don't apply to what they're actually doing. Rachel noted: "Half of these instructions don't even apply to the machine I'm on or the piece that I'm doing."

Redundant fields: Some forms ask for the same information more than once. Rachel's example: an item number that's entered near the top of a form and then asked for again later, requiring the operator to scroll back up, find it, and copy it back down.

Form length: Some forms have 30 to 40 checkboxes plus data entry fields. For processes that require this level of tracking, the length is defensible — but Rachel described it as something that "stops your workflow a little bit" when you're mid-job.

Checklist discovery: Rachel doesn't always know which form to use for a given process, particularly for less common tasks. The current solution is to ask a colleague, who then sends a SharePoint link. There's no navigation system or index she can consult on her own.

The variability problem: Rachel made a point that emerged in other conversations as well — the sheer variety of what gets produced makes it hard to have clean, standardized data. Plaques come in orders of 5 to 40 pieces, but she's currently working on one with 1,400. A banner order has come up twice in her nine months there. UV printing, laser engraving on glass versus wood versus metal, puzzles, name badges — each is different enough that comparing one job's labor data to another's is often not meaningful.

The Master Spreadsheet

All the form data flows into a master spreadsheet. Nate described it as having approximately 800 columns — a consequence of the number of form variants and branching logic across all processes. The goal of the spreadsheet is labor tracking: understanding how long different production steps take so the business can estimate future jobs, assess whether they can handle a rush, and plan staffing accordingly.

Rachel's read on the data collection is honest: "Is it too much data to collect? At what point is it overkill?" She's uncertain whether all the information being captured is actually being used to make decisions.

The Machine Environment

The production floor has a significant variety of machines, each with its own operating environment:

  • Helix and related laser engravers (multiple units, some sharing a single computer)
  • Canon UV printer (dedicated computer)
  • Milwaukee (function not detailed)
  • Various other machines — UV printers, laser engravers for different materials (glass, wood, metal)

Beyond machine-specific control software, most machines share Corel as the design and layout software. The version in use is approximately from 2010. Because it's so old, it has an expired license issue that can't be resolved through normal channels — operators have to periodically go into the file system and delete a specific folder to reset the license check so the software will open. This workaround is known internally and is currently managed by the people who know to do it.

When Corel fails before this workaround is applied, artwork errors can propagate to the physical piece — producing a ruined product. Rachel flagged this as something that "does cause issues sometimes with the artwork."

AI Use on the Production Floor

Nate asked directly whether Rachel uses AI tools in her work or sees opportunities to. Her answer was candid: not really. She noted that her work varies enough that it's hard to see where a consistent AI-assisted step would fit in. The one thing she raised was artwork merge errors — bulk orders where individual names are merged into a template, and occasionally the template variable placeholder (e.g., [Name]) appears literally instead of the actual name. She wasn't sure if this was fixable with AI; Nate noted it sounded more like a system configuration issue upstream.

Rachel's overall impression of AI's relevance to her role: "I don't know if there's that much that can be used because a lot of it is just kind of... everything's different."

Follow-Ups

  • Get a complete list of the current Microsoft Forms checklists from Briana or Karen — who owns them, how many exist, and whether there's any index or navigation.
  • Ask Briana what decisions the master spreadsheet is actually informing — is it being analyzed, or is it data collected for future use?
  • Flag the Corel software situation to Briana — the workaround is a reliability risk and worth raising even if it's outside the core engagement scope.