Susannah Wilson, a well-established fashion designer, was facing her busiest season yet. With the Met Gala just around the corner, as well as the Milan Fashion Week the following week, her queue of orders had gone through the roof. Despite being a famous designer, sought after by various celebrities, Susannah didn’t exclusively make garments for A-listers. Susannah had, instead, focused on building a boutique that sells designs that anyone can wear, though sometimes she did make exclusive pieces if it was a special occasion, and the Met Gala was definitely a special occasion.
However, Susannah’s direction had come with its own challenges, and it felt like that choice was hitting her about her head today. She and her team had become overloaded.
For months, she had painstakingly looked for open-minded celebrities, and now, at the last minute, many of them had reached out to her looking for an outfit once the theme for the Met Gala this year was announced: The Garden of Time. In the end, she had said ‘yes’ to six celebrities who were fine with not being the only ones to present her clothes to the world, and Susannah was determined to make them all shine on the red carpet.
Now, she had approximately two months to prepare six distinct Met Gala pieces as well as the planned 12 pieces for her latest fashion collection that would be featured during the Milan Fashion Week. Add in the management of her boutique and she was buzzing about like a bee. Susannah was nothing if not confident of her abilities, but she worried… could we handle six last-minute Met pieces? On the plus side, there’s nothing that inspires artists quite like the most awaited fashion display of the year!
Among the 6 Met Gala pieces, three celebrities had requested suits while the other three wanted dresses. While Susannah was usually the type to design whatever came to mind, she was overjoyed by being able to feature her talents in the Met Gala and said ‘yes’ to the requests. She assumed she would be able to make everything in time but, in hindsight, she now wondered if she might’ve said ‘yes’ too early and to too many, as now her team was going to be overloaded with a lot of jobs to complete in a short window of time. Of course, she had been expecting to get started a bit earlier on the designs and production, but with so many celebrities declining to work with her due to the unspoken rule of being brand ambassadors during the Met Gala, she was having a tough time processing the sudden increase in demand without the Milan Fashion garments being late.
After a couple of days of demanding work, and assessing her workload, it was now dawning on Susannah that she might not be able to create all the garments without missing the agreed-upon, and fast-approaching, deadlines. To say her stress levels were rising was quickly becoming an understatement.
Where things stood now, her Milan Fashion Week Collection was in various stages of ‘done.’ Some had their headpieces done, some had their trousers finished, and others had exquisitely patterned blouses, but none of them were a complete outfit. In the Met Gala side of things, two outfits had passed the design stage and were ready to be made, while the other four were still dancing about in Susannah’s brain. Since the Met orders came in late, Susannah chose not to disrupt the designers already working on the scheduled Fashion Collection. She also wanted the Met designs to flow smoothly from her mind straight into sketches, but things were not progressing as she’d hoped.
Feeling stuck, Susannah realised now was the time to call for her senior assistant designer, who was also her boutique’s manager, Rachel Choi. She needed her A team to guide her to a solution.
“Hey love, how’s it going?” Rachel asked as she made her way into Susannah’s workroom, which was located at the back of her boutique.
“Awfully. It’s going awfully.”
“Knowing you, I’m sure it’s really not that bad.” Rachel rolled her eyes as she took a seat next to Susannah and looked at the blank page in front of her. She then leaned back and saw the crumpled sheets around Susannah’s desk and let out a small ‘ah’ in understanding. “Designer’s block?”
“Something like that… I think I might’ve overestimated our capacity. We were fine at first but with me enthusiastically accepting six Met designs, I’m afraid that we don’t have the capacity to deliver on these orders, and worse, attempting to fulfil these orders will compromise the lead time for the Fashion Week Collection completion. Both things we cannot afford to be late on!”
“Hmmm…” Rachel trailed off as she looked at the blank sheet of paper in front of her, deep in thought, which prompted Susannah to continue venting her frustrations and mild panic at the impending deadlines looming above her head.
“At the very least, I’ve thankfully had the designs planned out for the Fashion Week Collection and have assigned designers to expedite that, but just today I saw two of the same blouses, and they had mistakes on top of that! We’re losing precious time and I’m not getting what I’m asking for!”
“Have you been doing all this delegating in person?” Rachel asked watching her boss and friend carefully.
“Yes, there’s not enough time and I needed everyone to be on the same page so we can get started. Thinking back, the rapid instructions might not have been too helpful… they’re overloaded with work and running around like headless chickens which is causing more problems than solutions, but we simply don’t have the time!”
“Hold on a minute.” Rachel speed-walked out of the room and returned quickly with her laptop in tow. She set it next to Susannah on the workbench and pulled up the task board that they had implemented to keep track of the work-in-progress.
“I don’t think many of our designers are still working from our task board either. Look, here. This dress was finished last week and I’m pretty sure Aaron finished accessorising it as well.”
“Rachel, I know the boutique’s orders have been increasing lately and our current designers are doing their best to meet the demand. Unfortunately, we are late on several orders, so I’ve reassigned some designers to work on the Met Gala and Fashion Week Collection outfits.”
“But Susannah, our board does not reflect this, it’s not doing its job of informing people about their priorities. So, now we have two prioritisation systems fighting each other and we are losing control as a result. We have operators working from out-of-date task lists; this is not going to end well. I also noticed that the more surprises you spring on them, the less coherent inputs I receive from them regarding their progress.”
“I see what you’re saying… it is best to make sure our boards are being used to communicate our priorities, rather than me telling them individually.”
Pausing for a moment Susannah voiced why she had stopped using the board.
“But Rachel, this board is just lists of tasks, I can’t see the flow of work, I can’t see which jobs are falling behind. What can we do about that? Right now, I have to spend a lot of time getting updates about every job. We also need the board to tell the truth about each job’s status.”
“True, true… we can’t see the risks easily. The longer a job has been released and is incomplete the greater our risk. And with this board layout, we can’t see the tasks that are falling behind. Susannah, we need to show the ageing of the tasks too.”
“Yeah, that’s a great idea. We should be managing the overall risks in the flow, not the individual job risks as I have been.”
“Absolutely! I’ll get started on fixing up the board. I’ll arrange a briefing for the team, say 20 minutes? We can go over these changes with the entire team.” Rachel offered.
“If we can get things done without overworking everyone to the point of insanity, I’d call it a win!”
Susannah tilted her head to the side, looking intently at the board again, seemingly deep in thought.
“I have to admit, I have not been looking at the board lately, if at all. I’ve been so worked up that checking it was the last thing on my mind. But looking at it now, I can see that the lists of tasks on the board do get rapidly out of date. Here, check this task right here.” Susannah pointed at a creation task for dress #10 in the Fashion Collection. “I need it urgently, but it is stuck behind all these other tasks.”
Turning back to their task board, Rachel pondered for a moment before voicing some thoughts. Pointing at one of the tasks. “Look, this task says blouse #2 in the collection is ready to be accessorised, and to refer to the designs in Workshop 1 to find out which outfit goes with it. It was originally assigned to Aaron and from the looks of it, he’s currently working on it. Since it’s just pairing pieces, a whole outfit should be done by the end of today.”
“Hang on, that’s the same one I got two of today, the one with the mistakes…” Susannah trailed off. “The collection was taking some time, so I asked two of the boutique designers to start working on the collection and to focus on the blouses first. I didn’t expect them to work on the same blouse! And one that Aaron has already done at that!”
“So, what happened? This task board is here so that you know the state of all jobs and our designers can work from the boards. You know the saying, ‘Supervisors manage the boards, the boards manage the operators.’ When you get involved the way you did, the truth becomes muddled. Susannah let us run the boards with the ageing approach, so we can see the risks in advance and respond calmly.”
“Thank you, Rachel. Get this board telling the truth again.”
Rachel nodded, seeming pleased that Susannah brought this matter up.
“Susannah, as you have told me before, “It is better to be late and in control than out of control.” So, we need to clear the spike in demand you created and stabilise the flow to the designers. We cannot allow overloading to create ‘rush’ responses that perpetuate into normal business. Maybe we have some options. What jobs have been released, and what jobs are in the queue for scheduling? Let’s review the mix.”
“Agreed, we have the boutique orders in there, and they are making the overloading problem worse. But which to make late? We have to work through the Met Gala and collection outfits, but we have made promises to our other boutique customers too.”
“We must accept it, call those celebrities, and see if we can reschedule their dates. Susannah, that would help a lot, we must get the inbound load down, so it matches to our capacity again.”
“I know you’re right, Rachel, I just don’t want to let anyone down. OK, we should stop promising boutique delivery until after the gala and fashion week collections. We will have to push out all new boutique orders, and, where we can the existing boutique orders. But I don’t want to compromise our future. These boutique orders are a sign of our continued success and growth! It is too late to decline the Met outfits, and stopping the Met outfits would put those celebrities in a tough spot, as well as damage our reputation. The Met Gala is simply too highly advertised. And, I can’t possibly miss my debut collection at Milan Fashion Week. This is my livelihood and missing such an opportunity would be shooting myself in the foot. But, if something has to give, let’s make it the boutique orders. I’m sure I can convince some of them to reschedule.”
Susannah slumped in her chair. “This has all gone to hell because I’ve overreacted. Thank goodness you’re here. I know what I would do, if it was just me, but with our growth, I can’t just work harder and longer. You’re right, I have to use our systems more.”
“It’s OK, Susannah, we still have time. Two whole months that can still be utilised!”
“As someone who’s been in this industry for this long, you know that’s not a lot of time!”
“Yes, but it’s manageable.”
“How?” Susannah didn’t really want to hear Rachel’s usual optimism. She wanted solutions, something that wasn’t really clear to her at this point as the piles of crumpled-up sheets increased all around her desk space.
“First and foremost,” Rachel tapped her laptop screen. “Use the board! Tag all the boutique customer orders in play and due to be released. You’ll call the boutique customers and create a gap to flush the gala and fashion week work through. I’m going to reassign all the Milan Fashion Week pieces that were already close to being finished to free up the design resources you need. In my opinion, two of the interns we hired should be able to finish those orders since the instructions are clear and it mostly only needs some line work, so that’s out of the way. The more intricate designs will still be assigned to the experienced designers.”
“The priority right now is the Met outfits though…” Susannah trailed off.
“Which, I’m willing to bet all my savings on, you will not entrust to interns, yes?”
“True enough…” Susannah trailed off, letting Rachel take the wheel. If they had more capabilities, why not use them to their full extent in these trying times? “What else?”
“We have to ensure we don’t allow customer due dates to force overloads onto the board, else we will get more jobs at risk, and you will feel pressure to intervene again. No, let’s not let that happen again. I have a suggestion for you.”
“Yes…”
“Take all the orders we haven’t released yet and spread them out by age. Then, we can see future overloads earlier and react to smooth the schedule preventing overloads. Given all the uncertainty of when clients place orders, we probably need to group them.”
“What do you mean by group them?” Susannah inquired.
“It’s more like near-term and long-term goals or deadlines we need to meet in order to keep up with our due date. As things are now, we should be done with most of the Milan Fashion Week pieces by the time you’re ready to start making the Met outfits. Each task must absolutely be outlined on our online visual board, so everyone is on the same page.”
“So, what you’re saying is when the inbound demand is grouped, let’s call these time slices, we will be able to see any time slices that are overloaded relative to our ability to deliver. And, then we can move orders between time slices to smooth the releases and stabilise the flow?”
“Pretty much. The unreleased jobs could be divided into daily, weekly, and monthly time slices, and have their own visual board.”
In this way, we can also detect any overloads in our inbound demand in advance and thus control the ‘must release today’ jobs.” Rachel added.
“Susannah, I have another suggestion! We should introduce regular status updates, maybe twice a day for the next month to check up on job progress. This way, designers can report at-risk tasks, or jobs, and any obstacles they face pre-emptively, allowing us to intervene early and with time on our side.
“That’s a great idea, Rachel! Thank you so much for your help!” Susannah said relaxing somewhat. Rachel simply nodded again, a smile on her lips as her fingers rushed about the keyboard of her laptop, configuring the tasks that were displayed on the visual boards to reflect their conversation.
“No worries. Just holler if you need me!” With that, Rachel packed up her laptop, preparing to leave the room, letting Susannah decompress from their conversation and prepare for the staff meeting while she set everything up.
“By the way…” hinted Rachel, changing topics. “The theme of the Met Gala and your Fashion Week Collection are similar, in that they’re both fantasy-themed. You already have two designs for the Met done. I can create a task on the visual board for you to come up with some designs over the next two weeks. If inspiration still doesn’t strike, we’ll simply take some outfits from our finished collection and turn our Fashion Week Collection into a capsule collection.”
“A capsule collection… meaning instead of 12 pieces we debut eight and the four that don’t make it can be good Met substitutes. Wow, that can actually work!” Susannah smiled for the first time today since Rachel walked into what she deemed as Susannah’s ‘designer pad’.
“Yup! Told you it wasn’t as bad as all hell breaking loose! If everyone can keep up with the tasks on the board and everything is done promptly, we can open up boutique sales again.” Rachel offered.
Things were looking good, as the session broke up, and Susannah’s mood had lifted. She was beginning to be convinced that she could have it all, the Met Gala, the Milan Fashion Week, and her boutique sales!