Producing packaging is, well, quite the production. From design to delivery, your project changes hands and locations several times. Today, we're launching new features that give you more visibility into the current status of every item you produce through Lumi.
The next time you log into Lumi, you'll see a new view called Production. This view shows every item you've ordered and its current status. Production statuses are available for any item ordered after April 1, 2019.
Production tracking gives you a single place to view activity related to any item you produce in any of the 20,000+ factories available through Lumi.
Production statuses
An item’s production status tells you where it is in the manufacturing process. Here’s what each status means:
- Scheduling: When you place your order, it first goes into Scheduling. This phase is all about preparing for production. It entails proofing, scheduling your production runs in the queue, and working out the exact equipment that will be used.
- In production: Your manufacturer is producing your order — hooray! This phase entails purchasing materials, creating tooling, and producing your items. If your production run is split into multiple shipments, it’s possible that some of your units will be in transit while others are still at the factory, queued up for shipment. As long as some of your units are at a factory, that item is “In Production”.
- Complete: Your manufacturer has shipped all of your items and they’re en route to you, or they’ve been delivered.
Planning your shipments down to the unit
If you’ve used custom manufacturing, you know that the number of items produced won’t be the exact number of items that you ordered (overs and unders, anyone?). The Units Produced column lets you know exactly how many units to expect from the factory. After they’re produced, use the Units Shipped column to track how many have left the factory floor en route to you. You can expect them to arrive within the Delivery Window.
Why Production Tracking is kind of a big deal
These new features are just the beginning for Production Tracking. With the new Production page, we have the structure to provide much more granular information on every item in your order.
Building the infrastructure that powers Production Tracking was one of our biggest engineering challenges to date. Standardizing the output of thousands of unique factories takes heavy lifting, but it makes the information more digestible and easy for you to access at any time.
As we continue to improve Production Tracking, we’ll be digging deeper to give you even more visibility over each step of the production process.
Check our Updates to stay in the loop on new features and improvements.
