Đơn hàng lớn đầu tiên
Tụi em in 20 tấm bảng tên
In một tấm bảng tên là làm thủ công. In hai mươi tấm trong một tuần là một cái xưởng nhỏ — và nó đổi hẳn cách tụi em làm việc.
Long viết
A teacher at our school asked for name plates for her whole class. Twenty names, all different, some with Vietnamese diacritics. We said yes before working out what that meant.
What went wrong at scale
The first five were fine. On number six we printed the wrong spelling. On number nine we forgot to swap the filament for the letters, so it came out all one colour. On number twelve we used a different orange because the first spool ran out mid-job.
So we stopped printing and made a checklist instead. Name spelled and checked twice by two different people. Colour written on the job card. Filament weighed before starting so we know it will finish.
The number that surprised us
Twenty plates took 53 hours of machine time across six days. We could only run one job at a time, which means our whole factory produces about four name plates a day. Knowing that number changed what we promise customers.
Bây giờ tụi em không hứa 'ngày mai có'. Tụi em hứa đúng số ngày tụi em làm được.