Application of Industrial Engineering in Garment Industry

Application of Industrial Engineering in Garment Industry

Abdullah Al Mamun

Assistant Manager-IE

Fareast Knitting & Dyeing Industrial ltd

E-mail: ie.mamun@fareastknit.com

Industrial engineers determine the most effective ways for an organization to use the basic factors of production - people, machines, materials, information, and energy - to make or process a product or produce a service. They are the bridge between management goals and operational performance. They are more concerned with increasing productivity through the management of people, methods of business organization, and technology than are engineers in other specialties, who generally work more with products or processes.

It is important to know why one should set up an IE department in garment factory. I have taken help of two questions to explain this topic in detail. Two questions are -

1.                  What is the application of Industrial Engineering in apparel industry?

2.                  How Industrial Engineering concepts are used by apparel manufacturers?

What is the application of Industrial Engineering in apparel industry?

Industrial Engineering concepts are used in garment manufacturing to fulfill the following purposes – 

    Ø  Monitoring production floor and having better control over the production floor.

    Ø  Improving processes and improving method of working to increase factory's overall performance and standardized garment manufacturing processes.

Overall application of Industrial engineering can be explained better by describing common tasks of the IE department. Common tasks of an IE department are as following but not limited to these

    Ø  Work measurement of sewing operations, cutting room jobs and finishing jobs

    Ø  Setting standard time for sewing operations and manual operations

    Ø  Style analysis and conducting research and development (R&D) of the styles 

    Ø  Improving method of work and design workstation 

    Ø  Production planning and factory capacity determination

    Ø  Work aids development

    Ø  Work station designing and machine layout planning

    Ø  Labor cost estimation

    Ø  Performance measuring of workers 

    Ø  Training of workers (sewing operators)

    Ø  Designing incentive scheme and calculating incentive for sewing operators

    Ø  Setting line production target of the sewing lines and chasing production from line supervisors and operators

    Ø  Application of lean tools

How Industrial Engineering Concepts are used by apparel manufacturers?

Factories those are using IE techniques mostly have a complete IE set up (department). An IE department consists of an IE managers (in-charge) and Industrial Engineers and juniors engineers. The strength of IE team widely varies based on the maturity level of the department and on the focus of application of Industrial Engineering. Without having enough team members, an IE department cannot work effectively.

Industrial Engineers are utilized in the following ways but not limited to those -

Factories apply all or few of the above listed functions to 

    Ø  Assist line supervisors by preparing resource requirement plan (machines and equipment and manpower), line setting and line balancing etc. 

    Ø  Assist production managers in target planning and production planning.   

    Ø  Help merchandiser and marketing personnel by providing labor cost and production lead time.

    Ø  Help HR department by providing operator performance level, and help in operator recruitment.

    Ø  Prepare MIS reports and show management team product status on daily basis and alert management team if their attention is needed.

    Ø  Set up standards operating procedures for new tasks, new process required for ever changing fashion products.

More than the regular jobs, IEs are also responsible for thinking of continuous process improvement. Initiation of new projects and implementation of the project that has been undertaken, showing the improvement opportunity within the factory to management team. Engineers are involved in performance improvement tasks of the cutting department and finishing department.

Companies those have limited manpower in IE team, only involves engineers for routine jobs like, making operation bulletin, thread consumption, preparing daily production reports etc.

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How to Calculate Thread Consumption for Garments?

How to Calculate Thread Consumption for Garments?

Abdullah Al Mamun

Assistant Manager-IE

Fareast Knitting & Dyeing Industrial ltd

E-mail: ie.mamun@fareastknit.com

In today's competitive marketplace, there is a need for tight cost control. A realistic estimation of potential thread requirements for particular garment styles or contracts will not only save you money, but also enable you to use a superior thread for the same cost, thereby not compromising on garment quality. There is standard formula for determining thread consumption for apparel products. In that formula you will get multiplying factors according to machine type and stitch class. To determine thread consumption you just need to multiply seam length with those factors. This way one can estimate total thread requirement for making a garment.

Actual thread consumption for a unit length of seam depends on following factors. 

    Ø  Stitch Classes

    Ø  Stitches per inches (SPI)

    Ø  Thickness of the seam (fabric thickness)

    Ø  Thread tension

    Ø   Thread count (thickness of sewing thread)

The thread consumption for a particular sewn product can be calculated in many ways.

Step 1:  To calculate thread ratio, you need a sewing machine, fabric and sewing thread that will be used for bulk production.

Step 2: Sew a seam of 12 cm long and take 10 cm seam out of it by trimming 1 cm from both edges.

Step 3: Unravel both needle thread and bobbin thread from the seam. Remove crimp from the unraveled thread and measure its length in cm. Now find the multiplying factor by dividing thread length with seam length. 

Using this method you can find out any types of machines’ thread consumption factors.

Note:

1. The above ratios are arrived at with a stitch density of 12 stitches per inch.
2. These ratios are the prescribed minimum in regular conditions and marginally vary with the factors affecting thread consumption.
3. A certain percentage of wastage is to be added to the above ratios as per shop floor conditions. It may vary from 10% to 15%.

By this ratio we easily  calculate sewing thread consumption by using following format. 

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Working flow chart of Industrial Engineering Department

Working & Process flow chart of Industrial Engineering Department

Abdullah Al Mamun

Assistant Manager-IE

Fareast Knitting & Dyeing Industrial ltd

E-mail: ie.mamun@fareastknit.com

At present Industrial Engineering Department is one of the important department for each garments or textile factory. Today’s maximum factory is run by industrial engineers, where they have to follow a process flow chart. By which they can easily control the whole production processes. Such kinds of process flow chart has discussed in this article.

IE department in garments industries

Process Flow Chart of Industrial Engineering (IE) Department:

Negotiation with merchandiser
↓
Garments analysis
↓
Make P.P meeting if all required element are in housed
↓ 
Production target
↓ 
Set machine layout
↓ 
Line setting
↓
Line balancing
 ↓
Hourly production monitoring
↓ 
Continuous production meeting
↓ 
Collecting production data
↓
Preparing production report
↓
Production report analysis
↓ 
Report submit to factory manager

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How to calculate the CM (Cost of Making) of a Garment?

How to calculate the CM (Cost of Making) of a Garment?

Abdullah Al Mamun

Assistant Manager-IE

Fareast Knitting & Dyeing Industrial ltd

E-mail: ie.mamun@fareastknit.com

CM (Cost of Making) calculation is very important factors for every garment industries. Factory’s costing people should know the actual calculating method for calculation the CM. Other-wise factory may fall in huge loss. So its really important to calculate the correct cost of making to get the correct costing.

Way to calculate the CM:

To find out the CM of a item you must need the following information at first…….

1)      CPM (Cost per minute) of this factory.

2)      SMV of the garment.

3)      Average line efficiency. 

Now, to find the CPM (Cost per minute) of a factory must know this information—

Ø  Monthly total expenditure of this factory. Suppose-85000000/tk.

Ø  Total number of running machine of this factory. Suppose- 1500 machine.

Ø  Total working day of the followings month. Suppose- 25 days. 

Ø  Daily working hours. Suppose- 8 hours. 

Formula for calculation CPM:

Formula for calculation CM:

CM=(SMV X CPM X 12) / Line efficiency (%) 

Example:

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What is Allowances & Different types of allowances are used in garments industries?

What is Allowance & Different types of Allowances are used in Garments Industries?

Abdullah Al Mamun

Assistant Manager-IE

Fareast Knitting & Dyeing Industrial ltd

E-mail: ie.mamun@fareastknit.com

Allowance:

The normal time for an operation does not contain any allowances for the worker. It is impossible to work throughout the day even though the most practicable, effective method has been developed. Even under the best working method situation, the job will still demand the expenditure of human effort and some allowance must therefore be made for recovery from fatigue and for relaxation.

Allowances must also be made to enable the worker to attend to his personal needs. The allowances are categorized as:

1)    Relaxation Allowance

a)     Personal need allowance

b)    Fatigue Allowance

2)    Process Allowance

3)    Policy Allowance

4)    Special Allowance

a)     Periodic activity allowances

b)    Interference allowance

c)      Contingency Allowance:

1. Relaxation Allowance:  Relaxation allowance is a addition to the basic time intended to provide the worker with the opportunity to recover from the physiological and psychological effects of carrying out specified work under specified conditions and to allow attention to personal needs. The amount of allowance will depend on nature of the job.

Relaxation allowance may be of two types:

a)    Personal needs allowance- this is for attending personal needs like drinking water, smoking, going to wash room etc. A common personal allowance is about 5% of basic time.

b)    Fatigue allowance- this allowance is given to compensate for energy expended during working.  Fatigue allowance is generally considered as 4% of basic time.

2. Process allowance:

 A process allowance is an allowance of time given to compensate for enforced idleness of an operator due to the character of the process or operation on which he or she is employed.  For example- an operator may not be able to work because he has to wait for a machine to complete its own part or he may be the member of an unbalanced line. These are all unavoidable delay for which the operator is not responsible. Process allowances are generally considered as 5% of the basic time.

3. Policy Allowance:

Policy allowances are not the genuine part of the time study and should be used with utmost care and only in clearly defined circumstances. The usual reason for making the policy allowance is to line up standard times with requirements of wage agreement between employers and trade unions. The policy allowance is an increment, other than bonus increment, applied to a standard time (or to some constituent part of it, e.g., work content) to provide a satisfactory level of earnings for a specified level of performance under exceptional circumstances. Policy allowances are sometimes made as imperfect functioning of a division or part of a plant.

4. Special Allowances:

a)    Periodic activity allowances- Allowance for activities carried out at definite intervals of time. e.g., cleaning machines, resetting machines etc.

b)    Interference allowance- This is the allowance to compensate the unavoidable loss of production due to simultaneous stoppage of one or more machines being operated by single operator.

c)     Contingency Allowance: This is a small allowance of time given to compensate such delay as tool breakage involving removal of tool from the holder or power failures for small duration.

This allowance provides for small unavoidable delays as well as for occasional minor extra work:

Some of the examples calling for contingency allowance are:

·         Tool breakage involving removal of tool from the holder and all other activities to insert new tool into the tool holder.

·         Power failures of small duration.

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