Customization of starfish software in the production of cotton-knit fabrics

Abstract

In recent years, ready-made garments (RMG) have be~ome the largest export products of Bangladesh. Kmtwcar cun,tilule, aboul 34% of the total earning througb RMG expurt,. The malll importing countries of Bangladeshi kn itwcar arc the U,S.A, Canada "nd the ElJ coulltrie,. Wbile placing orders for knit wear, buyers genenolly specify their ba,ic requirements in terms of gmms per 'quare meter (USM). fabric widU, and ,brink"»e (both leo.,,,h and width) for a finished knitted fabric of a particular sh"de, The suppliers. on thei" patt. have to ehoo,~ knitting vat'abk, Iikc mach ill. gauge (defined by "" u! /""p-jrJrnl/lig IIced/c,I'pel' ","I circullljerella ,if Ihe mach/lie). yarn count ( i1 mei1Sur~ ()f yarn finclless) & stitch length( fel'l!;th '1 Y""" in a farJp).The choice of the,e knitting variables lS "nporta.nt in ord." to meet the quality specif,cation of the buyers. Sometime, Ihe buyer's ~pecifieation, combinatIOn of the above three requin:ments, is quite impo,sible to achieve. I'or this n:ason it i, vel)' common for knitted-fabric manufaetun:rs 10 carry out a fairly large numbers of ,ample trials when they arc reqmred to develop a new product. The,e trial~ can consume eon"de",ble "mount of time and raw material>, ~nd eau~e considerable dIsruption to production schedules, before a satisfactory solution i, found. But, they are e»ential to ensurc Ihat a buyer's potential n~w product can aetnaJly be delivered. The above-mentioned ,nuation> I.d to the development (>f STARFISH technology at Intemational In,llltrte for Cotton, UK in 197R Allhough STARFISH software wa, comm~rClally available since 1988, Bcximeo Kniuing Limited wa, the first company in Bangladesh to buy this co,tly software in 1995, T() use STARFISI-I. the user ha, to gi, e input variables of machine gauge. yarn CO\lntand stitch length mainly a, well as specifying a target value of GSM and lilbric width or shrinkage. In case oftargel GSM and fabric width, th" STARFISH gives shrinkage as outputs and in ca~e of target shrinkage; Ihe software gives GSM and fabric width as outputs. I\, STA KFiSII outputs repre'ent the results developed frorn many industrial trials of different countries, the user jll,t gct, the standard average val"es of GSM, Width and Shri"kage of a particular fabric from STARFISH. So to customize th" sottware in a particular factory, the results given by STARFISH has to be calibrated ,ceo"ling to the factory re.<"lt<. In (hlS project thesis, first the relationship between STARFISH inputs (yam count and stitch length) and OUlputs {USM/W,dth) ha, been established thl'Ough a ,el of multiple linear regression models for each specific machine g"uge. The models thus developed have a high degree of correlationshlp with R' values in the range of O.97-0.99. Consequently, the regressioo model> can he used as a substitute ofSTARrJSH to predict output, with a high accuracy \lnder similar environment. Sc~ond. STARFISH pred'eted results have bee" compared with recorded result, of Be"imeo Knitting Limitoo, using standard statistical measures in order to customize STARFISI! package, It is observed that the mean absolute percenlIlge errl)r (MAPE) is less thllll 5% for all nlachine g""ges. The finding, clearly show that malluf'et"rers can u,e STARI'ISH package qUlle nd,,"nt"geously for the selection of dee,slon vaflable,.