Abstract:
In case of readymade garments (RMG) industries, productivity improvement is a
vital to decrease the production lead time as well as manufacturing cost. For productivity
improvement it becomes essential to decrease the waiting time, process bottlenecks and
increase the production line efficiency. Time study and line balancing are effective
techniques to reduce the operation time and improve the productivity. Time study was
performed in a furniture industry to increase its production efficiency and reduce the
operation time and associated cost. Assembly line balancing technique was also used in
some manufacturing industries for single production line to identify and remove the nonvalue
added activities and increase the productivity. But, it becomes essential to apply time
study and line balancing techniques for the number of production lines of various products
in small and large RMG industries to improve its productivity.
In this work, time study is performed on four different products of RMG
industries and production lines are balanced through the distribution of works among the
work stations by line balancing. Thus, new production layouts are modeled with the
balanced capacity combining both modular line and traditional manufacturing system
together. In new production systems, 6-64% production lead time is decreased for 27-78%
reduction of waiting time, 10-179% improvement of labor productivity and 6-130%
improvement of machine productivity for four products. Possible problem areas in the
industries are identified by fishbone analysis and strength, weakness, opportunities and
threats for productivity improvement were also identified by SWOT analysis. This
research report provides pragmatic guidelines for the garments manufacturers to improve
their industrial productivity and capacity by applying some essential tools like time study,
line balancing and fishbone analysis.