Effects of worker fatigue on product quality: a case study in apparel industry

Abstract

Improving product quality is one of the main concerns of any manufacturing industry. There are many factors in apparel industries which are responsible poor product quality and defective items. Unskilled workers, physical fatigue from manual works of extended working hours, misplacement of worker at workstation, lack of training, absence of engineering knowledge and engineering management are few factors directly related to product quality. In this work effects of work fatigue on product quality is studied and analysed for stitching, finishing and fabric departments of an apparel industry. During the investigation attention is concentrated on how work fatigue influences product quality. It is found that defect rate varies with time. Defect rate increases gradually until lunch break. Similar fashion is observed after the lunch break also. Among the three departments defect rate in stitching department is higher than fabric and finishing departments. Finally few suggestions are proposed to reduce quantity of fatigue related defective items.