Process improvement in sewing section of a garments factory a case study

Abstract

This case study represents the use of some tools and techniques for improving sewing section efficiency, productivity, defects per hundred units (DHU), overall labor effectiveness, overall equipment effectiveness throughout the production process. Now a day’s garments manufacturing companies are trying to develop their current production system and situation and continuously looking for new production tools and techniques in order to keep swiftness with the rapid changes of trend in consumers of apparel products. To deal with the recent problems & challenges industries have to improve production efficiency & productivity; ensuring proper quality requirements. There is no doubt that sewing section in an apparel industry is the most momentous and teeming department that plays a vital role in the whole firm. To improve the existing situation of this section and increasing productivity training program and sewing section line balancing based on worker capacity are very effective technique. To enhance operational efficiency, the organization set the training program and provide the training to employees means top to floor management and workers, where the training topics are selected quality policy, department wise goal & designation wise job responsibility, which can increase their efficiency and productivity in completing their daily work tasks. In capacity study, Standard Minute Value (SMV) has been calculated for each operation or job. Based on this technique each operator capacity is measured and balanced to eliminate the bottlenecks. Here, by applying these techniques significant improvements in the sewing section have been achieved such as SMV, man power, bottleneck, production/hour, line efficiency, DHU, OLE and OEE. The findings can be extended to similar garments factory in the future.