20 Ways to Improve Productivity in Garment Production

By Prasanta Sarkar

Higher productivity brings higher margin in a business. And increment in Productivity level reduces garment manufacturing cost. Hence factory can make more profit through productivity improvement. In this article top 20 ways have been discussed that will certainly help factories to boost up current labor productivity. All the means that had been explained here can be implemented as because most of these are at your reach. Machine productivity as well as labor productivity increases when a factory produces more pieces by the existing resources (Manpower, time and machinery).

When I look into the processes and operations during my visit to factories, I find improvement potential is there in every area. Initially, you may not be able to find and measure potential areas. Still you can improve productivity by applying some of the following steps. I have mentioned 20 ways where you can focus and start working on improving productivity. To provide you knowledge in details few links have been given for your further reading in some of the steps. Most of the tips mentioned in this article are mainly on time saving tips, discipline and proper planning. To get excellent result you may need external recommendation and support but without the external help you can surely get measurable improvement once you start your journey. One thing you need to understand that application of the following steps will vary based on production systems. I have written this article focusing on progressive bundle system. If you are new in the productivity discussion, before stepping into following steps, I will suggest you read How to measure labor productivity that will help you to understand following discussions. 1. Conducting motion study and correcting faulty motions: There is a saying Even best can be improved. So go to Gemba (sewing floor) and look for operators working method and movements. Prepare a check list for good methods and movements. At time of motion study observe operators movement and compare with you checklist. If you found wrong movements is used by operator or unnecessarily extra movement is present in the operation cycle correct it. If needed deskill operator. By doing this you can reduce operation cycle time and can improve labor productivity up to 100%* in individual operations (*in 20% of the total operations as per Paretos 80-20 Principle). 2. Hourly operator capacity check: Employ work study personnel (if you dont have) and start checking operator capacity hourly or bi-hourly. Compare actual operators hourly production with their capacity. If production is less then question them why? It helps in two ways first, when operators capacity is checked at regular interval they will be under pressure. Secondly, work study personnel start thinking on methods how cycle time can be reduced. Using the capacity data, you can move ahead in balancing the line.

3. Conduct R&D for the garment: A non-value added (NVA) process but having a strong Research and Development (R&D) team in the factory brings lot of benefits. R&D can be taken as preparation stage for the bulk production. This department does sample production and look into potentially critical operations, plan for requirement of special equipment, advice changes in terms of construction without changing styling. E.g. if an operation contains some raw stitches, which doesnt affect the final look of the garment, then that operation can be avoided if possible to save time. They plan for skill requirement for the operations. As a result production runs without any break or with less no. of breaks. As it reduces the chance of break in production for unnecessary reasons, line productivity doesnt come down. 4. Use best possible line layout: Line layout means placing of machines and centre table (trolley with wheel) as per style requirement. The main purpose of choosing a better layout is to reduce transportation time in the line as much as possible. A stable line is not a good idea if you produce multiple products in a same line. A straight assembly line with centre table at left side is good for a product that has no preparatory work and individual operation SAM is nearby the pitch time. When a style includes lot of preparatory work (for garment parts), it is better to make garment parts in sections and assemble them later. If possible use overhead transportation system. 5. Scientific work station layout: The workstation layout defines from where an operator will pick up work (garment components) and where she will dispose stitched garment. A scientific layout is defined as minimum reach for picking up and dispose of components. Every components and tools (trimmer) must be kept within operator reach. During workstation designing, engineering must follow key principles.

Components to be worked on should be positioned as near to the needle as possible. Direction of the components where it positioned on the table or track should be such way that during moving component to the needle point does not need to turn it. Placing of work at the same plane of the machine table so that operator can easily slide it to needle point.

The purpose of designing a good workstation layout is to minimize the material handling time as much as possible. Thus you can reduce operation cycle time. Secondary benefit of good workstation is operators can work at same pace without fatigue. When designing a workstation layout dont forget to consider ergonomics. 6. Reduce line setting time: It have been observed that a line reaches at its pick productivity level on day 6-7 after loading of an order. The time lost in the initial days (learning curve) brings down the average labor productivity for whole style. Reason - lot of time is lost during setting of the line for a new style. This reduces overall machine productivity and line efficiency. So to maintain line productivity level you have to work on minimising line setting time or throughput time. To reduce the line setting time, engineers have to study the garment thoroughly, prepare operation bulletin with machine requirement and machine layout plan prior to feeding cuttings to the line. Read another article to know how to reduce line setting time. Engineers need to coordinate with line supervisors and maintenance department with their plans and requirements. This will help supervisors and maintenance department to be pro-active in arranging required resources. 7. Improve line balancing: Purpose of balancing a line is to reduce operators idle time or maximize operator utilization. In a balanced line work will flow smoothly and no time will be lost in waiting for work. At time of line setting select operators for the operation matching operator skill history and skill required. Following this method you will select highly skilled operators for higher work content operations. Once line is set conduct capacity study at a regular interval. Use pitch diagram method to find bottlenecks inside the line. You have to think how you will minimize WIP level at bottleneck operations. Read another article on line balancing for guidelines. Once you start increasing operator utilization through line balancing you will get extra pieces from the same resources in defined time.

Even a well managed factory can improve productivity by 22% thorough line balancing reported by Md. Rezaul Hasan Shumon, Kazi Ar if-Uz-Zaman, and Azizur Rahman in a Research Study Productivity Improvement through Line Balancing in Apparel Industries. 8. Use work aids, attachments, guides, correct pressure foots and folders: These are some kinds of time saving devises that facilitate operator to perform their work effectively with less effort. If work aids are used effectively operation cycle time can be reduced many fold than existing cycle time. In new and small factories where there is no experienced technical person (maintenance, IE personnel or production manager) generally not aware about the usage and availability of work aids. So their operators sew garment free hand. Labor productivity is comparably higher for the factories that widely use work aids than those who do not use work aids for the similar products. Folders and attachments are also very helpful in producing consistent stitching quality. On the other hand work aids, guides and fixtures reduce operators movement and weight lifting. During my research study I college I had improved labor productivity up to 18.03% using work aids in various operations. 9. Continuous feeding to the sewing line: It is not a fault of production department if they did not get cuttings to sew. All plans and efforts towards productivity will fail if line is not been fed continuously. No feedin g or irregular feeding is one of the top reasons for lower productivity in poorly managed factory. Poor production plan, wrong selection product mix in seasons and ineffective cutting department are the reasons that stop continuous feeding. Once operators get the rhythm, they should be given non-stop feeding until style changeover to keep up the productivity. If you know there is unavailability of cutting in near future then plan accordingly and dont call all operators for that duration. 10. Feed fault free and precise cutting to line: Stop cutting and trimming of extra fabric from cut components by operators. If your cutter does not able to provide precise cutting s/he should be trained. But faulty cutting dont be fed. When operators cut fabric he performs additional task in the operation cycle time. If in some cases trimming is intended then that task must be included in total work content. Otherwise you will get wrong (less) efficiency for the operator. Secondly, cuttings with fabric defects, pattern problem are issued to sewing line. As a result line produces defective garments. Alteration and repair work for defective garments reduces labor productivity. 11. Training for Line supervisors: Line supervisors are shop floor managers. So each supervisor must be trained with fundamental management skills and communication skill. Still in most of the supervisors in Indian factories are raised from tailors. They dont acquire technical qualification in supervising. But their main job is providing instruction, transferring information. For which communication skill training is required for supervisors. Secondly, supervisor should understand the fundamental of industrial engineering like operation bulletin, skill matrix, workstation layout, movement, capacity study and theoretical line balancing etc. If they understood these, they can help engineers or work study boys to improve line performance. The above training will bring changes in managing and controlling the lines and will improve labor productivity. 12. Training to sewing operators: Operators are main resources in the apparel manufacturing. They are most valuable resource to the company. So, factory must work on developing operator skill where required. Training is not cost but an investment said by many experts. Production from an operator depends on his skill level to the task. A low skilled operator will consume higher resources (time) and give less output. You will find quality related issues with low skilled and untrained operators. As the skill level of the operators is increased through training lines output will improve. Training does mean lot of time and money. Training should be given only on specific tasks that will be performed by the operator. Pauls article systematic training for apparel industry operators an introduction is very helpful in this regard. 13. Setting individual operator target: Instead of giving equal target to all operators working in a line, give individual target as per operators skill level and capacity. Set an achievable target for each operator so that they would try to reach the target. This will help improving operators individual efficiency. Use tricks for increasing

target step by step. Take care of the operators who are under target. They may need skill training. Go back to point#12. Training for sewing operators. 14. Eliminate loss time and off-standard time: Utilize operators time as much as you can. There is no better alternative than just stopping operators sitting idle to improve operator productivity. Non productive time such as waiting for work, machine breakdown, power failure and repair work kill your productivity. Start eliminating non-productive time as much as possible. To start work on this point you have to track off-standard or nonproductive time data according to different categories. Once you have the analysis and Pareto of non-productive time you can think and plan on reducing it. 15. Real time shop floor data tracking system: For the continuous improvement and prompt action on failure you need information from the shop floor as fast as possible. Important information needed such as hourly production, line balancing, WIP, tracking bundles and quality performance of the line. If corrective action is not been taken early problem may increase as time goes. So RFID based real time systems are helping in providing shop floor information within second. With Leadtec system Joshep Abboud increased its total productivity more than 40% (refer to the following case study link). This system is quite costlier at this time. But as per published case studies ROI (12-18 months) of this RFID based real time system is not bad. 16. Using auto trimmer sewing machine (UBT): Just think how many pieces an operator is producing in a day? Each time an operator trims thread using a trimmer or scissors consume time minimum 50 TMU or 2 Seconds (approx). A rough estimate, in a day operator will lose about 20 minutes just in thread cutting. In an operation of 0.5 SAM, operator can make 40 extra pieces. Even machine without auto trimmer consumes more sewing thread. Those who use heavy (half kilogram weight) scissor may start using hand trimmer. 17. Installing better equipment: A low performing machine is not acceptable where some of your good machines are idle in the same building. Use the best of your resources. If machines or equipment dont perform well operator motivation goes down. Repetitive breakdown of machines increase the loss time and bring down overall line efficiency and labor productivity. I have seen lines where UBT machine is used in long seam operations and comparably lower work content. On the other hand where shorter seams are being stitched, most of the time spent in thread trimming for taking out work from the needle, normal lock stitch sewing machine are used. 18. Inline quality inspection at regular interval: Traffic light system is the most effective inspection tool to reduce defect generation at source. Less number of defective seam is made less the time will be lost in repairing it. Inline checking system will alert operators in concentrating their job. It also helps in other way. May be at the start of the style an operator not understood the specification, an interaction with quality inspector will make an operator clear about the quality requirement. Poorly managed factory loses productivity up to 10% due to repair and reject as mentioned by Dr. Bheda in his article Productivity in Apparel Manufacturing. 19. Operator motivation: Operators will is the most crucial part in productivity improvement. If they are motivated, they will put enough efforts on the work. Employee motivation generally depends on various factors like work culture, HR policies, bonus on extra effort or achieving target. In garment manufacturing operators motivation come through extra money. Operator motivation can be improve by sharing certain percentage of you profit made from operators extra effort. 20. Plan for operators Incentive scheme: Paul Collyer, British expert says In British factories, in a non incentive environment factory can reach up to 80% efficiency level and if manager expect more than that they had to provide incentive to operators as well as to the supporting team. If we look into Asian factories, in a non incentive environment factories find it is very difficult to reach up to 40% efficiency. You can see the potential efficiency that can be converted in money.

You need to understand that employees come for work in your organization for money. Initially you may think that an incentive scheme may reduce your profit. But in real it works in opposite direction, provided that incentive system is fair for the workers and has been implemented intelligently. I have seen factories where operator efficiency reaches up to 76% from 45% after implementation of incentive scheme. An incentive scheme will give lot of other benefits in return as a byproduct. An incentive scheme designed with multiple parameters may bring discipline on the shop floor. As operators give extra effort to the work, efficiency as well as productivity of the operator increases.

How to Calculate Production Capacity in Apparel Industry

In Apparel Manufacturing, Production capacity is one of the most important criteria used for vendor
selection by the buyers. It is because; the production time of an order is directly proportional to vendors production capacity. So it is very important that marketing and planning personnel should aware about the production capacity of their production units. Capacity of a factory is primarily expressed in terms of total machines factory have. Secondly, how much pieces the factory produces on daily for the specific products? In general, total numbers of machines in a factory mostly remains same for a period. But factory may produce various types of product during the season. According to the product (style) category, machine requirement may change and daily average production in each style may vary. So to be specific during booking orders, planner should know exactly how much capacity he or she needed to procure the order in a given time period. A factorys capacity is presented in total minutes or hours or in pieces (production per day). The method used to calculate capacity has been explained in the following. To calculate Daily production capacity (in pieces) one needs following information. 1. Factory capacity in hours 2. Product SAM 3. Line efficiency (Average) 1. Calculation of factory capacity (in hours): Check how many machines factory has and how many hours factory runs in a day. For example suppose, Total number of machines = 200 Shift hours per day = 10 hours So total factory capacity (in hours) = 200*10 hours = 2000 hours 2. Calculation of Product SAM (SAM): Make a list of product category that you manufacture and get standard minutes (SAM) of all products you make from work study engineers. If you dont have product SAM then calculate the SAM. Or you can use average SAM of the products. Suppose you are producing shirt and its SAM is 25 minutes. 3. Factory Average Efficiency: This data is collected from industrial engineer. Or calculate it with historical data. Suppose average line efficiency is 50%. Read the article - How to calculate efficiency of a production line or batch? Calculation of production capacity (in pieces): Once you have above information use following formula to calculate production capacity. Production capacity (in pieces) = (Capacity in hours*60/product SAM)*line efficiency

For Example: Suppose a factory has 8 sewing lines and each line has 25 machines. Total 200 machines and working shift is 10 hours per day. Total factory capacity per day is 2000 hours (200 machines * 10 hours). If factory is producing only one style (Shirt) of SAM 25 minutes and used all 200 machines daily production capacity at 50% = (2000*60/25)*50% Pieces = (2000*60*50) / (25*100) Pieces = 2400 Pieces [Note: Production will vary according to the line efficiency and during learning curve or in the initial days when style is loaded to the line] Production (capacity) planning is normally done based on sewing capacity. Having knowledge of the capacity in other processes (internal or external) is also very important. Otherwise planner may fail and will not be able to meet the dead line. Other departments such as Cutting room capacity, Finishing room capacity, Washing Capacity and capacity of the value added jobs.

How to calculate SAM of a garment?

SAM or Standard Allowed Minute is used to measure task or work content of a garment. This term is widely used by industrial engineers and production people in the garment manufacturing industry. For the estimation of cost of making a garment SAM value plays a very important role. In past scientists and apparel technicians did research on how much time to be allowed to do a job when one follows standard method during doing the job. According to the research study minute value has been defined for each movement needed to accomplish a job. Synthetic data is available for each movements. General Sewing Data (GSD) has defined set of codes for motion data for SAM calculation. There is also other methods through which one can calculate SAM of a garment with out using synthetic data or GSD. In this article both methods are explained in the following.

Method #1: Calculation of SAM Using Synthetic Data

In this method 'Predetermined Time Standard' (PTS) code are used to establish 'Standard Time' of a garment or other sewing products. Step 1: Select one operation for which you want to calculate SAM. Step 2: Study the motions of that operation. Stand by side of an operator (experienced one) and see the operator how he is doing it. Note all movement used by the operator in doing one complete cycle of work. See carefully again and recheck your note if all movement/motion are captured and correct. (for example motions are like pick up parts one hand or two hand, align part on table or machine foot, realign plies, etc.) Step 3: List down all motion sequentially. Refer the synthetic data for TMU (Time measuring unit) values. For synthetic data you can refer GSD (without licence use of GSD code prohibited but for personal use and study one can refer GSD code and TMU values) or Sewing Performance Data table (SPD). Now you got TMU value for one operation (for example say it is 400 TMU). Convert total TMU into minutes (1 TMU=0.0006 minute). This is called as Basic Time in minutes. In this example it is 0.24 minutes. Step 4: Standard allowed minutes (SAM) = (Basic minute + Bundle allowances + machine and personal allowances). Add bundle allowances (10%) and machine and personal allowances (20%) to basic time. Now you got Standard Minute value (SMV) or SAM. SAM= (0.24+0.024+0.048) = 0.31 minutes.

I like to refer you an article Secret Behind Calculation of Machine Time in SAM for better understand of SAM calculation.

Method #2: Calculation of SAM Through Time Study

Step 1: Select one operation for which you want to calculate SAM. Step 2: Take one stop watch. Stand by side of the operator. Capture cycle time for that operation. (cycle time total time taken to do all works needed to complete one operation, i.e. time from pick up part of first piece to next pick up of the next piece). Do time study for consecutive five cycles. Discard if found abnormal time in any cycle. Calculate average of the 5 cycles. Time you got from time study is called cycle time. To convert this cycle time into basic time you have to multiply cycle time with operator performance rating. [Basic Time = Cycle Time X performance Rating] Step 3: Performance rating. Now you have to rate the operator at what performance level he was doing the job seeing his movement and work speed. Suppose that operator performance rating is 80%. Suppose cycle time is 0.60 minutes. Basic time = (0.60 X 80%) = 0.48 minutes Step 4: Standard allowed minutes (SAM) = (Basic minute + Bundle allowances + machine and personal allowances). Add bundle allowances (10%) and machine and personal allowances (20%) to basic time. Now you got Standard Minute value (SMV) or SAM. SAM= (0.48+0.048+0.096) = 0.624 minutes. Can anybody estimate SAM (standard allowed minute) of a garment without seeing and/or analyzing the garment? No. It is not possible. To estimate SAM you have to analyze the garment carefully and check different factors that affect the SAM. SAM of a product varies according to the work content or simply according to number of operations, length of seams, fabric types, stitching accuracy needed, sewing technology to be used etc. But still many of us inquire for approximate SAM values for basic products, like Tee Shirt, Formal shirt, Formal trouser or jacket. An estimated SAM helps in capacity planning of the factory, calculating requirement of machineries and even helps to estimate CM (cut and make) costing of a garment. However, for better understanding I will suggest you first to read articles How to calculate SAM for a garment?. SAM is a short form of standard allowed minutes. It means a normal operator can complete a task within the allowed time (minute) when he works at 100% efficiency. Standard minutes (SAM) of few basic products have been listed down with its SAM range according to work content variation. In actual cases garment SAM may go outside of the limit depending the above factors. This list will be updated time to time adding more products.

How to calculate efficiency of a production batch or line?

Like individual operator efficiency, efficiency of a production line or batch or section is important for a
factory. Daily line efficiency shows the line performance. To calculate efficiency of a line for a day, you will need following data (information) from the line supervisor or line recorder. 1. Number of operators how many operators worked in the line in a day 2. Working hours (Regular and overtime hours) how many hours each of the operators worked or how many hours the line run in a day 3. Production in pieces How many pieces are produced or total line output at the end of the day 4. Garment SAM What is exact standard minute of the style (garment) Once you have above data you have to calculate following using above information a. Total minutes produced by the line: To get total produced minutes multiply production pieces by SAM b. Total minutes attended by the all operators in the line: Multiply number of operators by daily working hours. Now, calculate line efficiency using following formula: Line efficiency (in percentage) = Total minutes produced by the line *100 /total minutes attended by all operators For example, refer following table. Data calculation formula has been given on the header row of the table.

No. of Operator (A)

Working hours (B)

line output (production) (C)

Garment SAM (D)

Total minutes attended (E=A*B)

Total Minute produced (F=C*D)

Line Efficiency (%) (F/E*100)

48 48 34 35 35 34 34 35 34

8 11 8 11 11 8 8 11 11

160 240 300 400 329 230 200 311 340

44.25 44.25 25 25 25 25 35 35 35

23040 31680 16320 23100 23100 16320 16320 23100 22440

7080 10620 7500 10000 8225 5750 7000 10885 11900

30.73 33.52 45.96 43.29 35.61 35.23 42.89 47.12 53.03

Capacity is calculated: (number of machines or workers) (number of shifts) (utilization) (efficiency).