Divya Satyan.
ISince time immemorial the need for clothing has been one of the basic needs of mankind. The global apparel industry over the last 50 years has seen an enormous amount of change in the patterns of designing, sourcing, and manufacturing. A new breed of designers has redefined street fashion the world over and even developing countries like India have come into fashion focus time and again. The rapid advances in research mainly in the yarn, fibre and fabric technologies have led to a whole new range of fabrics. Sourcing and manufacturing have moved from the doors of the developed countries to far-flung nations like India, China, Cambodia, Vietnam, Turkey and Egypt for reasons of cost advantages and the ready supply of skilled labour. The last decade has seen the Indian manufacturers attempting to move up the value chain by focusing on value addition through design.
IThe world market has seen a rise and fall in the clothing sales which has led many big names worried seriously about the future direction of the apparel industry. The results have been seen in the continuously decreasing FOBs and sharper profit margin. This has also led to bringing the changing customer preferences into a sharper focus. As the customer of today demands value for money so does he demand faster changes and uniqueness of design in his/her apparel choices. The retailers have no option but to reduce their procurement time and also experiment with value additions in the form of printing, embroideries, etc. The changing trends in global apparel manufacturing as a result point towards a shift towards more complex, value added styles and lesser quantities - and all this at lesser prices. In this context, the apparel manufacturer today has to keep a sharp eye on his production runs and also be highly competitive. This has also led to the need for him to understand the complexities generated by the styles and the manner of dealing with them to lead to flexibilities in his shop floor. As global market change, manufacturing strategies are also changing. Quick response manufacturing, flexible manufacturing, synchronous manufacturing and agile manufacturing are all the production strategies that industry leaders are exploring to remain internationally competitive.
In this kind of an environment, the importance of productivity is felt to a greater extent. The factors affecting productivity in every organisation needs to be identified and steps should be taken to eliminate these factors or at least minimize their effect. While some of the factors can be generalised to the garment industry as such many more are specific-to-specific environments dealing with different customers and their differing needs. The styles to be produced by a manufacturer thus play a major role in determining the bottomline apart from the general factors affecting productivity by influencing these to a large extent. The situation becomes critical when the production runs become shorter and volumes decrease while the styling becomes more and more complex.
The article focuses on the complexity built into the styles and the need to study it to ensure that the right production control is exercised giving the maximum returns. A pilot study conducted in one such environment dealing with highly stylised and up market fashion products for the European markets and with low order quantities (300 - 1000 pieces per style per colour) has led to understanding the nature of style complexities and hence help evolve appropriate production strategies to deal with it.
The objectives of conducting a pilot study in this area were:
- To identify all parameters through which a style can be called complex.
- To better classify levels of complexities.
- State parameters to define levels of complexities.
- To identify the effect of style complexity on productivity.
- To identify difficulties faced by the organisation in processing styles with complexities.
- To identify requisites for processing complex styles.
Styling means the characteristics or distinctive appearance of a product, the combination of features that makes it different from the other products of the same type.
What makes a style complex?
The style look different by way of design changes to the pattern parts, by use of different fabrics, by use of value added processes like embroidery, printing, washes and by way of packaging.
Parameters that can make a style complex
Fabric & trim complexity
- Type of fabric: The fabric handling properties differ for different types of fabrics as do the machine adjustments. Thus, for extremely lightweight fabrics like chiffons the handling time may increase while heavy weight canvas or denim may require machine adjustments and work aids to ease work over longer durations.
- Fabric problems -- Patent and latent defects in the fabrics - visible defects can be eliminated easily but latent defects have more effect on complex styles as the number of parts of the garment may be more, so recut levels may become higher leading to lowered efficiencies.
- Structural design "created through manipulation of yarns, fabrications, colour or texture" -- the complexities created due to the insertion of different types of yarns like novelty yarns, the design due to coloured yarns as in checks and plaids leads to complexities as it requires special attention in during manufacturing for the various matching requirements of the garment.
- Applied design "created by printing, embroidery, quilting, appliqué or other forms of fabric decorations" -- the complexities created by applied design like lead to an increase in the number of operations, increase in handling time and longer throughputs.
- Fabric finishes (aesthetic and functional finishes) - uniqueness in garment is achieved by including some fabric finishes which lead to machine setting and sewing issues.
- Type and Number of support materials, trims and closures present in the style lead to additional operations, testing and possibility of defects.
- Number of pre-stitching processes - before the actual sewing - can increase due to additional parts to be fused, embroidered, printed or hand worked upon.
- Embroidery and printing complexities - whether being performed in-house or outsourced, in how many lots, from how many different suppliers, and how many stages of the order.
- Spreading, marking & cutting complexities due to fabric characteristics -- Different relaxation times, different maximum lay heights, different equipment to be used for cutting and different techniques for cutting (block cutting, etc).
- Number of operations involved in sewing the garment-throughput time of a garment increases.
- Complication due to Stitch and seam type-different types of seams and stitch types can lead to complications in line setting or change in the process flow.
- Number of dependent operations--number of independent to dependent operations play a crucial role in the throughput time determination and hence productivity.
- Complexity due to the number of parts in the garment-simple as it may sound, more the number of garment parts, more the work content involved.
- Complication incurred owing to a variety of fabric types present in same garment-increasingly, uniqueness in styling is being achieved by use of more than one type of fabric on the same garment as a panel, a part (pocket) or even patchwork. This leads to severe complications in the production process in thread matching, sewing machine settings, use of different needle types etc.
- Number of post-stitching processes - like printing, embroidery washes, over dyeing, etc.
- Complications incurred due to garment over dye and washing-may lead to changes in garment measurement, variety of shade lots, repairs and rejections.
- Garment presentation--The packing mode in the form of innovative packages and combinations of colours or fabric designs lead to the work content increasing for the manufacturer.
Criteria to define levels of complexity
All the parameters mentioned above are associated with a lot of variables that may or may not make the style complex. For easier understanding and to concretely define the levels of complexities, only three parameters under sewing complexity were taken into consideration in the study. A detailed and comprehensive historical analysis of styles handled by the company in the preceding one year was carried out along with the study of the current styles that were under production to ascertain the level of complexity in the styles and the same was applied to 4 case studies of the styles in production at the time of the study, on the basis of the below mentioned criteria.
1. Number of dependent operations in a style is more than 20 operations: For a simple shirt, the number of dependent operation does not exceed 20. As mentioned earlier, a dependent operation is an operation that cannot be performed without completion of its preceding operations. Thus, this factor gains considerable importance in planning for a style and its execution.
2. Number of out factory operations (like embroidery, printing, over dyeing, wash) - is more than one - since operations which are carried out in the premises of the job workers tend to involve a plethora of issues like transportation, handling, quality, communication, and cost factors, hence this criteria was also considered to be extremely vital.
3. Number of parts in the garment is more than 25 parts - purely based on the historical review of the different styles carried out by the factory for the past one year.
Based on the above criteria, it was deduced that all the styles being executed could be classified.
The aim of the study thus was to list down all the factors that could lead to making a style complex for production. Then consider specifically the criteria that could lead to productivity losses due to these complexities on the shop floor, ie, during sewing. This then gives a clear picture to the production planner to prioritise the styles into the degrees of complexities involved so that appropriate attention can be paid to them as required. One such example has been quoted here to make the point clearer.
This simple analysis alerts the merchandiser, production planner as well as the production team to the fact that the forthcoming style needs more care and attention in planning and execution. As a further add-on another analysis is carried out with the process flow of the style and process wise identification of the possible problems and bottlenecks. The case taken above has been similarly analysed and the classification of the style is done based on all the parameters.
Embroidery complications (outsourced operation)
- Bundles not received from embroidery job workers in sequence, so feeding of embroidered sleeve in sewing affected production.
- Receipt of embroidery (Sleeve Embroidery) was not in the same form as was sent (bundle wise).
- Style start-up losses very high due to too many dependent operations and complexity due to increase in number of parts. Total production hours lost due to line set up and style start up was observed to be 26.
- Thread change every time for each colour affected that particular operation causing bottleneck.
- Stitching complications and seam complexities increased operator-learning time leading to further loss of production.
- Quality problems in pocket placement in sleeve & panel attachment in sleeve occurred during production because two different fabrics had to be sewn together.
- Pocket making and attaching had to be broken down into many operations due to style complexity.
