The value chain in the textile and garments industry stretches from raw material production through yarn spinning, fabric weaving, dyeing and finishing, garment sewing, trimming, to labeling, packaging and distribution.
A. Yarns of synthetic fibers, such as Fiber A, Fiber B, Fiber C, etc. are used for making fabric for garments.
Synthetic fibers are manufactured through different chemical processes and are converted to yarn using the spinning process.
B. Fabric is made by either knitting or weaving the yarn. Two types of knitting are used in the Textile production
a. X Knitting
b. Y Knitting
Rolls of fabric are dyed to obtain the desired colors. The fabric is cleaned, dried, tested for quality and subsequently rolled on bolts.
C. The fabric is initially cut into pre-determined lengths, which are further cut into pieces of garment. Pieces are stitched together by individual seamstresses or by computerized stitching machines. Stretching and other tests are performed on the garment, before and after the washing process.
D. The packaged Textile is distributed through channels, such as:
a. Online Stores and Mail Order Houses
b. Specialty stores
c. Mass Merchandisers (that includes Department Stores, National and Regional Chain Stores, Supermarkets and Hypermarkets)
d. Company Owned / Franchise Stores
A new wave leading to retailing chains
Retail companies invests in cutting/stitching and garmenting unit and the output is sold under their brand name. Lifestyle brands have fast gained prominence in the Indian market. Using a cost-effective production strategy, they have successfully brought down the cost of the apparels enabling it to target non-premium customer segments. E.g. brands such as Benetton
CHALLENGES FACED BY THE INDUSTRY
A. Ineffective supply chain leaving opportunity in improving logistics system.
a. Stock levels in the whole chain (“pipeline stocks”) typically amount to 30–90% of annual demand, and there is usually 4–24 weeks’ worth of finished good stocks.
b. Supply chain cycle times (defined as elapsed time between material entering as raw material and leaving as product) tend to lie between 1000 and 8000 h, of which only 0.3–5% involve value-adding operations.
c. Low material efficiencies, with only a small proportion of material entering the supply chain ending up as product (particularly fine chemicals and pharmaceuticals, where this figure is 1–10%).
B. Less presence of flexible manufacturing systems. If the progress is not followed with necessary background, an important chance for competitive advantage could be lost.
C. New product introduction with less cost New product may create new demand in the market. Technical and/or intelligent textile products provide useful functionalities which could require extra cost otherwise.
D. The long-term planning of capacity in a single production site
VEDZEN'S PAST EXPERIENCE IN THE SAME/SIMILAR INDUSTRY
Initiating Change: Carried out an 8 weeks Focus Process™ to engage the entire organization in initiating changes. The purpose of this exercise was solely to make the organization understand and own the existing problems to facilitate solution development and implementation. During this phase, various exercises, brain storming sessions, observation studies and data studies were conducted to unearth the potential. A value stream mapping exercise was done to pinpoint the bottleneck operations. This exercise helped the organization to agree and prioritize the pain points and helped transform the organization to a pro-active mode.
Implement Change: Various workshops and brain storming sessions helped the concerned teams design and develop simple solutions which made the operations planning and control & action orientation, more robust. As all concerned members of the organization were engaged at every stage, the resistance to change was absolutely negligible. And with the help of a proactive management team, the small resistances were easily overcome. After the solutions were tested in the real environment, extensive training was provided for the roll out. This helped the users readily accept the new practices.
Sustain Change: A major concern of Plant management was to ensure sustainability of the newly implemented work practices. This issue was overcome with the robust review and audit framework Vedzen provided. Within a very short span of 3 months, the compliance, understanding and usage of the new work practices improved by more than 240%. As people began using the new systems and work practices, a major shift in their approach to operations management was obvious. Employees became highly of motivated to continue with the new way of working, and management became more confident that what Vedzen brought to the organization, would last.
Operational Deliverables and Systems Improvement in Textile….
WHAT VEDZEN CAN DO FOR THE CLIENT?
Improve profitability
Profitability improvement through,
- Enable use of substitute material such as fly ash reducing use of primary raw material i.e. limestone
- Efficiency improvement of high energy consuming equipment such as pre heaters, kiln, cement mills etc. in order to reduce energy consumption leading energy cost per unit production.
- Enable use of wastes as fuels in a cement kiln which is referred as Alternative Fuels and Raw Materials (AFR)
Reduce Cost
- Identify opportunity and assess requirement of automation through Cost-Benefit analysis and take the benefit of especially intelligent machining operations reducing costs and yielding more products with better quality.
- Analyze of raw material BOM and eliminate or combine to reduce material code and setup replenishment system to have better material control and cost.
- Analyze and setup consumables replenishment systems to have controlled inventory cost of the same (quantity and space)
Optimize Inventory
- Eliminate obsolete inventory through use and reallocation.
- Develop & implement best practices of inventory management to ensure elimination & avoidance of obsolete inventory
- Improve house-keeping drastically through one-time mission and ensure sustainability so as to reduce wastage & damage to goods
- Implement ‘first-in & first-out’ or other such practices to avoid wastage & damage of goods
Improve capacity utilization
- Conduct capacity utilization studies, bottleneck identification studies and propose measures to optimize utilization.
- Conduct studies & analysis to clearly identify areas requiring capacity enhancement through investments and
- Develop measurement system for monitoring availability and efficiency of critical equipments.
- Identify opportunity for OEE improvement of critical equipment.
Improve delivery
As the speed of production and delivery is the main issue for competitive advantage, there is a better scope to implement.
- Implement lean production systems and concurrent engineering methods like SWIP, changeover standards etc.
- Identify and eliminate bottlenecks.
- Improve packing and dispatch process to have requirement based supply with optimum vehicle utilization and synchronized with production.
Improve housekeeping
Identify critical areas where housekeeping is strictly required in order to observe safety and ease of work. For the said area,
- Develop 5S standards and targets with checklists for sustenance
- Daily audits ensuring closing of actions.
Improve vehicle utilization
As high to-fro lead time of delivery vehicle leads lot of waiting,
- Improve and make manufacturing lines supportive to delivery vehicles.
- Line balancing, production synchronization through effective scheduling and scientific batch sizes.
Workforce development
- Bring about cultural changes in employees ensuring more utilization of human resources
- Coach and mentor employees at root level to show potential for leadership, to participate in teams, to develop the skills and flexibility necessary for multiple jobs, and to focus on safety and built-in quality. Percolate down the capability of coaching and mentoring to managers and supervisors.
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