IT Based Sewing Room Data for Improved Performance of SMEs in Garment Sector

8/7/2019 IT Based Sewing Room Data for Improved Performance of SMEs in Garment Sector

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It Based Sewing Room Data for Improved Performance of SMEs inGarment Sector

C. S. Vora, M. G. Solanki, P.B. Jhala, Pavan Godiawala1 and Verghese Paul2Ahmedabad Textile Industrys Research Association, Ahmedabad 380 015

1

National Institute of Fashion Technology, Gandhinagar 382 0102Nirma Institute of Technology, Ahmedabad 382 481

Abstract

Today, the Indian garment industry is facing a fierce competition in global market, where price is orderqualifier whereas transparency in system, excellent service, high quality goods, and timely delivery areorder winners. This has forced the garment manufacturers to increase productivity, reduce costs, adapt todemand cycle and improve quality. Only those units will survive which are competitive and efficient in allrespect.

In Indian garment industry, generally recording of machine production and performance data is donemanually and there is no systematic flow of data to achieve the required target of production at low cost.So, there is a dire need to automate the flow of information to and from the production floor so thatmanagers and supervisors have immediate access to the information for better planning and control.

ATIRA in collaboration with NIFT-G is implementing a micro-controller based single system to interfacesewing machines and multi-drop net working to transmit the machine performance and production data toa computer system to store, process and generate reports. These reports will be used by the managersor supervisors to take timely action to increase productivity, to improve logistics and to generate quickresponse. It is a low cost system with a payback period of about 1 year.

Keywords: Information Technology, Sewing Room, Ready Made Garments

1. Introduction

Today, the Indian garments industry is facing a fierce competition in global market, where price is order

qualifier whereas transparency in system, excellent service, high quality of goods and timely delivery areorder winners. Increased competition, product diversification and excellence in service have forcedgarment manufacturers to increase productivity, to reduce costs, adapt to demand cycle and improvequality. Only those units will survive which are competitive and efficient in all respect.

SMEs in India are mainly converters/vendors. Their earnings come from only efficient manufacturing. Itstands true even for the exporters because of the globalisation, sourcing is easy and efficient.

The raw material prices are almost same for every body and higher realisation only come from productionhouse. India RMG industry has specific production manufacturing systems. Majority of manufacturersfollows assembly/ line/ throughput manufacturing system. Because of labour intensive, skill basedindustry it is absolute necessary to have efficient assembly/ line production system. In this case output ofone process become the input of other process and delay in any one operation will result in loss of output

down the line for all the operations. Higher difference in skill level of the operators, heavy absentisum andhigh labour turnover rate has turned nicely plan lines in to unpredictable, inefficient production systems.These will lead to decreased machine productivity and the system efficiency, increased throughput timeand WIP level, increased delivery time and production cost and What not to make the business unviableand inefficient.


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There are about 69,000 Indian garment units spread over the entire sub-continent. The industry has twomajor sectors the knitted sector and the woven sector accounts for the major share of 63,000 units. Theaverage size of the unit is small, not exceeding 15 to 20 machines with an investment of Rs. 15 to 20lakhs in plant and machinery. The garment export for 1999 was US$ 5.3 billion and it may reach US$ 6.5billion during the current year. Despite the healthy growth trend, the Indian garment industry is yet toblossom to its full capacity.

According to an ICRIER recent study, Indian manufacturer exporter averaged 10.18, 9.12, 6.25, 9.62 and6.84 pieces/shift in ladies blouses, gents shirts, ladies dresses, ladies skirts and trousers, respectively,against Hong Kong bench-mark of 20.56, 20.87, 20.17, 19.25, and 19.25 pieces/shift. A NIFT studyrevealed that for shirts, Indian exporting plants averaged 9.99 pieces/shift as against an average of 17.47pieces/shift in plants of other major shirts exporting countries in rest of Asia.

There is no exaggeration to say that the accurate and timely information will only permit the decisionmaker to take quick and right decision no matter what so ever high experience on has. This is the bottomline for the growth of IT in the world. Due to small size and unorganized nature of industry, unfortunatelyIT integration has not stepped in to the shop floor of RMG in India. There are very few users of theproduction data generation manufacturing system in India, which is too expensive for SMEs.

2. About RMG SMEs

The number of machines are between 35 to 50 machines /unit. Total investment in plant and machinery is not more then 20 to 30 lakhs. Around 70 to 100 workers are involved. The no of computer is mainly used for payroll and account. One production head looks after the entire system having reasonable educational background. One or two supervisor mostly promoted from operator and not having meteric level education. One person keeps the data of out put of the operators and maintains the register. He reports to

the supervisor and his salary cost to the company is Rs.4000/- month. Majority manufacturers are vendors/converters so they take labour cost. These sizes of unit are not organized in all respect and it becomes impossible for them to gather

the sewing room production information manually and accurately.

2.1 Present Method

In the industry very few production houses are gathering the shop floor information. They are doing itearliest at the end of the day and that too collects the data manually for next day planning the neverknows which operator will come tomorrow and which will not. These things will result in poor systemefficiency (around 60% to 70%). Apart from that in the majority of the industries this type of planning is nothappening and the obvious reason is non-availability of timely information. Usually present Indian RMGindustry has postmortem approach.

Its been recommended that manager/ supervisor should do the planning thrice in a day for efficientoutput. For that one should have accurate information of individual machine on the floor.

So there is dire need to develop the system, which can reduce the various production losses in Indian

garment industry in order to compete global market. Such system is now a days a need for garmentindustry.

3. Production Losses of SMEs

Production loss is mainly of two natures in garment industry.


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3.1 Unavoidable losses

Machine set up time. Some material handling. Personnel fatigue time. Inspection and instruction to operator.

Delay allowances like rethreading, bobbin change, needle change etc.

3.2 Avoidable Losses

Response time for system balancing. Poor floor planning. Reduction in size of bottleneck operation. Frequent machine breakdown. Excessive material handling. Late starts, early stops. low speed, extensive breaks.

Absolutely there is no doubt that, the greater benefit if increased machine uptime. The greatestproductivity loss comes from idle machines. Unavoidable machine idle time can be controlled and

probably reduced. But avoidable machine idle time represents significant opportunity for productivityimprovement through management action. If production managers or supervisors get timely high qualityinformation, with which they can routinely assess performance and isolate the problems. These willincrease the production.

4. How System will Work

4.1 System Description

System consists of several single board microcomputers and a host computer. Each sewing machine hasone single board microcomputer. Each microcomputer is connected to the host computer through twistedpair wire. Microcomputer collects data like machine ON time, piece-handling time, piece stitching time,bundle entry and exit time etc. from each station, stores data in memory and on demand from host

computer, it offloads the stored data to the host computer. It analyses the data and generates variousreports like production, material on shop-floor location of each piece, efficiency of operator, status of jobon hand etc. These reports provide valuable and important information to the managers, supervisors andcustomers at any time. It also provides cost effective logistics of material movement to meet a plannedschedule. It also builds up the data bank for generating norms for standard stitching time of variousprocesses.

System is divided into three parts. Hardware Networking Software

4.2 Hardware

4.2.1 Single Board Microcomputer

It is 8-bit micro controller based system as shown in Fig. 1. It has 64KB programme memory to storemonitor programme. It has 64KB data memory and 4x4 matrix keyboard for inputting data manually. Ithas 16 characters, 2 line LCD display-to-display information like on going bundle number, pending bundlenumber etc. It has got RS485 serial communication port for data trans-receive. It has also Real Timeclock to get various event times.


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Real time clock

RS 485

64K EPROM

64K RAM

80 C535

Optical sensor

4x4 Matrix keyboard

16 char, 2 lines LCD

display

Fig. 1.

4.2.2 Sensor

It is a non-contact optical reflectance type sensor, which senses the status of sewing machine i.e.whether the machine is ON or OFF. A reflective strip is mounted on the wheel of the machine and thesensor, which consists of infrared light transmitter and receiver, is mounted in front of it at 5 mm distance.Whenever reflective strip comes in front of sensor, light transmitted from sensor returns and outputvoltage level of sensor changes. Thus sensor changes its output state whenever machine is runningabove certain speed and maintains it as long as machine is running at that speed.

4.3 Networking

Movement of data is handle using RS485 serial communication method. RS485 is a specialized interfacethat would not be considered standard equipment on todays home PC but is very common in the dataacquisition world. RS485 supports 32 drivers and 32 receivers and with repeater it supports another 32receivers and with repeater it supports another 32 drivers and receiver. (We are talking about bi-

directional-half duplex-multi-drop communications over a single twisted pair cable!!) Maximum cablelength can be as much as 4000 feet because of the differential voltage transmission system used. UsingRS485 technique, single PC is connected to several addressable microcomputer boards sharing cable.Thus it saves cable cost. Since it employs differential voltage transmission technique, data aretransmitted efficiently.

4.4 Software

Software has been developed in assembly language, which runs on single board microcomputer andkeeps track of various events like machine on time, machine off time, piece completion time, piecehandling time etc. It stores these events data in data memory and sends stored data to host computer ondemand.

Software has been developed in VB as well as in Access, which collects data generated at each station atregular interval, analyse the collected data and upgrades various reports. It also allows user for inputtingvarious other data manually.

5. Data Input

Name of the operator Machine allocation Operation allocation


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Production grid diagram Operation wise Piece rate / daily wage/ monthly salary Target out put per operator.

6. Management Information and Reports Generation

The system can generate following types of reports:

(i) Every 3- minute status of complete sewing floor.(ii) Operation wise and products actual SAM.(iii) Operators/ machines daily performance report.(iv) Operation / operator/machine wise Needle Down Time and Handling.(v) Development and continuous upgradation of Skill matrix chart.(vi) WIP status of the floor.(vii) Estimated order completion time at the beginning of order planning.(viii) Per day expected output and actual output.(ix) In case of piece rate system daily earning of the operator.(x) Order wise detail of direct labour cost.(xi) Rejection / rework level machine and operator wise.(xii) Back tracing of the garment.

7. System Benefits

In flow of information to and from the production floor is automated through more accurate set upstandards.

(i) Operator wise/ machine wise/ operation wise/ production data.(ii) Accurate and fast product base costing.(iii) Improvement in training programmes.(iv) Fast identification and removal of Bottleneck operation.(v) Generation of SAM.(vi) Easy development of Skill Matrix Chart.(vii) Upgraded material handling procedures

(viii) Total work in process.(ix) Machine downtime(x) Differentiation between needle time and material handling time.(xi) Per machines productivity and Line balancing.(xii) Actual throughput time.(xiii) Reduce the response time to problem identification.(xiv) Bench-mark can be developed for the production system.

These benefits all contribute to improve production, lower unit production cost and to execute the ordertimely.

8. Testing and Evaluation

First prototype model for eight sewing machines has been fabricated and tested in laboratory at ATIRA.

It has been successfully tested and evaluated at NIFT. Shop floor trial is under going at local Garmentmanufacturing unit.

9. Conclusion

Increased competition, product diversification, and excellence in service have forced garmentmanufacturers to increase productivity, reduce costs, adapt to demand cycle and improve quality. Onlythose units will survive which are competitive an efficient in all respect. Indian RMG industry has specific


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production manufacturing systems. Majority of manufacturers follows assembly/ line/ throughputmanufacturing system. Because of labour intensive, skill based industry it is absolute necessary to haveefficient assembly/ line production system. India RMG industry has specific production manufacturingsystem. Majority of manufacturers follows assembly/ line/throughput manufacturing system. Because oflabour intensive, skill based industry it is absolute necessary to have efficient assembly/line productionsystem.

ATIRA in collaboration with NIFT-G has designed and developed a low cost micro-controller basedsystem to interface sewing machines and multi-drop net working to transmit the machine performanceand production data to host computer to store, process and generate reports. These reports will be usedby the managers or supervisors to take timely action to increase productivity to improve logistics and togenerate quick response. First prototype model has been successfully tested and evaluated at NIFT-G.

10. Acknowledgement

The authors are grateful to Directors of ATIRA, NIFT-G and NIT for their king permission to present thispaper at this conference. We are grateful to Shri Aanal Bhow, Denifine Line, Ahmedabad for his kindpermission for conducting field trial. The authors are also thankful to Shri G. L. Patel, ATIRA and NIFT-Gfor their assistance in project work. We are also grateful to The Industries Commissioner, Govt. of Gujaratfor funding the project.

Reference Book:43

rdJoint Technological Conference

2nd

3rd

March, 2002.Jointly Organised by: ATRIA, BTRA, SITRA & NITRA

Documents

IT Based Sewing Room Data for Improved Performance of SMEs in Garment Sector