Role of the SAM Value in Production Planning and Control

SAM value of a garment is defined as how much time it would take to complete a garment in sewing. This is also known as garment work content and standard minutes.

To know the role of Garment SAM in production planning, first, you have to understand the primary roles of a Production Planning and Control (PPC) department (or PPC personnel). I have written a post on functions of the PPC department. Refer to this article for the details of PPC department’s functions.

Production planning
Functions of the Production Planning Department

To be specific, in this article I am mentioning only key roles of PPC department, those can’t be performed without having garment SAM value.
  • Determining the capacity of the factory and capacity of the individual sewing lines in terms of how many pieces (product specific) factory can make in a certain time period with existing machines capacity. 
  • Order booking based on factory capacity for different types of products
  • Allocating of styles to the lines
  • Determining production lead time for each order (styles)
  • Process scheduling
  • Production execution and monitoring 

Roles of SAM Value in Production Planning includes

1. Line Capacity Calculation: 
The scientific method of calculating the production capacity of a line (in production pieces per day) is to use standard time (SAM) of a garment. So, to determine the production capacity of a line (for specific products) in pieces you need to know garment SAM.

2. Lead Time Calculation:
Based on the production capacity, order allocation is done for different lines. A planning guy also needs to calculate how long a style would run in a line if loaded in a single line. If you need to complete the order in less time, calculate how many lines to be considered for an order.

3. Order booking:
During order booking, you need to consider capacity availability in a certain period. In such cases, you can use how many minutes you need to make the new orders using garment SAM value and compare the same with how many production minutes are available in your factory for the defined period.

4. Process Scheduling:
Time and action calendar or production process scheduling of each order is done by the planning department. Again to schedule a list of tasks, you need to know the capacity of each process per day (or a predefined period). Based on the capacity of each process you allocate no. of days for the process. Like for the sewing department, you determine the sewing capacity of your line (or multiple lines) and according to that, you set how many days to be given to the sewing department for production.

5. Order Execution and Production Monitoring:
Standard minutes help planners to set a target for sewing lines. Mutually agreed and calculated target given to line supervisors. On a daily basis when you check production status you can compare actual production with target production. In case production is getting delayed you can push the production team based on the given target.

6. Labor Cost Estimation:
One most important task is the labour cost estimation of a specific order. To estimate how much labour cost to be considered for an order (style), you can’t make labour costing without having garment SAM value.

All the above six points are proving that garment SAM plays a big role in production planning and controlling function in garment industry.

What is next? I want to listen from you - how do you associate garment SAM value with production planning tasks?

Prasanta Sarkar

Prasanta Sarkar is a textile engineer and a postgraduate in fashion technology from NIFT, New Delhi, India. He has authored 6 books in the field of garment manufacturing technology, garment business setup, and industrial engineering. He loves writing how-to guide articles in the fashion industry niche. He has been working in the apparel manufacturing industry since 2006. He has visited garment factories in many countries and implemented process improvement projects in numerous garment units in different continents including Asia, Europe, and South Africa. He is the founder and editor of the Online Clothing Study Blog.

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