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All you know that employees work for money. If there is a chance for earning more money through better performance employees will jump for it. As a result, an employer gets more production in the same working hours. It will work only if you design your incentive scheme scientifically and if it is fair.

I will share 3 simple ways for designing incentive scheme for sewing operators in the garment industry in 3 parts. All of these are successfully running in garment manufacturing factories. In this article, the term ‘incentive’ indicates the bonus amount or extra amount of money operators earn for their better performance.


Part#1 Incentive on extra production
The name itself defines that bonus will be paid to sewing operators when operators produce more pieces than target production. Production target is set for the line and bonus is paid to the line. This is one types of group incentive plan where line output will decide whether operators will get incentive or not.

This is the most …

Time and Action (TNA) calendar is one of the most important tools for managing a project. In garment manufacturing, each order is not less than a project to a merchant. Because from order receiving to order completion involve a number of tasks of various duration and requirement of resources. Few tasks come one after another and others move at the same time. Like a number of processes, a lot of people are involved to accomplish an order. Secondly, each order is unique in terms of process and time demand. So, a detailed plan with well-defined responsibility is must for each order to finish it before time or on time.

What is a Time and Action Calendar? Normally merchants prepare a plan in a spreadsheet listing down key processes in one column and planned date of action for each processes is noted in another. This planning sheet is called time and action calendar. Once TNA calendar is made, merchant can easily list down her daily 'to-do list' for the day and start doing work one…

Question: How can I determine require number of lines from the value of order qty, SMV, Working hours and Days in hand to shipment? ... asked Nahid Hasan

OCS's Answer:

To determine no. of sewing lines that are needed to complete an order on time following information is required.

1. Order Quantity
2. Garment SMV
3. Working Hours per day
4. Days in Hand for shipment
5. Line Efficiency and
6. No. of sewing machine installed in each line.

To find out number of sewing line follow below steps.

First step:  Calculate daily production requirement. How many pieces to be produced per day using following formula: Daily production requirement = Order Quantity / Days in Hand

It is considered that days in hand are only for production not up to finishing and packing.

Second Step:  Calculate capacity of your each line.
Line capacity = (No. of machines X Working hours X 60 X line efficiency%) / Garment SMV
Learning curve to be considered here.

Third Step:  Divide daily production requirement by …

Question: How to calculate Basic Pitch Time (BPT), Upper control limit (UCL) and Lower control limit (LCL) that is used in initial line balancing? ... asked by Samana


OCS's Answer:
Basic Pitch Time= (Total Basic minutes of a garment/ Total Number operations)

Where,  Basic minutes for the garment can be calculated using following formula.

Total Basic minutes = Sum of basic minutes of each operation
OR
Total Basic minutes = SAM(1 - Allowance%)

Generally an Operation Bulletin includes one column for calculated machine requirement and another column for actual machine requirement. Calculated machine, which is calculated requirement mostly come in fraction. See diagram-1. But in practical you can't assign fraction of a machine. Secondly you have to allocate correct number of machines to get output as per hourly target. Where work content is high (greater than Pitch) you plan for more that one machine for the same operation. When do you add one machine more and share work with other …

By Rakesh Ralhan

It is important to maintain humidity of a unit not only for quality reason i.e. for operations efficiency or minimizing yarn breakages, but also right humidification helps in maintaining regular weight of a textile material, establishing a healthy environment (less pollution by loose air borne fibres, reducing dust and pollutant suspension which leads to less headache and dry mucous membranes among the employees). Humidification is maintained by simply adding water to the air.
In this article I have first explained various terms used above and later discussed on three methods of managing moisture in knitting floor - Adiabatic cooling, Atomization method and direct water injection.

Operations efficiency: During the knitting operation carriage yarn is pushed over the previously placed yarn thereby increases the abrasion among the yarns which finally leads to yarn breakage. A Precise control of yarn tension for knitting operation, particularly for hosiery products, gener…

Question: How do we calculate margins in apparel costing? ... asked by Shazadi


OCS's Answer:

On apparel manufacturer's point of view, Profit margin is part of FOB . FOB is apparel manufacturer's selling price.

Your question can be answered from two different angles, which are -

How to find profit margin after sales of garments?How much margin to be added to garment cost to determine garment FOB?
Here is my explanation on both questions.

1. How to find profit margin after sales of garments? Standard costing (FOB) formula for any manufactured product (garment) is as following.

Manufacturer's Price (FOB) = Manufacturing cost + Operating expenses + Profit

Where manufacturing costs includes raw material costs, direct and indirect labour cost and overheads. And operating expenses includes administrative overhead like operating general office and departments that are not directly involved with the product manufacturing but essential to the operation of the firm.

So, from the abo…

Question: Where can I learn and get lean manufacturing certificate with training in India? please suggest. I don't mind the duration of the course.  ... asked by Praveen

I have considered this question. Reason -this is third time I have been asked for Lean certification courses in India by our readers. All readers are linked with apparel industry. I have done a quick research on the web and found some organisations those provide Lean Certification through work shops or regular classes. I have listed down 8 such names in a random order for your easy reference. You may find more such organisations.

Question: A rate of 0.78 minutes per piece is standard for a sewing operation. Operator works on a job for a 12 hours day and produces 1750 pieces.
1. How many standard hours does the operator earn?
2. What is the operator efficiency on the day?
3. If the base rate is R7.50 per hour compute the earnings for a day using the 100% time premium plan.
4. What is the direct labour cost per piece using this efficiency?  ... asked by Humbe


OCS's Answer:

To calculate above factors I am giving you formula here and using above information will show you the result one by one.

1. Operator Standard hour earning Standard hours (SAH) earned = (SAM of the operation X pieces produced/60)
So operator SAH earned  = 0.78 X 1750/60 = 22.75

2. Operator Efficiency% Operator efficiency (On-standard) in percentage = (Total SAH Earned  X 100 / Total hours worked)
= 0.78 X 1750X100 / (60 X 12) = 22.75 X100 / 12 = 189.58%

3. Operator Earnings Operator earning depends as per operator employment category. If operato…

Apparel manufacturing is a labour-intensive industry. Factories aim for reducing manufacturing cost through increasing sewing operator efficiency. The purpose of increasing operator efficiency is to reduce labour cost per unit.

How one can improve operator efficiency in a garment factory?
In this post, I have shared 9 ways that can help you increasing operator efficiency.
Tips for increasing sewing operator efficiencyDevelop operator's sewing skills through training on the job. Train them on good movements, correct material handling and better method of performing a job.
Motivate operators by providing incentive based on their performance (efficiency level).
Assign operators to the tasks on what they are skilled. If they are given operations on which the operator is low skilled, they will work on less efficiency. If you don't have an alternative skilled operator for a job, train your existing operator first (point no. 1) to develop his/her skill level.
Improve work methods where…

An operation breakdown of a 5 Pocket Basic Jeans is shown in this article. SVM mentioned here against each operation are just for your reference. SMV may vary according to machine types, workstation layout and equipment used.

Some of the operations are done by automatic machines, like auto pocket hemming (APH), auto pocket attaching (APS) etc. Machines that are used for the operations have been mentioned in the third column (M/c type) of the following table.

This Operation Breakdown has been taken from a Jeans manufacturing company in Vietnam.


Table 1: Operation Breakdown Chart
Sl. no. OperationsM/C Type SMVBack1 pocket hemming APH 0.07 2 pocket o/l 3T O/L