Efficiency Levels of Major Apparel Manufacturing Clusters in India

You may be measuring the performance of your factory daily. Because you believe "present performance standard can be improved only if it is being measured." 

But do you know how other factories are performing? 

What is the average efficiency level of different parts of India? And what would be your efficiency benchmark to move to the next level of performance standard? 

Many factories do not measure their performance level in terms of operational efficiency and other major KPIs. You will get answers to all the above questions in this article.

Last year I personally observed the performances of 10 factories in the National Capital Region (NCR) of India and analysed the monthly efficiency (sewing section) of those factories. Efficiency is within a range of 30% to 45%. One of them is exceptionally doing well at 60%. When I looked into the daily line efficiency of the same factories, lines work up to 65% efficiency. 

But when data is summarised to calculate monthly line efficiency it goes down below 40%. I have come up with many reasons for the low performance of the factories. A few reasons are longer line setting time, pick and valley of orders during the year, production planning issues, etc.

I have also attached a table of Technopak analysis on efficiency levels of major apparel manufacturing clusters in India against a benchmark factory. 

The following information may help you to understand the average performance level of Indian apparel factories.

Region / Cluster	Efficiency
Delhi / NCR	36% - 42%
Ludhiana	40% - 45%
Bengaluru and Chennai	40% - 45%
Tirupur	42% - 50%
Average Indian Factory	47%
Benchmark Factory (approx)	56%
Source: Technopak Analysis

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