Question: Please advise how we can control the rejection percentage from cut to ship. What is the way/ procedure/system that can help us improve our rejection percentage? Please suggest. ... asked by Raju Singh
In garment manufacturing, it will not be a surprise if we find a few rejected garments after shipment. The primary reason for defective garments - manufacturers believe that garments are soft goods and non-repairable defects may occur due to low-quality raw materials or faulty process, or employee casual behavior. However factory must have checkpoints to control this issue.
There is no ready-made solution that can reduce the rejection percentage overnight. Each order is unique. But I can suggest to you how to handle this issue and bring down the rejection rate.
Do I need to explain how to calculate the rejection percentage of an order?
Here it is. The garment rejection rate is calculated using the following formula.
Rejection Rate = (Number of rejected garments in an order/ Total cut quantity in that order) X 100.
You may get a lot of rejected garments after shipment. You are termed as rejected because those garments can’t be repaired by any means. You want to reduce the percentage of rejections in your future shipments. To reach your goal, follow my recipe: You need to read and act as you read to get the result.
- Collect all rejected pieces. All means all garment pieces that were not shipped due to certain defects and flaws. Normally, the number of rejected garments in an order is equal to the cut quantity minus the shipped quantity. After collecting all rejected garments, keep them in a separate place for checking.
- Call the garment checkers who understand what defects are and can find why those garments are rejected.
- Ask them to diagnose all rejected and defective garments. Defect analysis can be done in two ways: Firstly, you have a quality system in place where checkers check garments and make reports during checking, two, after getting rejected pieces rejected by the final checker (who doesn’t make a report), do fault finding in those rejected garments.
- From your diagnosis, pick the highest occurring defects (top 5 defects) and do an exercise on finding root causes of those defects generations. Bring your quality personnel, production, and technical personnel to this exercise.
- Once you have found the list of root causes for each defect, your next task is to find a way to stop making those defects again by eliminating the root causes. I think this task will not be very difficult for you, as you are in this business and understand how the error occurred. In case you don’t find the way to cure root causes, you need to seek help from your colleagues or experts.
- You found some solutions. Great! Make standard procedures to stop generating the same defects during processing in the future. Implement it. See the result is your next shipment.
- This is the way to improve the cut-to-ship ratio and reduce the rejection percentage rate. I believe - corrective action is the only remedy for stopping further defect generation
Best practices to control defect generation within your factory
- Make the workplace clean – From fabric store to cutting to sewing to washing and finishing.
- Place a quality control system in place. I mean a sufficient number of checkers, trained checkers, checkers making reports while checking, analysis of reports, and taking action based on the quality check reports. Now, mobile applications are available for capturing quality inspection data.
- Conduct a training program for the checkers on how to check a piece correctly to capture defective pieces. Train them to make garment checking reports.
- Run a quality awareness program for your employees.
- Quality standards must be understood by each employee, and everybody has to work to meet the quality goal.
- No low-standard work should be accepted by the following department.
- In the sewing line, don’t allow operators to keep bundles open, and each bundle must be completed before forwarding to the next. It will help you track missing pieces. As per my experience, operators throw pieces under tables when they make a mistake or receive defective (incomplete) garments from the previous operator. Nobody keeps track of these missing pieces until you find a shortage of garments in finishing.
- Set standard operating procedures (SOPs) for each task performed by your employees. SOP for the quality control system for each department.
- Set an audit team to audit your quality system at a regular interval.
- Implement 5S in your factory.