Need Ideas for Improvement Projects – Check This List

Just doing daily activities is not enough. You need to do some extra work to improve the process. For improving productivity or product quality.

I know, many industrial engineers used to do improvement projects one after another. You may be already implemented many improvement projects. Now you are looking for the next one.

ideas for improvement projects

You might be done a good project in the last year – but the same improvement project would not interest you and others for a long time – we want something new, interesting, and acknowledgeable work.

Don’t stick with one project. Move ahead and become more creative and bring new ideas. To continue doing good projects we need inspiration. Some ideas may not be new to the garment industry - but it can be new to your factory. Or you can repeat a project work that has been done long back in your factory but currently not in practice.

Source of improvement project ideas

Here is a list for getting new ideas for improvement projects.

1. Talk to your friends who are working in the other garment companies as IE or in the other departments. Check with them what kind of development project they are doing. Keep discussing what is happening in the garment industry - their productivity benchmark and quality level. From the casual discussion with friends, you can find a fresh idea for doing an improvement project.

2. Attend seminars and workshops: If you get a chance, participate in the seminars and workshops that discuss topics related to the garment industry, garment manufacturing, process improvement, system, technology, latest trends, etc. 

3. Find fresh ideas by reading trade journals. Many apparel trade journals are available online. You can read articles and news on fibre2fashion.com, textiletoday.com, and apparelresources.com.

4. Read the published internship reports online. Students do project work during their summer/winter internship and publish their project report on digital libraries. In the students' internship report, they share their work, working method and project findings. You can refer to those for project topics and consider working on those if you find interesting ideas. Students' internship report may not be professionally written - so what? You just need to skim the project report and need to pick the idea.

The best digital libraries and online platforms for finding published project work are -
  • Academia - This is a web platform where students and faculty members publish internship report, papers.
  • Slideshare – Presentations and project reports
  • Scribd – A digital library. A place where you can find many internship reports.
  • OCS – you can follow and read my article and explore OCS to get new project ideas.
5. An improvement project can be installing an automatic sewing machine in your factory for a specific operation. May be exploring the usability of the new machine. Developing new machine guide and attachment.

6. Follow industry trends. If you don’t find time for reading project reports, trade journals – know about the latest buzzword in the apparel industry. 


 

Conclusion

We all are innovative and creative to some extent. But at some point, we face challenges in finding new ideas. How long one can be creative? You may think out of the box and get inspired by Google’s projects or Elon Mask’s project. But all big ideas can’t be implemented on the shop floor. Your project needs to be relevant to your factory, to your business and product. 

At the start, choose an improvement project that does not require much investment. Later, you can pick projects that involve some expenses. You may need to cost-benefit analysis of the project for fund approval. One idea from my side – you can work on the sustainability of your implemented projects.

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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