Managing Repair Operations in a Production Floor (Garment Manufacturing)

In the garment manufacturing stage, getting defective garments are common while checking a lot or inspecting an order. So, there is a repair process in the workflow. A sewing operator needs to repair or mend the defective garments when they get them for repair.

To find defective garments, checkers check the garment lots and detect the defective pieces in the checking process and inspection stage. To manage your repair operation, you need to set up a checking process, detecting defective garments, sending defective garments for repair work, and get the piece repaired. 

Let's understand how a garment factory can manage its repair work.

A factory can check garments in the following stages.

• At the checkpoints inside the line (fixed workstation)
• Checking garments prior to assembly section
• Checking garments at the end of each part completion
• Checking garments at the end of the sewing line
• Checking garments at the finishing stage

Also, read quality checkpoints in garment production

How the defective pieces sent back to the operator for repair work?

• Collect all the defectives garments and send for repair in a lot (number of pieces after the certain interval)
• Sent piece by piece whenever a defective piece found by a checker.
• Once get a single defect and sent for repair first, instead of checking the whole garment (rest of the parts checking will be done later and it will be followed in the cycle).
• Check all the whole garments, mark all defects on the garment then send for repair. All stitching repairs can be done by a single operator for all the defective stitching

Repairing Process

The defect is made by an operator by mistake, the checker detects it. Now the question is who will repair the defective operation if it is related to the sewing operation. The repair can be done in one of the following ways.

• by a repair operator (in the repair section)
• the defective garment is sent to the same line and to the same operator who stitched the garment first time for the specific operation
• the repair can be done by a different operator from the same sewing line (as the availability of the operators).

---

Related post: How to improve apparel product quality

---

Conclusion:

The above details are explained based on checking and repair work followed in assembly lines (PBS). For the other production system, a similar method can be used with little modification.

You can make a matrix with these three criteria and prepare an SOP for repair work in your factory. At what stage the garment will be checked, and defective pieces detected – When the garment will be sent for repair – Who will repair the defective piece.

You can manage the repair work in your factory in a better way by using technology solutions. That would keep tracking of movement of the repair work - count how many hours it takes for fixing the defect.