Controlling production in a garment manufacturing unit involves key actions that enable the factory to maintain benchmark performance. A controlled production floor directly results in: meeting daily production targets, producing desired quality garments, and keeping production costs and other factors under control. Other crucial production factors include reduced style changeover time, minimized lost time, and eliminated excess overtime. Better control of your sewing lines improves resource utilization and line performance. Production control also encompasses understanding and solving problems through data analysis.
While the definition and objectives of production control are straightforward, implementation can be challenging. In this article, I will outline the fundamental steps to help your factory control production at the floor level.
Production Control vs. Production Improvement: Understanding the Difference
It's important to note: Production improvement and production control are two separate things. Where production improvement is a necessity and choice for many companies, production control is the action.
Traditionally, line supervisors were solely responsible for controlling production and meeting daily targets. However, the modern approach emphasizes teamwork, involving the IT team, industrial engineers, the MIS team, and production supervisors. For effective data analysis and data-based decision making, a robust system is paramount.
Controlling production is often more critical than solely chasing productivity and efficiency improvements. You must have an alert mechanism that updates production teams on areas to focus and identifies problematic areas for a smooth production flow.
Most companies now recognize the importance of data for informed decision-making, from performance measurement to worker payroll calculation. The days of relying solely on manual data collection and report preparation for production performance and inventory insights are long past.
To effectively control production, a multifaceted approach is required. Below, I've outlined the top 6 essential areas to consider for managing your production floor and sewing lines on a daily basis.
6 Key Areas to Control Production on Your Factory Floor
1. Check Operator Attendance at the Start of the Day
You must estimate the current day's production and adjust planned output and capacity based on manpower availability. Accurate production target estimation requires line-wise headcount of machine operators (MOs) and workers. Furthermore, verifying that the required MOs are available on each line and assigned to their planned jobs is crucial. Early insight allows line supervisors to allocate jumpers (floater operators) to cover absent personnel promptly.
Manually monitoring every operator's start time in the morning is impractical. Late starts lead to lost minutes until machines are running and sewing commences. For accurate MO attendance data, consider implementing a real-time shop floor control system.
Employee attendance and absence reports are essential for historical data, enabling accurate payment and bonus calculations, and validating operator daily efficiency based on actual working hours. A software system is the most effective way to maintain secure and accurate historical employee records.
Control on manpower every day morning is the first step towards production control.
2. Capture and Analyze Hourly Production Data
Are you still relying on whiteboards for hourly line output data, recording production quantities from operators' notes? This approach is insufficient for effective sewing line control. You need operation-wise hourly production quantities. Automated display of hourly production by line and section is highly recommended.If individual production tracking isn't feasible, collect production data for each section of a line or focus on critical operation output. Technology exists to collect data directly from sewing workstations and generate various reports automatically, significantly improving floor-level production visibility and data accuracy. Focus on displaying production data by operation, sorted by operation sequence.
Hourly production data empowers production control by allowing hourly comparison of produced quantity against target and cumulative (so-far) targets. Clearly visible deviations from the target alert supervisors and the production team, prompting action to accelerate production in subsequent hours. If increasing production isn't possible, you'll identify which process is slowing the hourly production rate. Displaying "Production vs. Target Production" on an LCD screen, if possible, can further enhance visibility.
Automating production data and segmenting cumulative (so-far) production into hourly slots provides a better understanding of hourly production rates, revealing trends from hour 1 to hour 10. RFID-based real-time technology can automate data capturing from operator workstations, reporting pieces stitched per operator and per operation.
Having real-time production data > improved visibility > Bottleneck identification > possible to reduce bottleneck and push for production effort > controlled production
3. Collect Non-Productive Time and Eliminate It
Don't just count production and shift hours. Instead, segregate worker hours into productive (on-standard) and non-productive categories. This reveals the true efficiency of your machine operators. A major reason for production line efficiency loss is the prevalence of non-productive and idle time within total working hours. To reduce non-productive time, you must first measure it. Subsequent actions to eliminate it will result in improved line productivity and achievement of daily production goals. Lost time acts as a "speed breaker" to an operator's working pace.A real-time production tracking system allows machine operators to report lost time when they are not working or lack work to stitch. Non-productive times, such as machine breakdowns requiring mechanic intervention, must be handled promptly. An alert mechanism for machine mechanics can be utilized to ensure faster attendance to machine breakdown issues.
Repeated issues with machine downtime or non-productive times? Practice root cause analysis to find the root cause of the problem and work on fixing it.
RELATED READ | Real-Time Production Management: Driving Digitalization in Apparel Manufacturing
4. Balance the Line Based on Actual Production and WIP Data in Real-Time
Tracking hourly reports for all operations in a line provides an easy understanding of work volume throughout the line. Visualizing this data with a line chart or bar graph clearly reveals whether your line is balanced. The following thing you must do is balance the line by feeding operators with bundles where WIP is below the required quantity and reduce the WIP from the bottleneck workstation.A system can suggest which operators can be utilized for bottleneck operations. A graphical chart displaying operation-wise production and expected production from each operation provides essential information for predicting line output. Understanding this data empowers you to increase production.
Imagine a system that provides expected production from each operator (per operation) by the end of the shift. Leverage technology that aids factories in real-time line balancing and delivers accurate floor-level production insights.
5. Check Availability of WIP
Are you concerned about maximizing machine operator (MO) utilization? This is possible by maintaining sufficient Work-in-Progress (WIP) at each workstation. All operators must have ample WIP to keep sewing machines running. Maintaining WIP at both line level and operation level is crucial.WIP between operations can be controlled through line balancing, as discussed previously. However, WIP at the sewing line's loading points requires separate and proactive management. Knowing the daily capacity of each production line for specific styles allows you to plan cutting accordingly and ensure materials are ready on the production floor for all lines. Plan for future (next-day) loading. A clear loading plan (by style) enables effective planning for other related processes.
While you understand the need, how can you receive status updates and alerts regarding WIP stability across processes? Only a robust software system and application can help you achieve this. A production progress report is ideal for tracking order-wise production and WIP movement through data analysis. Additionally, production scheduling and cut loading plans can be automated through software.
6. Check Line Efficiency and Achievements
Just as you monitor production volume, consistently check the line efficiency of your factory floor. To effectively review line performance, you need to measure line efficiency daily. Next, compare the daily line efficiency against the target efficiency. If the line efficiency meets the target, your production is on track. However, if line efficiency falls below the target, immediately work to identify the reasons and support line supervisors and operators in achieving the daily target.Furthermore, checking and analyzing individual operator efficiency helps identify low performers. Empower operators by ensuring they know their daily and current efficiency percentages. This transparency can be a powerful self-motivating factor, encouraging operators to maintain performance at target efficiency. This approach is highly effective in controlling operator performance.
Again, it's clear that data is essential for checking and controlling line efficiency. How do you achieve this? Manually collecting data from lines and preparing reports on spreadsheets is no longer a viable option. Instead, production and efficiency data collection and report preparation must be easy and automated. The solution lies in an application that can collect production information and present calculated efficiencies tailored to your needs. Robust software systems can securely store historical efficiency and operator skill data, allowing you to easily track efficiency trends by day, month, or quarter.
As a next step, you can proactively work on improving line efficiency and achieve your goals consistently with system-assisted data and analytics.
Concluding Note
In summary, effective production floor management and control necessitate a real-time production management system. Such a system empowers factories to capture operator data, generate key performance indicator (KPI) reports, send automated alerts for breakdowns, and predict bottlenecks in production lines.While fashion brands and top-tier manufacturers are leveraging AI tools for business process productivity improvements, for most manufacturers, AI tools remain optional. However, real-time production tracking and data accuracy are absolutely fundamental.
After a whole day’s effort and hard work, you must check the output and performance. Not only at the end of the day, anytime of the day, you need to know the line performance, you should have data ready for you on the monitor screen.
Call to Action
If you're ready to gain precise control over your factory's production through automated reporting and real-time insights into manpower, production, WIP, and non-productive time, I invite you to contact me. With 14 years of experience implementing such systems across various countries, I would be delighted to provide a comprehensive overview of a real-time production management solution tailored to your needs.