It Based Sewing Room Data for Improved Performance of SMEs in Garment Sector

Transcription

1 It Based Sewing Room Data for Improved Performance of SMEs in Garment Sector C. S. Vora, M. G. Solanki, P.B. Jhala, Pavan Godiawala 1 and Verghese Paul 2 Ahmedabad Textile Industry s Research Association, Ahmedabad National Institute of Fashion Technology, Gandhinagar Nirma Institute of Technology, Ahmedabad Abstract Today, the Indian garment industry is facing a fierce competition in global market, where price is order qualifier whereas transparency in system, excellent service, high quality goods, and timely delivery are order winners. This has forced the garment manufacturers to increase productivity, reduce costs, adapt to demand cycle and improve quality. Only those units will survive which are competitive and efficient in all respect. In Indian garment industry, generally recording of machine production and performance data is done manually and there is no systematic flow of data to achieve the required target of production at low cost. So, there is a dire need to automate the flow of information to and from the production floor so that managers and supervisors have immediate access to the information for better planning and control. ATIRA in collaboration with NIFT-G is implementing a micro-controller based single system to interface sewing machines and multi-drop net working to transmit the machine performance and production data to a computer system to store, process and generate reports. These reports will be used by the managers or supervisors to take timely action to increase productivity, to improve logistics and to generate quick response. It is a low cost system with a payback period of about 1 year. Keywords: Information Technology, Sewing Room, Ready Made Garments 1. Introduction Today, the Indian garments industry is facing a fierce competition in global market, where price is order qualifier whereas transparency in system, excellent service, high quality of goods and timely delivery are order winners. Increased competition, product diversification and excellence in service have forced garment manufacturers to increase productivity, to reduce costs, adapt to demand cycle and improve quality. Only those units will survive which are competitive and efficient in all respect. SME s in India are mainly converters/vendors. Their earnings come from only efficient manufacturing. It stands true even for the exporters because of the globalisation, sourcing is easy and efficient. The raw material prices are almost same for every body and higher realisation only come from production house. India RMG industry has specific production manufacturing systems. Majority of manufacturers follows assembly/ line/ throughput manufacturing system. Because of labour intensive, skill based industry it is absolute necessary to have efficient assembly/ line production system. In this case output of one process become the input of other process and delay in any one operation will result in loss of output down the line for all the operations. Higher difference in skill level of the operators, heavy absentisum and high labour turnover rate has turned nicely plan lines in to unpredictable, inefficient production systems. These will lead to decreased machine productivity and the system efficiency, increased throughput time and WIP level, increased delivery time and production cost and What not to make the business unviable and inefficient.

2 There are about 69,000 Indian garment units spread over the entire sub-continent. The industry has two major sectors the knitted sector and the woven sector accounts for the major share of 63,000 units. The average size of the unit is small, not exceeding 15 to 20 machines with an investment of Rs. 15 to 20 lakhs in plant and machinery. The garment export for 1999 was US$ 5.3 billion and it may reach US$ 6.5 billion during the current year. Despite the healthy growth trend, the Indian garment industry is yet to blossom to its full capacity. According to an ICRIER recent study, Indian manufacturer exporter averaged 10.18, 9.12, 6.25, 9.62 and 6.84 pieces/shift in ladies blouses, gents shirts, ladies dresses, ladies skirts and trousers, respectively, against Hong Kong bench-mark of 20.56, 20.87, 20.17, 19.25, and pieces/shift. A NIFT study revealed that for shirts, Indian exporting plants averaged 9.99 pieces/shift as against an average of pieces/shift in plants of other major shirts exporting countries in rest of Asia. There is no exaggeration to say that the accurate and timely information will only permit the decision maker to take quick and right decision no matter what so ever high experience on has. This is the bottom line for the growth of IT in the world. Due to small size and unorganized nature of industry, unfortunately IT integration has not stepped in to the shop floor of RMG in India. There are very few users of the production data generation manufacturing system in India, which is too expensive for SME s. 2. About RMG SME s The number of machines are between 35 to 50 machines /unit. Total investment in plant and machinery is not more then 20 to 30 lakhs. Around 70 to 100 workers are involved. The no of computer is mainly used for payroll and account. One production head looks after the entire system having reasonable educational background. One or two supervisor mostly promoted from operator and not having meteric level education. One person keeps the data of out put of the operators and maintains the register. He reports to the supervisor and his salary cost to the company is Rs.4000/- month. Majority manufacturers are vendors/converters so they take labour cost. These sizes of unit are not organized in all respect and it becomes impossible for them to gather the sewing room production information manually and accurately. 2.1 Present Method In the industry very few production houses are gathering the shop floor information. They are doing it earliest at the end of the day and that too collects the data manually for next day planning the never knows which operator will come tomorrow and which will not. These things will result in poor system efficiency (around 60% to 70%). Apart from that in the majority of the industries this type of planning is not happening and the obvious reason is non-availability of timely information. Usually present Indian RMG industry has postmortem approach. It s been recommended that manager/ supervisor should do the planning thrice in a day for efficient output. For that one should have accurate information of individual machine on the floor. So there is dire need to develop the system, which can reduce the various production losses in Indian garment industry in order to compete global market. Such system is now a days a need for garment industry. 3. Production Losses of SME s Production loss is mainly of two natures in garment industry.

3 3.1 Unavoidable losses Machine set up time. Some material handling. Personnel fatigue time. Inspection and instruction to operator. Delay allowances like rethreading, bobbin change, needle change etc. 3.2 Avoidable Losses Response time for system balancing. Poor floor planning. Reduction in size of bottleneck operation. Frequent machine breakdown. Excessive material handling. Late starts, early stops. low speed, extensive breaks. Absolutely there is no doubt that, the greater benefit if increased machine uptime. The greatest productivity loss comes from idle machines. Unavoidable machine idle time can be controlled and probably reduced. But avoidable machine idle time represents significant opportunity for productivity improvement through management action. If production managers or supervisors get timely high quality information, with which they can routinely assess performance and isolate the problems. These will increase the production. 4. How System will Work 4.1 System Description System consists of several single board microcomputers and a host computer. Each sewing machine has one single board microcomputer. Each microcomputer is connected to the host computer through twisted pair wire. Microcomputer collects data like machine ON time, piece-handling time, piece stitching time, bundle entry and exit time etc. from each station, stores data in memory and on demand from host computer, it offloads the stored data to the host computer. It analyses the data and generates various reports like production, material on shop-floor location of each piece, efficiency of operator, status of job on hand etc. These reports provide valuable and important information to the managers, supervisors and customers at any time. It also provides cost effective logistics of material movement to meet a planned schedule. It also builds up the data bank for generating norms for standard stitching time of various processes. System is divided into three parts. Hardware Networking Software 4.2 Hardware Single Board Microcomputer It is 8-bit micro controller based system as shown in Fig. 1. It has 64KB programme memory to store monitor programme. It has 64KB data memory and 4x4 matrix keyboard for inputting data manually. It has 16 characters, 2 line LCD display-to-display information like on going bundle number, pending bundle number etc. It has got RS485 serial communication port for data trans-receive. It has also Real Time clock to get various event times.

4 16 char, 2 lines LCD display 64K RAM 4x4 Matrix keyboard 80 C535 64K EPROM RS 485 Optical sensor Real time clock Sensor Fig. 1. It is a non-contact optical reflectance type sensor, which senses the status of sewing machine i.e. whether the machine is ON or OFF. A reflective strip is mounted on the wheel of the machine and the sensor, which consists of infrared light transmitter and receiver, is mounted in front of it at 5 mm distance. Whenever reflective strip comes in front of sensor, light transmitted from sensor returns and output voltage level of sensor changes. Thus sensor changes it s output state whenever machine is running above certain speed and maintains it as long as machine is running at that speed. 4.3 Networking Movement of data is handle using RS485 serial communication method. RS485 is a specialized interface that would not be considered standard equipment on today s home PC but is very common in the data acquisition world. RS485 supports 32 drivers and 32 receivers and with repeater it supports another 32 receivers and with repeater it supports another 32 drivers and receiver. (We are talking about bidirectional-half duplex-multi-drop communications over a single twisted pair cable!!) Maximum cable length can be as much as 4000 feet because of the differential voltage transmission system used. Using RS485 technique, single PC is connected to several addressable microcomputer boards sharing cable. Thus it saves cable cost. Since it employs differential voltage transmission technique, data are transmitted efficiently. 4.4 Software Software has been developed in assembly language, which runs on single board microcomputer and keeps track of various events like machine on time, machine off time, piece completion time, piece handling time etc. It stores these events data in data memory and sends stored data to host computer on demand. Software has been developed in VB as well as in Access, which collects data generated at each station at regular interval, analyse the collected data and upgrades various reports. It also allows user for inputting various other data manually. 5. Data Input Name of the operator Machine allocation Operation allocation

5 Production grid diagram Operation wise Piece rate / daily wage/ monthly salary Target out put per operator. 6. Management Information and Reports Generation The system can generate following types of reports: (i) (ii) (iii) (iv) (v) (vi) (vii) (viii) (ix) (x) (xi) (xii) Every 3- minute status of complete sewing floor. Operation wise and product s actual SAM. Operators/ machines daily performance report. Operation / operator/machine wise Needle Down Time and Handling. Development and continuous upgradation of Skill matrix chart. WIP status of the floor. Estimated order completion time at the beginning of order planning. Per day expected output and actual output. In case of piece rate system daily earning of the operator. Order wise detail of direct labour cost. Rejection / rework level machine and operator wise. Back tracing of the garment. 7. System Benefits In flow of information to and from the production floor is automated through more accurate set up standards. (i) (ii) (iii) (iv) (v) (vi) (vii) (viii) (ix) (x) (xi) (xii) (xiii) (xiv) Operator wise/ machine wise/ operation wise/ production data. Accurate and fast product base costing. Improvement in training programmes. Fast identification and removal of Bottleneck operation. Generation of SAM. Easy development of Skill Matrix Chart. Upgraded material handling procedures Total work in process. Machine downtime Differentiation between needle time and material handling time. Per machines productivity and Line balancing. Actual throughput time. Reduce the response time to problem identification. Bench-mark can be developed for the production system. These benefits all contribute to improve production, lower unit production cost and to execute the order timely. 8. Testing and Evaluation First prototype model for eight sewing machines has been fabricated and tested in laboratory at ATIRA. It has been successfully tested and evaluated at NIFT. Shop floor trial is under going at local Garment manufacturing unit. 9. Conclusion Increased competition, product diversification, and excellence in service have forced garment manufacturers to increase productivity, reduce costs, adapt to demand cycle and improve quality. Only those units will survive which are competitive an efficient in all respect. Indian RMG industry has specific

6 production manufacturing systems. Majority of manufacturers follows assembly/ line/ throughput manufacturing system. Because of labour intensive, skill based industry it is absolute necessary to have efficient assembly/ line production system. India RMG industry has specific production manufacturing system. Majority of manufacturers follows assembly/ line/throughput manufacturing system. Because of labour intensive, skill based industry it is absolute necessary to have efficient assembly/line production system. ATIRA in collaboration with NIFT-G has designed and developed a low cost micro-controller based system to interface sewing machines and multi-drop net working to transmit the machine performance and production data to host computer to store, process and generate reports. These reports will be used by the managers or supervisors to take timely action to increase productivity to improve logistics and to generate quick response. First prototype model has been successfully tested and evaluated at NIFT-G. 10. Acknowledgement The authors are grateful to Directors of ATIRA, NIFT-G and NIT for their king permission to present this paper at this conference. We are grateful to Shri Aanal Bhow, Denifine Line, Ahmedabad for his kind permission for conducting field trial. The authors are also thankful to Shri G. L. Patel, ATIRA and NIFT-G for their assistance in project work. We are also grateful to The Industries Commissioner, Govt. of Gujarat for funding the project. Reference Book: 43 rd Joint Technological Conference 2 nd 3 rd March, Jointly Organised by: ATRIA, BTRA, SITRA & NITRA