Textiles and Garments

A. In addition to garments, we market intermediary products like yarn and fabric. The available manufacturing capacity of the plant was shared between external orders ((yarn/fabric customers in the market) and internal orders(finished garments).In the past, this sharing system, and the inability to synchronize various items of raw material needed for completing orders was creating disruption (erratic cycles of starvation and overloading) in flow of yarn and fabric required for garment orders. So, in spite of high WIP, expensive finite scheduling software, and frequent expediting meetings, the lead-time was high and highly variable; orders were not being dispatched on time.

Like others in the textile and garment business, we tried to solve the problem by under-loading the plant. This dented profitability.

A. Our due date delivery performance was inconsistent. Airfreight and penalties, lack of affirmative action to grow the business due to inconsistent supply was causing considerable losses. Additionally, customers had been consolidating their supply chains and had been threatening to pull out unless we delivered. To survive and succeed in this very tough business, we knew we had to improve operations in a very short time. With the help of TOC, we aimed to enhance performance (and profitability) by focusing on reliability and on shortening lead-times. At the same time, we wanted to extract , more output from same capacity.

A. The most important change is that now our entire supply chain is realigned to ensure reliability of customer orders. Output improvement in the plant became the welcome side effect!

We completely revamped our operations.

First, the focus of the company was changed. Amongst our three lines of business, garment manufacturing and supply became top priority. Fabric sales was discontinued; yarn was made to subordinate to the garmenting requirements. Some capacity was set aside exclusively for strategic yarn customers.

Second, WIP was capped at a reduced level (compared to the level in the months before implementation) to ensure that there were few orders on the shop floor. This forces the departments to complete work on the orders in hand. This enabled planning team to be conservative and spared some capacity buffer, while allowing execution team to aggressively use any unused capacity and maximize output.

Third, to discipline expediting efforts, a clear and visual priority system was put in place for the benefit of shop floor and vendors.

Our core issues arose from the fact that various departments were blind to how local decisions were affecting garment orders. So, these three processes, which define the boundaries within which local considerations (for productivity) can prevail (without delaying orders), ensures that operations always work on correct orders.

A. Now, customers receive their orders on time (and in full assortment) with a considerably reduced lead-time. This motivates them to continuously increase our share of business. We’ve halved the lead-time for key customers’ garment orders. We’ve accomplished this reduction in the existing system without hampering other normal lead-time orders.

Further, the shop floor exigencies used to consume a major share of senior management time. Now the system is largely working on “Auto Pilot” with very little intervention needed from senior management. This has released our bandwidth significantly and we are now able to focus on the future. We have now been able to invest and strengthen and reap the benefits of an enhanced Product Design & Development Studio with design support centre in Europe.

India’s edge as a low-cost supplier is blunting. By building agility into our operations, we aim to become a manufacturer of choice for global fashion garments businesses.