Sewing faster is not the only way to increase the productivity and efficiency. About 20-40% of the working time is lost by the operators idling away for want of work. Planning-related issues stop production due to various reasons like labels not ordered or their supplies delayed, besides the insufficient feeding of cut or embroidered parts, changed style preferences, fabric or material issues, urgent delivery issues, among others. Often planning personnel are fire-fighters, and busy in holding meetings for sorting out the above issues. This results in losing valuable time on both the factory floor and of the senior management as well.
StitchWorld will carry a series of articles detailing many aspects of good ‘planning’ covering preproduction and production functions and the best practices being followed. Team StitchWorld explores what and how should the production be planned.
Planning is important to business success as it determines whether targets such as dates given to buyers, lead times offered and capacity utilizations are achievable before we even start. Proper planning improves the manufacturer’s ability to perform and meet buyers’ expectations like on-time delivery performance, reducing lead times and costs therefore prices, social compliances (too much OT, unauthorized sub-contracting), etc. So ultimately the ability to make a realistic plan and achieve it consistently affects the bottom line profitability of any business!
The Planning Challenge
In today’s apparel business, we all agree that planning is a very demanding and skilful job. It is a fine balancing act between utilizing capacity but not over committing; reducing lead times but still allowing enough time to juggle the plan to cope with unexpected problems; being flexible to changes but not exhausting the staff and killing the factory efficiency through too much “fire-fighting”.
Around 90% of the companies in the Indian Subcontinent do not have a dedicated planning department. In some cases, even if they have a planner, he usually is without much powers and is more a coordinator rather than a planner. In fact, the marketing team and the production team are working in total isolation on their own spread sheets and email as there is no system to help them coordinate.
Planning is a very specialized and complex process, and needs a separate department headed by a GM-level person who can work between sales and production departments. He is the one who takes decisions based on the overall company’s interest, and uses his influence to save the industry from any kinds of problems before they grow2 too big. He also ensures that none of the sides – either the buyer or the production – exert too much influence, else they end up working blind. Often we hear the reason for a late order is – “Nobody told me”, that is communication and coordination problem.
The problem is not really the people, it is the lack of the right system. Plans fail due to several reasons like:
- Lack of speed, seamlessness and commitment between departments and need for customer focus,
- Reprioritization of orders or frequent changing of plan,
- Output as per the plan for the day is not met consistently due to quality issues, viz. reworks, re-screens, etc. or low productivity in new operations due to learning curve or high absenteeism on a particular day or continuous absenteeism by critical operators,
- High attrition which is not predicted and manned for,
- Handling of fabric in sewing becomes difficult because of the nature of fabric, viz. silk, satin, lines, spandex, dobby fabrics, etc. if not predicted during risk analysis and buffered in the plan.
So effective planning has a wide scope and it gets harder.
Scope of Planning in Apparel Industry
An agreed upon basic scope of planning in an apparel business is as follows
- Plan Primary Capacity, i.e. Sewing – Confirm delivery dates based on and efficiency to account for styling, product mix, order size, etc.
- Plan Secondary Capacity – Look at other potential bottlenecks like Embroidery, Printing, Washing and Special Sewing machines, i.e. pocket welt, keyhole buttonhole and profile sewing.
- Critical Path/Time and Action – Pre-production activities often take more than half of the total lead times such as lab-dips sample approvals, etc. It is essential that we allow sufficient time and prioritize the many orders for each month in the correct sequence.
- Materials Requirements and Availability – Raw material and accessories supply should be planned and synchronized in such a way that optimum level of inventory availability is maintained.
- Communicate and Coordinate the plan to all staff, suppliers, sub- contractors. This sounds easy but in reality it is not so.
- Update and Compare Plan vs. Actual Plan – No plan is perfect, so easy identification of failure to meet the plan and fast re-planning is vital.
- Revise Plan and Repeat – Just consider the huge number of variables that a factory has to deal with to successfully plan and take action to deliver on-time. For example if you have 40 styles per month, 5 colours per style, 2 months forward orders. Where there are 30 material items for each style, 20 different pre-production events such as lab- dips, sample approval, fabric tests, 6 production processes (cut, print, embroider, sew, wash pack, etc.) for each style…, you will have to plan, communicate and check the status of at least 12,000 material items, 1,600 pre-production events and 2,400 order/production schedules! And it does not end here as inevitably, there will be changes along the way as, material and trim suppliers change their deliveries, buyers change their priorities, and internal problems arise with production.
Be it merchandising or industrial engineering or production – all department functions are interwoven/interdependent. All of them have to work in cohesion right from the time of booking an order.
Planning for Domestic market is Different – S. Raviee, Factory Manager, Madura Garments Lifestyle Clothing
In domestic business a centralized planning department which coordinates with the brand-supply chain/product team/design team, stores, quality and production ensures –
- getting the BCDs plan for the month,
- planning brandwise/POwise/linewise,
- getting all the trims,
- fabrics organized by coordinating with stores,
- ensuring the inputs to cutting, viz. markers, inspection reports, work orders and shade batching rollwise details, etc.,
- updating wip reports in sap,
- ensure that whatever planned is happening as per the committed date,
- control the wip between departments and within the departments to ensure that the throughput is achieved,
- re-prioritization of orders,
- ensure that the routing,
- costing etc. is updated in sap,
- risk analysis is done for all fabrics/styles in coordination with quality/production/sampling dept,
- technical closure of each and every work order, and
- order completion report for each work order.
The planner should also know what styles can the line make and what will be the volumes they can hit. They should plan for every season and for the year based on the budgeting exercise done every year.
Approvals are in the form of gold seals (garment to be followed in bulk); fabric design approval, etc. is done by the product manager and any deviations from the design are also done by the product manager of that particular brand. Quality issue/ approval decisions are taken by centralized quality department/manufacturing in coordination with brand quality department if the factory coordinates with regard to quality issues with centralized quality department team. Approvals from product manager are also done by quality department in the manufacturing team. Gold seals are approved by the designer/product manager and quality head.
The Success Lies in Pre-Production Control – Piyush R. Vyas, COA, Mandhana Industries Ltd.
Pre-Production Control (PPC) does exist in all organizations – or for smaller owner- driven company, PPC function is in the “mind” of the ruler.
Invariably in macro planning, the organizations go wrong – and accept orders even if they are booked for a certain peak delivery segment – they just apply the thumb rule of 60/90/100 days lead time and commit the delivery to the customer.
For any organization planning department should work at both Macro and Micro Planning levels. Merchandising team – at the point of negotiating an order (for delivery and price) should consult PPC for availability of production slot. PPC is the centre of planning where they are aware of all the orders of the organization. In normal course a merchandiser would commit a 90 days’ delivery to a customer but a PPC would look at the TNA of the merchandiser and then look at the production slots available and accordingly would suggest the best delivery date. This is Macro Planning – an overview of the orders of an organization and the production capacity available.
At Macro level, PPC would look at:
- TNA from the merchandising team – mainly fabric lead time and approval process,
- Raw material IN dates,
- Approvals needed – customer specific,
- Testing (pre-production activities of a customer) and
- Time needed for actual production, printing, embroidery, washing and inspections.
And then quote delivery date to the merchandising team. This process helps the organization to “sell” their capacity optimally.
For most of the pre-production activities, we are dependent on the fabric mills, the trim suppliers, the (whims of) buying agencies and the buyers. And hence we cannot control the TNA – which forms the basis of all activities. It is here that the PPC role comes into play – making best of their efforts by juggling the production plan to ensure the factory is fed and to ensure the deliveries are met. This is Micro Planning – planning on weekly basis, planning on daily basis and monitoring the planning effectively. The pressure is on PPC from all sides, hence there has to be effort from all concerned departments to ensure TNA is adhered to.
In reality, success of a factory to adhere to plan depends on how a manager is able to foresee and handle the buyer/buying agency. A factory which very firm on TNA should WARN the buyer/buying agents of missing the delivery date – one week delay in approval. It does not necessarily mean one week extension in delivery date BUT that the production slot is LOST and hence delivery date has to be reworked and re-quoted. This approach of the factory made the buyer realize the folly of delay and hence all approvals started arriving on time.