A production line, also known as an assembly line, refers to each stage a product goes through during the manufacturing process. Production management in a garment factory involves overseeing every step in the production of clothing, from fabric to finished product. This includes design, pattern making, fabric preparation, sewing, ironing, quality control, and packaging and shipping. Regardless of whether it is one order or hundreds, the management standards and SOPs remain the same.
Production lines can be categorized into automated and non-automated. In manufacturing, the ideal of full automation is seen as the only way to consistently achieve profitability. However, in labor-intensive industries like garment manufacturing, even with semi-automated equipment, most companies still rely heavily on manual labor. Therefore, managing the production line involves not only the process stages but also the people, making stable production line management a significant challenge for many garment manufacturers.
The Importance of Production Planning
A good production line starts with solid production planning. This is essential to eliminate obstacles, ensure timely delivery, reduce costs, and make the production line more efficient. Here are some reasons why production planning is crucial in the garment industry:
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Labor, materials, and time are essential production costs. A well-planned production line helps reduce these costs and increase profitability.
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Estimating the operational time of each production line helps determine product output time and delivery schedules, preventing delays.
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Effective production planning assists in material procurement and inventory calculation, providing flexibility to handle small quantities and diverse product outputs.
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Digital dynamic process status can be presented to clients, allowing them to understand the current production stage.
Key Factors in Production Line Planning
Most garment manufacturing companies rely on in-house personnel for production line planning, with execution efficiency being the backbone of production planning. Here are the key considerations when planning:
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Production Line Scheduling and Product Specifications: The trend towards small quantities and diverse products requires constant verification of customer demands for product specifications and styles. Special attention is needed when switching between different products, such as considering how much time is required for laying out materials, cutting, and other production processes, and how many machines are needed to avoid stockpiling.
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Resource Allocation and Staffing: Material resource planning is an essential part of effective production planning. Completing a garment order requires various types of materials. Therefore, it's necessary to check available internal materials, determine how much more is needed, and decide whether to purchase locally or internationally. Similarly, the staffing needs must be calculated to maximize output with minimal personnel on the assembly line.
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Equipment Verification and Order Allocation: Before starting production, each equipment's capacity and operational position must be checked. Every facility has different production capacities. Coordinate with equipment engineers to ensure machines are operating correctly, and perform maintenance or upgrades as needed to meet production schedules.
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Delivery Schedule Management: Based on actual shipping times, production planners must plan daily production hours to match the production schedule. Orders should be allocated based on capacity and deadlines to meet final delivery and on-time delivery.
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Tracking and Execution: A successful garment production plan depends on each department following the production plan. The most critical part of the plan is tracking each department. Regular meetings with department heads should be arranged to check progress. Additionally, fabric inspections should not be overlooked to maintain quality.
Principles of Garment Production Management
The most crucial aspect of production management is the smooth operation of the entire process. Performance management, on-site quality control, and delivery management are vital.
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Performance Management: This can be used for subsequent reviews and improvement plans, such as analyzing the causes of anomalies through input hours, output efficiency, and daily production reports.
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On-site Quality Control: After personnel training is completed, staff engage in garment production. The factory identifies defective products based on sampling or quality control standards and analyzes and optimizes any issues.
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Delivery Management: This is based on performance management and on-site quality control results to ensure products are delivered on time.
Challenges in Garment Production Line Management
Many manufacturing industries face the challenge of producing small quantities and diverse products. Daily production lines may encounter unexpected situations that disrupt the original production plan, which is a significant challenge in modern production management.
Customers in the textile industry demand material innovation, sustainable production, quick response, and fast production schedule control, making the construction of high-intelligence manufacturing a necessity. Currently, the challenges faced by the textile and garment industry include:
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Difficulty in Monitoring Production Progress: Production information and reports rely on manual integration.
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Isolated Equipment Information: Various equipment cannot communicate data.
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Difficulties in Managing Production and Equipment Anomalies: Relying on manual reporting and management, making it hard to monitor production uniformly.
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Challenges in Calculating Production Costs: Costs of raw materials, energy consumption, etc., rely on different systems and manual calculations.
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Difficulty in Finding Optimal Parameters: Production parameters and quality inspections depend on manual experience.
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Difficulty in Reflecting Real Production Capacity: Equipment and production utilization rates rely on manual calculations.
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System Management Challenges: Multi-process production, multiple equipment brands, and multiple system data are difficult to integrate.
Technological Development Trends
With technological advancements, there have been significant developments in garment production technology:
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Application of AI Technology in Quality Inspection: We have introduced AI-assisted technology in fabric quality inspection, improving accuracy and efficiency while reducing human error.
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Application of Automated Equipment: In the finished product inspection and shipping stages, using automated equipment such as needle detectors (for detecting broken needles and metals), scanners (for recording sizes or colors), reject machines (for removing defective products), and unboxing machines, which can be integrated into an automated assembly line, reduces manual intervention and increases production efficiency. Automated assembly lines are also more environmentally friendly, reduce manual interference, and minimize issues caused by staff turnover, such as skill gaps or production interruptions, while simplifying training.
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Real-time Production Data Display: Real-time display technology is very suitable for multinational or multi-country factories, allowing the production supply orders of the factory to be seen at a glance. This not only improves management efficiency but also makes global supply chain management more convenient and transparent.
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Environmental Protection and Sustainability: Automated assembly lines can reduce manual interference, lower the risk of skill gaps or production interruptions due to staff turnover, and make training easier, further reducing environmental burdens.
Benefits of Production Line Transparency
Challenges in the production site include not only unexpected situations but also many external factors that cause management difficulties. Making the production process transparent and digitizing all data enables real-time understanding of production process data, effectively improving management efficiency.
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Management: Accurately grasp production status, quickly eliminate abnormal downtime, and keep production line machine information updated in real-time, optimizing databases for large-scale data analysis.
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Scheduling: Digital information, public and transparent, makes scheduling clearer. Optimized scheduling centralizes factory operating hours, coordinates dispatch, avoids ineffective production hours, and improves production efficiency.
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Cost: Real-time grasp of production information provides appropriate energy supply, avoiding excess energy supply and consumption. Automation and intelligent production technologies streamline personnel.
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Quality: Machine connections enable the system to produce real-time data. Data tracking identifies optimal parameters and improvement methods.
Conclusion
Digitization is essential for assisting in the management operations of the production line. Not only does it make operational information visible, but transparent production also helps management identify abnormalities early and find solutions. Textile and garment factories have complex processes, various equipment brands, and difficult-to-integrate system data. Transparent production line planning can effectively reduce extra costs, streamline personnel, facilitate process tracing, and allow customers to monitor production quality and delivery times in real-time online.
Oshima is committed to intelligent manufacturing. Through virtual and hardware integration technology, some equipment has been digitized, not only connected to the database but also eliminating isolated machine operations, with data visualized and real-time. The ultimate goal is to help customers establish real-time information to better control production and reduce waste. To learn more about smart manufacturing solutions, please contact us.