Traditionally operated garment industries are facing problems like low productivity, longer production lead time, high rework and rejection, poor line balancing, low flexibility of style changeover etc. These problems were addressed in this study by the implementation of lean tools like cellular manufacturing, single piece flow, work standardization, just in time production etc.After implementation of lean tools, results observed were highly encouraging. Some of the key benefits entail production cycle time decreased by 8%, number of operators required to produce equal amount of garment is decreased by 14%, rework level reduced by 80%, production lead time comes down to one hour from two days, work in progress inventory stays at a maximum of 100 pieces from around 500 to 1500 pieces. Apart from these tangible benefits operator multi-skilling as well as the flexibility of style changeover has been improved.
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1.1 History of Lean
During II world war, the economic condition of Japan was heavily destroyed. Due to this there was scarcity of fund resulting in limiting access to corporate finance. In this situation, neither Toyota was able to set up a mass production system like their American counterparts, nor it was possible to layoff the employees to reduce their cost due to legislation. Anyhow Toyota had to devise a new system for reducing costs to sustain in the market. So they decided to produce a small batch of products which would reduce inventories; it means they would need less capital to produce the same product.
But this is obstructed by the practical difficulty of changing tools and production lines frequently. To cope with this problem they started making multipurpose tooling systems in their machines and trained their employees in changeover time reduction methods. At the same time, Toyota realized that investing in people is more important than investing in bigger size machinery and continues employee training throughout the organization. This motivates all employees and they are more open to the improvement process and everyone started giving their input to the company.
In this way, short production runs started by Toyota became a benefit rather than a burden, as it was able to respond much more rapidly to changes in demand by quickly switching production from one model to another (Drew, Blair and Stefan, 2004, p. 5-6). Toyota didn’t depend on the economies of scale production like American companies. It rather developed a culture, organization and operating system that relentlessly pursued the elimination of waste, variability and inflexibility. To achieve this, it focused its operating system on responding to demand and nothing else. This in turn means it has to
be flexible; when there are changes in demand, the operating system is a stable workforce that is required to be much more skilled and much more flexible than those in most mass production systems. Over time, all these elements were consolidated into a new approach to operations that formed the basis of lean or Toyota Production System.
1.2 Definition of Lean
The popular definition of Lean Manufacturing and the Toyota Production System usually consists of the following (Wilson, 2009, p. 29-30).
1. It is a comprehensive set of techniques which when combined allows you to reduce and eliminate the wastes. This will make the company leaner, more flexible and more responsive by reducing waste.
2. Lean is the systematic approach to identifying and eliminating waste through continuous improvement by flowing the product or service at the pull of your customer in pursuit of perfection (Nash, Poling and Ward, 2006, p. 17)
According to (Drew et al., 2004, p 25) the lean operating system consists of the following:
· A lean operating system follows certain principles to deliver value to the customer while minimizing all forms of loss.
· Each value stream within the operating system must be optimized individually from end to end.
· Lean tools and techniques are applied selectively to eliminate the three sources of loss: waste, variability and inflexibility.
Thus the organization who wants to implement lean should have strong customer focus,should be willing to remove wastes from the processes they operate on daily basis and should have the motivation of growth and survival.
1.3 Objective of Lean
· To meet customer demand on time by eliminating non value added work from the process
· To minimize the work in process inventory
· To create flexibility of style changeover
· To reduce rework percentage
· To create a pool of multi-skilled operators who can respond quickly for changing style
1.4 Lean Principles
The major five principles of Lean are as follows (Burton T. and Boeder, 2003, p. 122):
Principle 1: Accurately specify value from customer perspective for both products and services.
Principle 2: Identify the value stream for products and services and remove non-value adding waste along the value stream.
Principle 3: Make the product and services flow without interruption across the value stream.
Principle 4: Authorize production of products and services based on the pull by the customer.
Principle 5: Strive for perfection by constantly removing layers of waste.
To be continue .
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By,
MD Shakhawat Hossain
B.sc in Textile Engineer
Executive of Marketing
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