Productivity improvement in readymade garments industry: a case study

Abstract

In case of readymade garments (RMG) industries, productivity improvement is a vital to decrease the production lead time as well as manufacturing cost. For productivity improvement it becomes essential to decrease the waiting time, process bottlenecks and increase the production line efficiency. Time study and line balancing are effective techniques to reduce the operation time and improve the productivity. Time study was performed in a furniture industry to increase its production efficiency and reduce the operation time and associated cost. Assembly line balancing technique was also used in some manufacturing industries for single production line to identify and remove the nonvalue added activities and increase the productivity. But, it becomes essential to apply time study and line balancing techniques for the number of production lines of various products in small and large RMG industries to improve its productivity. In this work, time study is performed on four different products of RMG industries and production lines are balanced through the distribution of works among the work stations by line balancing. Thus, new production layouts are modeled with the balanced capacity combining both modular line and traditional manufacturing system together. In new production systems, 6-64% production lead time is decreased for 27-78% reduction of waiting time, 10-179% improvement of labor productivity and 6-130% improvement of machine productivity for four products. Possible problem areas in the industries are identified by fishbone analysis and strength, weakness, opportunities and threats for productivity improvement were also identified by SWOT analysis. This research report provides pragmatic guidelines for the garments manufacturers to improve their industrial productivity and capacity by applying some essential tools like time study, line balancing and fishbone analysis.