Following are the common formulas those are used by garment industry professionals.

Formula#1:
Daily Line Target = (Total working minutes in a day X No. of operators in a line X Line eff %) /Garment
SAM

Formula#2:
Individual operator target = (Total working minutes in a day X line efficiency %) /Operation SAM
Formula#3:
Individual operator Efficiency% = (units produced X operation SAM X 100)/Total minutes worked

While you are developing skill matrix for sewing operators, you need measure individual performance.
Secondly, if you plan to start performance based incentive scheme for individual operator, measuring
individual operator efficiency is essential.

Formula#4:
Line Efficiency% = (Line output X garment SAM X 100)/ (Number of operators X minute worked in day)

Note: include helpers and worker doing manual operations in case you have included SAM of those
operations.

Formula#5:
Machine Productivity: Line output / No. of machine used

Machine productivity is measured in production per machine per shift day.

Formula#6:
Labor Productivity = Line output / No. of total manpower (operators +helpers)

Formula#7:
Line WIP (work in process) = Total pieces lie on the line for a particular order line
WIP of the line of an order is equal to Total pieces loaded till date minus Total piece out till date.

Formula#8:
Standard Time = (Observed time X observed rating) + Allowances

Allowances – Relaxation allowance, contingency allowance

Formula#9:
Machine utilization% = (Actual Machine running Time X 100) / Time available

Formula#10:
Cost per minute = Total cost incurred in labor / Total available working minute in a day X no. of labors

Formula#11:
Production Cost per unit = Total cost incurred in production in a day/ no. of garment produced in a day

Formula#12:
Man to Machine ratio = Total manpower of the factory / Total no. of sewing machines (utilized)

Suitable for printing and hanging near your work space when you need to see it most…
Two questions are -

1. What is the application of Industrial Engineering in apparel industry?

2. How Industrial Engineering concepts are used by apparel manufacturers?
What is the application of Industrial Engineering in apparel industry?
Industrial Engineering concepts are used in garment manufacturing to fulfill the following purposes -
 Monitoring production floor and having better control over the production floor
 Improving processes and improving method of working to increase factory's overall performance and
standardized garment manufacturing processes
Overall application of Industrial engineering can be explained better by describing common tasks of the IE
department. Common tasks of an IE department are as following but not limited to these
 Work measurement of sewing operations, cutting room jobs and finishing jobs
 Setting standard time for sewing operations and manual operations
 Style analysis and conducting research and development (R&D) of the styles
 Improving method of work and design workstation
 Production planning and factory capacity determination
 Work aids development
 Work station designing and machine layout planning
 Labor cost estimation
 Performance measuring of workers
 Training of workers (sewing operators)
 Designing incentive scheme and calculating incentive for sewing operators
 Setting line production target of the sewing lines and chasing production from line supervisors and
operators
 Application of lean tools

How Industrial Engineering Concepts are used by apparel manufacturers?

Factories those are using IE techniques mostly have a complete IE set up (department). An IE department
consists of an IE managers (in-charge) and Industrial Engineers and juniors engineeTk. The strength of IE
team widely varies based on the maturity level of the department and on the focus of application of
Industrial Engineering. Without having enough team members, an IE department cannot work effectively.

Industrial Engineers are utilized in the following ways but not limited to those -
Factories apply all or few of the above listed functions to
 Assist line supervisors by preparing resource requirement plan (machines and equipment and
manpower), line setting and line balancing etc.
 assist production managers in target planning and production planning,
 help merchandiser and marketing personnel by providing labor cost and production lead time,
 help HR department by providing operator performance level, and help in operator recruitment
 prepare MIS reports and show management team product status on daily basis and alert management
team if their attention is needed
 set up standards operating procedures for new tasks, new process required for ever changing fashion
products

More than the regular jobs, IEs are also responsible for thinking of continuous process improvement.
Initiation of new projects and implementation of the project that has been undertaken, showing the
improvement opportunity within the factory to management team. Engineers are involved in performance
improvement tasks of the cutting department and finishing department.
IE Work Flow Chart
Still if you like to know about IE procedures, it can describe with a work flow. Most common tasks of an IE
are presented in an order in the following.

Style analysis --> Make operation breakdown --> Thread consumption calculation--> Making line layout on
paper --> Select m/c and equipment --> arrange guides and attachment -->Planning for production target -->
Setting line when new style is loaded --> Do line balancing --> Record production data --> Make production
reports --> Report to higher management (P.S. This is just an example of work flow).

Most IE tasks are aimed to make better work flow, improve utilization of resources, increasing factory
performance, and reducing production cost. As IE department get matured in a factory, it includes more
tools to help production team to increase the factory performance.

Work flow chart of IE department is shown in the following chart.

Implementation Procedure of IE Tools
IE procedure can be explained as the procedure of using Industrial Engineering tools. To learn how
Industrial Engineering tools are used by IEs in garment industry read on the following articles.

 Time Study Procedure

 Standard Minute Estimation Procedure
 Operation Bulletin Preparation Procedures
 Operator Training Procedures
 Sewing Operator Recruitment Procedure
 Thread Average Calculation.

There are two ways to find Cost of Manufacturing (CM) for a particular style/order.
1. Based on Standard Time (SAM) of the product
2. Based on Daily Production Average

1. CM Calculation Based on Standard Time (SAM) of Product Making

To get better accuracy in cost estimation one should prefer this procedure. But too many small size
companies no such resources available to measure product SAM and data for the following parameter Tk.
Following parameters are essential for cost calculation in this method.

1. Product SAM: Standard time of the garment. Standard time of a garment is measured by
using Time Study and using synthetic data.
2. Target Efficiency: Target efficiency percentage is at what % you are expecting running a
specific product and order quantity.
3. Operating Cost per day/machine - Operating cost is factory running cost. Operating costs
are all cost incurred to run the business other than material cost. Calculate monthly operating cost
and then calculate daily operating cost. Calculate per machine operating cost.
Formula:
Cost of Manufacturing = (Operating cost per day per machine* SAM)/(Target Efficiency% * Working hours
* 60)

In the following table an example is shown for calculating manufacturing cost using SAM and Daily
Production figure.

In the above example, garment SAM is 21 minute, target efficiency 60%. So, actual time would be 35
minute to make a garment. Factory works 8 hours in a day and operating cost per day per machine is Tk.
1022.
Cost of manufacturing is Tk. 74.52

2. CM Calculation Based on Daily Production Figure

This method is widely used by garment manufacturing factories. Cost of manufacturing calculation is done
based on historical production data. This is an easier method compared to above one.

Information needed to find Cost of Manufacturing

1. Daily production: Find average daily production of a particular style (garment) based on
earlier (historical) production figures. Calculate daily average production of the factory.
2. Manpower involved in production: How many sewing machines or sewing operators are
utilized to produce above quantity.
 3. Operating cost per day/machine: As explained above.

Formula
Cost of Manufacturing = (Operating cost per Day / Total garments to be produced per day)

See the example method -2 in the above table. In the example, daily product is 550 pieces. 40 operators
worked to produce these pieces. Operating cost per machine is Tk. 1022 per day.
So cost of manufacturing is Tk. 74.33
P.S. Data used in the above examples are hypothetical.

Tools and Equipment used by Industrial Engineers

Industrial Engineers (IE) use various type of tools and equipment. What all equipment and tools to
use, depend on the job responsibilities of an IE in a company. Name of the common tools and equipment are
listed below. Purposes of the tools are also mentioned here.

Stop Watch (Digital or analog): Measuring observed time at the time of Time Study.

Measuring Tape: Measuring length of seams and measuring distances.

Digital Camera: Capturing videos for various

operations that help in motion analysis of operations.

Tripod for the camera: Used as camera stand.

Time Study board: Required during time study to hold

the Time Study format.

Calculator: Data calculation and report making.

Tachometer: to measure speed of the motor of sewing

machine. This equipment is used to find machine rpm.

Data capturing and process analysis formats: For

example- Time Study format, Motion analysis format
etc. Data capturing and analysis to bring improvement.

Various documents: Documents are used to assist

production and other processes with information,
methodology or layout. Formats are like Operation
Bulletin, Line Layout, Pitch Diagram, Hourly report
format etc.

Computer: Data analysis, Report making, Mailing, video analysis of operations etc.
Standard Hours Earned in Garment Manufacturing

Standard Hours Earned term is not much known in garment factories. Here, Work Study officers
or Industrial Engineers working in garment manufacturing factories (Export house or domestic garment
manufacturing) don't use 'Standard Hours Earned' instead engineers use Standard Minutes produced or
Standard Minutes earned. So when we heard this term first time, we think it might be a different measure.

Let me explain what ‘Standard Hours Earned’ means.

This is similar to Standard Minute Produced by workers. Instead of minutes it is presented in hours. To get
Standard hours earned value, standard minutes are divided by 60. Like, if an operator works for 8 hours a
day and produce garment equivalent to 360 minutes then operator’s standard hours earned would be 6 hours
(This is derived from: 360 minutes/60).

Formula for calculating standard hours earned:

Standard hours Earned = (SAM of operation X Garments produced)/60

This term is also called as Earned Hours because operator has earned that many hours by his/her effort.

Benefit of using Standard Earned Hours

- Easy to compare produced hours against available hours in a day (efficiency)
- Secondly calculating earning amount (in Dollar) of an operator from earning hours is easy as you know
standard hourly rate of your operators.

Operation Breakdown:
Breakdown is a listing of the content of a job by elements. A garment consists of some parts & some group
of operations. Breakdown means to writing down all parts & all process/operation after one another lying
with the complete garment according to process sequence. Prior to defining SAM of the garment, detailed
operation break-down is made by engineer. Both manual and machine operations are included in the
operation list. It is a must to write down the estimated SMV & type of machine beside each & every process.
Breakdown Procedure:
 APM, Technician Chief & Work-Study officer must sit together to make breakdown.
 Technician breaks the garments into parts and gathered the parts one after another by operation/Process.
 Then Work-Study officer & APM fix up the SMV of those operation
 By preceding this technique when all process completed need to summarize all process SMV and the
total will be called as respective garment’s SMV.
Benefit of Breakdown:
1. Can see the all operations of the garment at a time.
2. Can anticipate the difficulties of doing critical operation
3. Can make layout in an easy, simple & less time consuming way
4. Can calculate the SMV for target setting & equal time distribution to the operator during layout.
5. Easy to select right operator for right process.
6. Can easily achieve the production target within a very short period.
Operation Breakdown and SAM of Full Sleeve Formal
Men’s Shirt
Prior to defining SAM of the garment, detailed operation break-down is made by
engineer. Both manual and machine operations are included in the operation list. Then a
skilled operator is given to do operations one by one. 5 to 10 samples are studied. All
operations are studied by GSD expert for motion analysis. At the same time all
operations are videoed for future reference. Calculated SAM of the operations for a
Formal Shirt has been shown in the following table. This has been defined by a GSD
practitioner of a large size Indian garment export company using GSD software. The
following SAM of each individual operation will help to understand how a shirt’s SAM
reach up to a certain value. The SAM of the operation may vary according to the
changes styling of the shirts, seam length, attachment and work aids used, motion sequence used by the
operator and machine type.

Product: Full Sleeve Men’s Formal Shirt. Brand: Arrow

Total Garment SAM: 22.32 minutes.

Sl. No. Operation List SAM 22 Attach front placket 0.603

1 Pinning to profile 0.234 23 Crease pocket 0.542
2 Run stitch collar 0.219 24 Hem pocket mouth 0.28
3 Trim collar 0.285 25 Attach pocket to front 0.861
4 Clip and turn collar 0.223 26 Attach brand label and tack loop 0.589
5 Crease collar 0.381 27 Crease patch pieces 0.236
6 Top stitch collar 0.42 28 Attach patch piece 0.333
7 Run stitch (R/s) collar band 0.291 29 Sew pleats 0.278
8 Crease collar band 0.317 30 Attach yoke to back 0.475
9 Insert collar in neck band 0.799 31 Top stitch back yoke 0.365
10 Turn and crease collar 0.452 32 Join shoulder 0.64
11 Attach bias piece to cuff 0.874 33 Top stitch shoulder 0.656
12 Crease cuff 0.458 34 Attach collar 0.535
13 Hem cuff 0.501 35 Close collar with size label 1.01
14 R/s cuff 0.565 36 Sleeve attach 0.862
15 Trim cuff 0.36 37 Top stitch armhole 0.678
16 Turn cuff 0.527 38 Top stitch side seam 1.036
17 Crease cuff bottom 0.566 39 Attach & close cuff 0.696
18 Attach placket to sleeve 0.795 40 Top stitch cuff 0.524
19 Lock and make diamond 1.026 41 Hem bottom 0.947
20 Sew pleats (4 no.) 0.389 Total SAM 22.322
21 Hem right front 0.494
Operation Breakdown and SMVs of a Basic Jeans
Operation breakdown of a 5 Pocket Basic Jeans is listed in this article. SMVs mentioned here against each
operation are just for your reference. SMVs may vary according to machine types, workstation layout and
equipment used. Some of operations are done by automatic machines, like auto pocket hemming (APH),
auto pocket attaching (APS) etc. Machines that are used for the operations have been mentioned in third
column (M/c type) of the following table.

This Operation Breakdown has been taken from a Jeans manufacturing company in Vietnam.

Table 1: Operation Breakdown Chart

Sl. no. Operations M/C Type SMV 17 left fly attach @ front SNLS 0.34
panel (inseam & top
Back stitch)
1 pocket hemming APH 0.07 18 J-stitch @ left fly APJ 0.58

2 pocket o/l 3T O/L 0.3 19 front pocket mouth DNFPH 0.3

hemming
3 pocket creasing ADPC 0.4 20 Pocket bag stitch to SNLS 0.46
front panel @side &
top (wt w/c label@lt.)
4 pocket attaching APS 0.74
21 right fly attach with SNLS 0.25
zipper & crotch join
5 second stitch @ back SNLS 0.65
pocket Assembly
6 back yoke attach FOA 0.41
22 loop preparation 3T F/L 0.15
7 back rise join FOA 0.24
23 main label attach @ SNLS 0.3
waist band, & w/b
8 size label attach SNLS 0.2
joining in chain
24 top stitch @ inseam FOA 0.55
Front Section
25 side seam join (attach 5T O/L 0.65
9 coin pocket hemming APH 0.015 front & back panels)
26 top stitch @ side SNLS 0.38
10 coin pocket attach @ SNLS 0.2 seam
jet piece (right)
27 waist band stitch WBAM 0.38
11 pocket bag attach 5T F/L 0.42
with jet piece
28 waist band corners SNLS 0.72
12 o/l @ pocket bag 3T O/L 0.68 finish
29 loop attach ABLA 0.65
13 top stitch @ pocket SNLS 0.4
bag
30 bottom hemming BHM 0.33
14 o/l @ zipper fly 4T O/L 0.3

15 o/l front panels @ 3T O/L 0.26

crotch
Total 11.65
16 zipper attach @ left DNLS 0.32
fly
Full form of sewing machine name

APH - Automatic pocket hemming machine

ADPc - Automatic pocket creasing machine
APc - Auto pocket stitching machine
SNLS - Single needle lock stitch
FOA - Feed of the arm
3TO/L - 3 thread overlock (overedge)
5TF/L - 5 thread flat lock (cover stitch)
4TO/L - 4 thread over lock
5TO/L - 5 thread over lock
DNLS - Double needle lock stitch
3TF/L - 3 thread flat lock (cover stitch)
APJ - Auto J-stitch making
DNFPH - Double needle front pocket hemming
WBAM - Waistband attach machine
ABLA - Auto loop attach
BHM - Bottom hemming machine
(Note: Some of the machine names are short form of machine used for the specific operation
used by a company. Other companies may name it different way)

Denim is known as all-time fashion for all age group and for both sex. The demand of
denim pants are always there. To supply enough Jeans to the sourcing countries
entrepreneurs are setting plants in low labor cost countries. Bangladesh is one such example.
To reduce the manufacturing cost high end technology are used in denim plants with basic
machines. Specialized machines and semi-automatic machines are used in sewing, i.e. patch
pocket pattern making, surging panels and automatic patch pocket attaching. A plant of 500
machines can be set with following machine mix.

About the Contributor of this Denim topic: Md. Mostafiz Uddin is in the Apparel
Trade since 1999. Currently he is holding the post of Managing Director at Denim Expert
Ltd, a Denim Manufacturing Company.
Operation Breakdown and SMVs of a Basic Polo tee-shirt
We have done this experiment in SM Knitwear Ltd. Bangladesh.
We attempted this study for proper utilization of man and machine. We
made a little bit change of existing line balancing and process layout for
number of operations that was done by man power. In this experiment
we used auto machines in some operations instead of man power and
also find out the performed SMV after the modification of operations.

Process layout line balancing and SMV of Polo- shirt

Performed

Sl. No. Operations Machines Stitch type Man power SMV

Helper Operator

1 Placket position mark Helper − 1 0.374

2 Placket fusing Iron man − 1 0.396

3 Body scissoring Helper − 1 0.33

4 +Both placket joint on front part LS 1N Lock Stitch 2 0.946

5 Placket nose tack LS 1N Lock Stitch 1 0.462

6 Placket raw edge cut Helper − 1 0.469

7 Lower placket close LS 1N Lock Stitch 1 0.418

8 Upper placket close LS 1N Lock Stitch 1 0.418

9 Placket security tack LS 1N Lock Stitch 1 0.396

10 Placket box LS 1N Lock Stitch 1 0.484

11 Body match Helper − 1 0.33

Over edge
12 Shoulder joint with piping OL Stitch 1 0.44

Chain / Flatbed
13 Shoulder top stitch FL Stitch 1 0.44

14 Collar mark Helper − 1 0.396

Over edge
15 Collar over lock OL Stitch 1 0.806

Over edge
16 Collar joint OL Stitch 2 0.418

Chain / Flatbed
17 Neck piping FL Stitch 1 0.44
18 Neck top stitch LS 1N Lock Stitch 1 0.44

19 Main label joint LS 1N Lock Stitch 1 0.396

Sleeve match and shoulder piping

20 cut Helper − 1 0.33

Over edge
21 Sleeve joint OL Stitch 2 0.682

Chain / Flatbed
22 Bottom hem FL Stitch 1 0.352

23 Care label joint LS 1N Lock Stitch 1 0.374

Over edge
24 Placket servicing OL Stitch 1 0.352

Over edge
25 Side seam OL Stitch 2 0.77

26 Side slit tape measure and cut Helper − 1 0.33

27 Side slit tape attach LS 1N Lock Stitch 2 0.66

28 Side slit tape top stitch LS 1N Lock Stitch 2 0.704

29 Slit security tack LS 1N Lock Stitch 1 0.286

30 Button attach and hole mark Helper − 1 0.308

31 Button hole BH 1N Lock Stitch 1 0.297

32 Button attach BS 1N Lock Stitch 1 0.308

8 30

Total SMV
Total man= 38 ≈14.552
*** Furnished by Safayet.dishan