Industrial engineering concepts and IE department become an integral part of garment manufacturing industry. Whenever I took classes for apparel production students and discuss IE topic with group of engineers, this topic comes naturally. What is role of the IE in garment production management?
Read that post to know more on job responsibilities of an industrial engineer in the production management in the garment industry.
#1. Recruitment of sewing operators through the standard test (operator skill test). In small and medium size garment factories, IE team conduct the operators' sewing skill test and material handling test according to the company policy. They keep record of skill tests. IE team shortlist the skilled candidates and move the hiring process to HR team.
#2. Evaluation of existing production target and fix a new production target. You know daily production target per production line is dynamic. As style changes and manpower changes in a production line, production target changes.
#3. Extend work measurement in other processes like cutting section and finishing section. Production improvement is possible with combined effort of cutting, sewing and finishing departments. Though industrial engineers mainly focus on the sewing floor process improvement, engineers work on overall process improvement of the factory.
#6. Preparing daily production reports, Monthly improvements reports with graphical presentation. They design their production report templates based on their data analysis need. Some engineering use automated reports for viewing weekly performance and monthly performance of the line and individual worker. These reports helps engineers and production manager in controlling production.
#7. Time study and updating time study database including videos on a constant basis.
#8. Research on motion study and implementation of the better system to eliminate excess motions.
#10. Initiative on lean manufacturing, learning of lean tools and looking for the scope of implementation.
#11. Research and development for samples prior to production start.
Related post: Job profile of an Industrial Engineer.
There are much more activities for which engineers are responsible. If any project is being implemented in a factory related to production engineers lead the project.
Recently, I had a discussion with a couple of engineers and I learned that engineers have a bigger role in managing manufacturing processes rather than the daily use of IE tools. In the daily schedule, they do constant monitoring of all production processes and lot more as below.
#1. Recruitment of sewing operators through the standard test (operator skill test). In small and medium size garment factories, IE team conduct the operators' sewing skill test and material handling test according to the company policy. They keep record of skill tests. IE team shortlist the skilled candidates and move the hiring process to HR team.
#2. Evaluation of existing production target and fix a new production target. You know daily production target per production line is dynamic. As style changes and manpower changes in a production line, production target changes.
#3. Extend work measurement in other processes like cutting section and finishing section. Production improvement is possible with combined effort of cutting, sewing and finishing departments. Though industrial engineers mainly focus on the sewing floor process improvement, engineers work on overall process improvement of the factory.
#4. Constant control of direct labour cost. Through data analysis they need to work on controlling direct labour cost. They follow the productivity improvement methods for increasing floor performance and thus try to control direct labour cost.
#5. Data analysis and look into monthly trends of production KPIs. Industrial engineers take care of preparing daily reports, weekly and monthly production reports. They analysis the trend of production and factory performance up and down.
Related post: Major KPIs for garment manufacturers
#6. Preparing daily production reports, Monthly improvements reports with graphical presentation. They design their production report templates based on their data analysis need. Some engineering use automated reports for viewing weekly performance and monthly performance of the line and individual worker. These reports helps engineers and production manager in controlling production.
#7. Time study and updating time study database including videos on a constant basis.
#8. Research on motion study and implementation of the better system to eliminate excess motions.
#9. Research on new machinery and the latest systems that meet companies long term goal and preparing cost-benefit analysis and ROI for the same.
#10. Initiative on lean manufacturing, learning of lean tools and looking for the scope of implementation.
#11. Research and development for samples prior to production start.
Do you like to learn about Industrial Engineering in apparel production? Read the following book.
There are much more activities for which engineers are responsible. If any project is being implemented in a factory related to production engineers lead the project.