Final year students of Apparel Production or Garment Manufacturing Technology or Fashion Technology do a research project as part of their course curriculum. Normally students' research projects are categorized as innovative projects and economically viable projects. Few students look for an award winning project. Some look for a project that is sponsored by a Company. Some like to do project on the field where they want to build their career.
Following project ideas are mix of innovative as well as most common projects but companies can be benefited a lot if projects are implemented successfully. Projects are not always implemented just to make more money directly. It is also for the improvement of systems, strengthening existing systems, implementing tools to make employee’s task easier.
Following listed project ideas are not only for students, industrial engineers and project team of an organization (company) can also go for these projects and improve things.
#1. Lean Manufacturing:
There are number of projects that can be done under lean implementation in a garment manufacturing unit. You can start with implementing lean tools like 5S, VSM, Modular Manufacturing, Kaizan etc. Main goal of a project under lean implementation is to reduce wastes or non-value added tasks from the process and improving value added time in process cycle. Since 2008 (approx.) students are doing lean projects to improve awareness in the apparel manufacturing companies the benefits of lean manufacturing. Till date many projects are done on Lean Manufacturing by students, still Lean is Buzz in garment manufacturing.
#2. Green or Sustainable Manufacturing:
A sustainable apparel manufacturing is going to be vision for the corporate garment manufacturing companies as well as medium companies in the coming years. Major goal of this project is reducing carbon foot print per product produced by the company. Interesting Project topics are - i) Measuring carbon foot print of a product, ii) Development of a tool for measuring carbon foot print, iii) Life cycle assessment of a product, iv) Recommendation on how factory can reduce carbon foot print at the factory level, v) Green building etc.
#3. Productivity improvement:
I have mentioned in earlier articles many times that most of the garment manufacturing factories are running at low productivity. And there is a big scope of productivity improvement. There is various ways to improve productivity. To get an idea how you can start your project to increase factory machine productivity level read 20 ways to improve productivity. If you like to do project on productivity improvement in a garment manufacturing company one out those 20 points.
#4. Quality Management in small manufacturing unit:
The fact is that quality awareness in garment manufacturing is still very poor though factories are making clothes for big brands and exporting millions of garments every year to UK, European countries, USA and other countries. Quality management in many factories is weak due to lack of training of quality or strong quality team. Product quality as well as process quality needs to be improved. Projects under quality management you can do projects on i) implantation of 7 tools of quality control, ii) statistical quality control, iii)Total quality management, iv) Quality circle, v) Strengthening fabric and garment inspection system etc.
#5. Pre-production Process Control:
Garment Export Houses are still facing lot of problems in pre-production processes. Like, in sample development, sample approval, development of trims and embellishment sourcing of materials, approval of trims and fabrics are taking much time than planned. Shipments get delayed due to delay in pre-production processes, mostly come as merchandising responsibilities. So, you can pick a topic in this area for your graduation project and find a better solutions for exporters.
#6. Cost Benefit analysis of New Technology:
Garment industry is embracing new technology in various part of the garment supply chain. But at the initial stage users question themselves, is the new Technology cost-effective to the company? New technologies like - Digital Textile printing for bulk fabric printing, RFID Technology for shop floor production controlling, Web based sample approval system, Production Planning Software etc. You can do a project this topic that will be very helpful for the industrialist in making buying decision of a new technology .
#7. Plant Start up:
A Plant start-up guide is essential for the new comers in apparel manufacturing and exporting business. There are hundreds of things that need to be taken care of to get success in the business as long term. So, preparing a plant start-up guide is a good project.
#8. Future of the Indian Export Business:
This question has been asked by many times by the people who are running the business and by those are observing the garment export business from outside. There is nothing to be said firmly. What all factors are making us to think on business sustainability? It can be good research project for the industry.
#9. Employee Motivation:
Indian garment industry is facing big shortage of sewing operators since many years. Current HR policies, hike in minimum wages, good amount as attendance bonus, yearly bonus even performance based incentive systems are not able to lure operators to join to a company. There is a need for deeper analysis why there is shortage of worker round the year?
Your project topic may be like - How to attract sewing operators to be associated with a company? Or Why workers are less preferring to join garment manufacturing companies? Even you can do project on developing fair incentive scheme for sewing operators.
If you like a topic, let us know. You can write us if you need further details on a specific topic.
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Fashion