A Typical Day of an Industrial Engineer (Manager) in a Garment Export House

Meet Vineet Saini, a manager, Industrial Engineering Department, of a Delhi based leading garment export house. He is working in the garment industry for about 10 years. He started his career as a management trainee (IE) and now heading the Industrial Engineering Department.

I often meet with him. Last week I met with him and I took an interview on the common activities he performs day to day basis being an IE manager. According to him, there is no fix list of daily activities of an IE. Based on our discussion I have summarized the IE’s routine of a typical day.

In this article, you will find how an IE spends his day in a factory.

industrial engineering department activity
His office starts at 9:00 am.

After reaching to his cabin, he becomes busy with work. He has shared his activities with time frame.

9:10 AM: He opens his Laptop. Opens his mail inbox, scans all mails and first opens auto generated reports one by one. Common reports are Line output report, Efficiency report. Spends about one hour in reading and checking reports. Reply to urgent mails.

In the meantime, he had one cup of tea.

*Checking of emails and replying to emails are whole day's activity.

10:00 AM: In-depth checking of the line efficiency reports and find out reasons for low performing lines and talks to line supervisors regarding line performance.

10:30 AM: He spends half an hour for recruiting fresher trainees for sewing operators. He counsels of all candidates those come for joining the company. He sends them for train-ability test after counselling.

11:00 AM: Looks at production planning board. (This is a weekly activity and scheduled for Monday's activity).
  • He spends time on R&D for samples and new styles. For R&D 3 samples are made IE department. Based on the R&D of coming orders, they started arranging sewing machine guides and attachments.
  • He allocates works to his subordinates. Works line preparing operation bulletin, calculating thread consumption, Time study, initial line balancing, production line layout etc.
  • Daily he receives samples from head office (from merchandisers or marketing team) for labor cost estimation. He analyses sample garments for labor cost estimation. 
  • He gives approvals on labor cost and other things that come to him for approval.

12:00 - 1:00 PM: He spends time on the shop floor. He
  • gives a round to all sewing lines. 
  • meets with line supervisors and operators. 
  • visits operator training center and checks with sewing operator trainers how training is going on.
  • checks fresher’s trainability test results and pass on the fresher’s list to the HR department. 
1:00 - 2:00 PM: Lunch Time

2:00 PM - 4:30 PM: He does follow up of works given to subordinates and with other departments for respective work.
  • Checks emails and reply to all emails and make a report if required. 
  • Looks at line balancing report
5:30 PM – Leave the office for home.

Also Read: Industrial Engineer's Job Profile in the Apparel Industry

Occasional activities

Vineet is also involved in other activities other than daily routine works. Following are such few examples.
  • Pre-production meeting – He also takes part in pre-production meeting held in the factory. In the PP meeting share his comments on PP samples. 
  • He is responsible for project implementation in the sewing and other production areas – like the implementation of 5S and other lean tools.
  • He analyses factory KPI and makes KPI report at the beginning of every month.
This is Vineet's story. Share your story with Online Clothing Study readers. 

Prasanta Sarkar

Prasanta Sarkar is a textile engineer and a postgraduate in fashion technology from NIFT, New Delhi, India. He has authored 6 books in the field of garment manufacturing technology, garment business setup, and industrial engineering. He loves writing how-to guide articles in the fashion industry niche. He has been working in the apparel manufacturing industry since 2006. He has visited garment factories in many countries and implemented process improvement projects in numerous garment units in different continents including Asia, Europe, and South Africa. He is the founder and editor of the Online Clothing Study Blog.

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