Visibility in garment production means getting information on the progress of orders as they move from one process to another. Information and data related to progress status must be visible and accessible to all the concerned team members in a company.
Visibility terms can be defined in different aspects.
- Visibility of actual production status of an order on various processes.
- Visibility of product quality status based on the quality inspection and audit results. Status of the quality deviation with current orders.
- Knowing the team who is involved in producing the goods.
- Visibility of the planned production schedule Vs actual achievement against the goal.
- Visibility of the issues found in running order and plan of action to resolve those issues.
- Visibility of the current status of previously identified issues on the shop floor.
What is a real-time process tracking technology?
Technology is available to capture production and quality data for real-time visibility. The system generates reports to give users and authorized persons real-time visibility. Technology comes with certain costs and annual/monthly maintenance fees. Companies that can bear the costs of such technology have already implemented real-time systems.
Depending on the user’s understanding, different companies choose different technologies. The selection of a system is done based on the production processes, the need for in-depth data, and feel-good factors about the technology.
The selection of the real-time system is also done based on the know-how, investment capability, and availability of the system in their demographics.
ERP and PLM systems are not designed for real-time data visibility. These two kinds of software products enhance reporting and order visibility when someone manually enters the data into the system. Scanning barcode tags is also available for updating certain process statuses. But this can not be done in real-time all the time. For real-time visibility, you need a separate system and this system can be integrated with your PLM and ERP systems for data storing and reporting from ERP and PLM.
What technologies are used in real-time systems?
Real-time data capturing is possible using one of the following technologies
- RFID technology (with low frequency (LH) or high frequency (HF) RFID tags and readers)
- Barcode technology
- QR code technology
- NFC Technology
- Mobile application
- Touch buttons
The real-time technology that aims to increase visibility also comes with many other features and benefits. Users can use those features if they wish to.
Why are garment manufacturers considering real-time tracking systems?
All the big to mid-sized garment factories are facing a common challenge. After cutting garment panels, garments pass through many processes inside the factory or outside. When garments reach to finishing and packing stage, most of them see some garments are missing somewhere. Manual records of garment quantity transfer from one department to another show all goods on paper but some physical garments are not found anywhere.
Second things they observed that when garments are not missing and under process in some processes, nobody can trace where are those incomplete garments. Cut panels are loaded to the production as per the shipping plan with size and color ratio, but in the packing stage, they don’t get garments in that order and the expected ratio.
Challenges with real-time technology
1. Limitation of WIP tracking of some processes:
Major concerns with the capability of the technology in tracking all the processes in the apparel supply chain - from fabric roll to packing of the garments.
For example - the barcode tags (labels) are a good solution for tracking data in the production area but these tags are not suitable for the washing process. RFID tags can be used in the laundry process but handling RFID tags for individual garments is challenging. When you need to wash the same garment (uniforms in hospitals) again and again, you can attach a permanent RFID tag to each uniform but in this article, our discussion is on production orders in the manufacturing stage.
2. Fabric tracking with real-time system
The production tracking is done through tag assignment and scanning the tags at the workstation using real-time tracking devices. Bundle tags can be attached to the garments after fabric cutting. You know before cutting, we don’t know the actual cutting quantity by color and by size. Challenges of tracking fabric status through the same tags that would be assigned to the bundles after cutting. Movement of the fabric rolls from one process to another against the running orders is challenging. Tracking of the fabric roll movement can be tracked separately with a separate dimension. Fabric roll length and roll number can not be tracked the same way as the bundle quantity and bundle number.
3. Ensuring Tags are attached to the garments from start to end process
Some factories wish to track the movements of production orders by processes. They are not interested in tracking production by operations. Their concern is whether the tags (RFID / Barcode) will be intact with the pieces till the end of the process. If tags are not attached to the garments, then tracking of accurate garment quantity is not possible through tag reading.
How do you get an alert if any tags are removed by someone intentionally or tags fall down from the pieces during handling? A big question - but no answer to this question at this moment.
4. Additional manpower requirement
The concern is the need for extra manpower in the tag assignment process and tags attached to the bundle or individual garments. Some individuals are unable to visualize how they can attach the tag (Barcode/RFID) to individual garments effortlessly. Some engineers think scanning all garments one by one piece would be time-consuming.
Some of them understand attaching tags to bundles (pieces) and scanning tags of individual pieces is much better than physically counting garments in each process. The counting is needed multiple times when a quantity mismatch is found and some garments get missing.
5. Automation of RFID tag generation
Assigning RFID tags for individual pieces for large-scale factories is time-consuming. Automation of tag generation would be helpful.
Conclusion:
Users need to understand that there will be certain limitations of any system when they are using it. A real-time production tracking system and WIP tracking system can be designed based on multiple logics, and arithmetical calculations. The system helps a company to stop data manipulation by the employees. So, the company and management get real production reports and actual progress of the orders.
I have pointed out a few challenges in the article. If you can find a solution you can come up with a better version of real-time WIP tracking and real-time production monitoring system.