Title: Cellular manufacturing model to reduce WIP fluctuation in garment manufacturing

Authors: Vijitha Ratnayake, Gamini Lanarolle, Chandana Perera, James Marsh

Addresses: Department of Textile & Clothing Technology, University of Moratuwa, Moratuwa, Sri Lanka. ' Department of Textile & Clothing Technology, University of Moratuwa, Moratuwa, Sri Lanka. ' Department of Management of Technology, University of Moratuwa, Moratuwa, Sri Lanka. ' School of Engineering, Sheffield Hallam University, Sheffield, UK

Abstract: The labour productivity in the Sri Lankan garment industry is found to be rather low compared with that of some of its competitive countries. On-site investigation revealed that the workflow becomes unbalanced due to many reasons despite it being balanced at the beginning of a style change. The significance of the problem of high work in progress and its high fluctuation is investigated through the data collected from 42 garment manufacturing lines in 14 different factories. Hypothesis testing on these data revealed that this is a common problem. Root cause analysis on work in progress fluctuation disclosed the major contributing factors to the problem. Identifying each sewing line in few |sub cells|, where a team of operators focuses mainly on one part of the garment, helped when addressing most of the problems identified in the root cause analysis. The sub-cell concept was successfully implemented in a garment manufacturing company in Sri Lanka.

Keywords: cellular manufacturing; sub-cells; lean manufacturing; garment industry; apparel industry; clothing industry; WIP; work in progress; line balancing; root cause analysis; manufacturing cells; Sri Lanka; sewing lines; labour productivity.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSSCA.2009.029914

International Journal of Six Sigma and Competitive Advantage, 2009 Vol.5 No.4, pp.340 - 358

Published online: 02 Dec 2009 *

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