Muhammad Akram
, Rehman Akhtar, Khizar Azam, Muhammad Adil Saleem
The garment manufacturing industries faces significant challenges to stay competitive and survive in the global market due to the highly flexible and dynamic customer demand for top-quality products at lower prices. Thus, the product quality and product cost both are very critical concerns for garment manufacturers. The variations in sewing process are not acceptable and variations are mainly responsible for defects, which leads to increasing overall production costs, lowers profits and customer dissatisfaction, among others. Therefore, due to the competition of today’s business climate in textile sector, many garments manufactures are working to find the ways for improving quality of the products and reducing defects percentage to a minimum level. On one hand Lean technique can help to eliminate the production waste and convert the system into highly adaptive production system in order to meet the customers demand. On the other hand, Six Sigma intend to reduce process variability, improving quality of the product. Aiming to provide applicable improvement proposals for the sewing process in apparel industry, this research is conducted in which Lean and Six Sigma is implemented through DMAIC (Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, and Control) approach. The methodology developed in this study has increased the sigma level from 3.9198 to 4.3546 which dropped the defect rate by 26%. Moreover, the preventive & Proactive actions proposed in this study helped to reduce the thread wastage by 30% & 36% on Lock-Stitch and Over-Lock machines, respectively and saved 1,29636 Rs. per month which can further be improved in the near future by reducing defects percentage, reducing variations in process, and improving overall quality of the product.
Muhammad Akram Rehman Akhtar Khizar Azam Muhammad Adil Saleem “Lean Six Sigma Implementation For Improving Sewing Process in Apparel In Vol. 10 Issue 11 PP. 93-106 November 2023. https://doi.org/10.34259/ijew.23.101193106.
