Lean Tool Implementation in the Garment Industry

Abstract

Garment Manufacturing is one of the oldest in the world, compromising a high number of critical operations. The main issues in the garment industry are the lead time, production rate, very poor line balancing and fabric wastes. Productivity improvement is carried out by implementing the various lean tools in the industry, such as 5S, Value Stream Mapping (VSM) and line balancing in the sewing section. After the implementation of lean tools in the garment industry, the outcomes observed are a reduction in work-in-progress inventory, increases in the production process and increased line efficiency. Similarly the before and after implementation of 5S, which shows space utilisation in the sewing section, is increased. In this research, an implementation study was conducted in only one organisation. Hence the results extracted by the conduct of this implementation study are achievable and adaptable in similar organisations.