Statistical Process Control (SPC) in Apparel Manufacturing

In the past decade, quality management practices in the apparel industry have undergone a significant change in the majority of factories in India. There is also no doubt that the quality of apparel produced in the country has improved significantly over a period of time. However, in the light of the intense competition for a share of the global apparel market, it is not enough to say that our product quality level has improved over the past. It is also important to evaluate how our quality level fares, compared to the best apparel producers in the world. When such a comparison is made, one clearly realises that there is a long way to go and there is great scope for improvement. One tool of quality management that is widely used in other industries but is seldom used in the apparel industry is Statistical Process Control, SPC. This article is intended to introduce the concept of SPC and its application in the apparel industry.

Dr. Rajesh Bheda is a Professor at the GMT Department, NIFT, New Delhi, one of the worlds leading fashion technology institutes. His teaching, consultancy and research interests focus on productivity improvement, quality management, and the social issues in apparel manufacturing. He is a thought provoking speaker, writer and author. He has been addressing international conferences and has conducted several management development programmes for leading apparel firms. He holds a Doctorate in Management from the Faculty of Management Studies, University of Delhi.

What is SPC?
Statistical Process Control (SPC) lays emphasis on controlling various processes in the manufacturing cycle. It reduces heavy dependence on post manufacturing product inspection and

consistency of processes to produce acceptable products. SPC uses various charts that visually communicate whether a process is performing under control or is out of control. This is achieved by drawing a small sample from the output of critical processes at a fixed time interval and evaluating the output against given specifications. Any variation from the target value is noted and the same is drawn in form of a line graph. These graphs have control limits drawn on them. If any observation goes out of the control limit it can be said that the process is getting out of control and will not be able to meet specified quality requirements. In such cases, a corrective action is initiated. If the results of the inspection show that the process is under control but there is a trend indicating that it is likely to get out of control in the future, then also corrective action is warranted.

Why SPC?
SPC, developed by Dr.Walter A Shewhart of Bell Technologies in the second half of the 1920s, uses Control Charts for monitoring each process. By careful analysis of these charts, workers can detect and prevent many defects thus eliminating the need for mass inspection. Each worker can monitor his or her process and make changes as needed. This method gives workers better control over their process so that time, energy, and money can be saved by eliminating scrap. Because the workers are given more responsibility and power, they are likely to take greater pride in their work. The first large scale implementation of SPC in the apparel industry was carried out by Liz Claiborne

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Inc. Any discussion on the SPC implementation in apparel industry is incomplete without the reference to and learning from the Liz experience. Liz Claiborne started SPC implementation on a pilot basis in 1997 with Sara International, a Miami, Florida based supplier, with factories in Columbia. As a result of the SPC implementation, the garment reject rate at Sara International's factories plummeted from over 20% in mid 1990's to 3% in 1997, below 2% in 1998 and to 0.4% in the first half of 1999. Liz used this factory as a global showcase for SPC implementation and invited its important vendors from across the globe to witness SPC in action. As a result of subsequent roll out of SPC implementation in Liz supplier factories across the globe, Liz Claiborne's failed shipment index dropped by 33% between 1996 and 1999.

STEPS FOR SPC IMPLEMENTATION

Step 1 Management Commitment: As SPC is uncommon in the apparel industry, it's implementation is likely to face a lot of resistance within the organisation. For this reason, it is important that the top management is completely convinced of its implementation and will support and ensure its implementation. SPC Briefing and Training: The quality manager, supervisors and operators/ inspectors on the critical operations will need to be exposed to the basic principles of SPC and the methodology of SPC implementation. Identification of production line for pilot implementation and Preparatory Meeting: This shall involve a meeting between Production Manager, Pattern Master / Technical Supervisors and Quality Manager / Supervisor. The objective of this meeting is to identify critical operations of a garment style to be produced. These operations, if not controlled, are likely to contribute to high rate of defects. The meeting also focuses on how to minimise/ eliminate defects by process modification and what type of control chart can be installed on these critical operations. Installation of Control Charts at the critical operations: This involved training the operators/ inspectors at the critical operation on how to construct control charts and how to interpret them. Once this is done the data for SPC should be collected at fixed interval, generally every 30 or 60 minutes, and the control charts should be constructed Interpretation and corrective action: Installation of the control chart is not enough at it only tells you the status of the process. It's important to have procedures in place for initiating corrective action should the process go out of control. The tools like cause and effect diagrams are quite useful for analysing the root causes of defects and initiating a corrective action. Monitor the progress and review the improvement: It is expected that with the control charts in pace and focus of the QA on eliminating the major causes of the defects, the process is likely to get stabilised and the defect rate is likely to drop. It's important to monitor the progress and ensure that the implementation efforts do not hit roadblocks.

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Step 8

Take a decision on implementing SPC in other areas of production: Having learned from the results of the pilot implementation, organisation can now take a decision on the future of the SPC implementation and roll out the same throughout manufacturing processes.

Types of Charts used in SPC

Chart Type X chart For variable data Usage in garment manufacturing Used for communicating the average measurement of the process output when measured out of a fixed sample size

R Chart Communicates the variation in the process output (range). Assuming the For Variable Data five garments drawn for tracking the chest measurement have a lowest value of 47 inches and highest value of 49 inches as against the target 0f 48 inches, the range is 2. C Chart Communicates defects per unit. Assuming a 5 garments selected have in For Attribute Data total 12 defects on them, the average value becomes 2.4 P Chart Communicates fraction defective (out of five garments one is defective For Attribute Data then faction would be 0.2) np chart Communicates number of defectives in a fixed sample. In the case stated For Variable Data above np would be 1.

This is what Liz team and their business partners that spearheaded the SPC iniciative had to say (as reported in Bobbin Magazune July 1999 issue). David Baron, VP Quality Assurance, Liz Claiborne. "We realised we weren,t doing our vendors any favours incradling a sense of dependency that prevented them from evolving to the best that they could be. We wanted to establish a programme (SPC) that allowed them, with in their own knowledge, skill and ability, to mature as an organization". Raffael Villages, President Sara International Inc. Liz Collaborator for pilot implementation of SPC in its Columbia factory. "The best way to describe the essence of Statistical Process Control is that it looks at a process continuosly and it encourages associates to recognise that quality is everyone's responsibility". Vijay Mahteney, President Ambattur Clothing Company, Chennai india, Liz Claibone's model factory for South Asia and Middle East. "A picture is more than 1000 words-SPC brings quality out by pointing out defects on a visual basis to its operators and iuts supervisors. Having understood the importance of SPC, let us have a look at how an organisation can go about the implementation of SPC.

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In the processes / operations where the output is evaluated quantitatively, for example length, weight etc. (variable data) variable charts X and R as illustrated in table are used. So communicate and track measurements of a critical operation for example sleeve length, X and R charts can be used. X chart shows the average of the sleeve placket length measurement for each sub-sample collected every hour, where as R chart shows range between the sleeve length measurement of the subsample. In case of the operations where the output is evaluated for presence or absence of defects (attribute data) attribute charts (p, np, c) are used. For example for pressing operation p chart can be used. This chart communicates the fraction of defective products out of the total lot inspected. The np chart is used for tracking the total number of defective products in lots of fixed size. Assuming 10 garments are checked every hour and the total number of defective garments out of them are tracked then np chart will be useful. On the contrary, if a company is interested in tracking number of defects in a garment, c chart can be used.

SPC Implementation in the Indian apparel Industry

Most readers would have realised by now that SPC implementation in the Indian apparel industry is broadly limited to the vendors of Liz Claiborne. The manufacturers that have implemented SPC have benefited immensely and there is no reason why others cant emulate them. Though SPC may sound as a difficult to implement technique, two small projects carried out by GMT student teams illustrate that even with limited but focussed efforts, pilot implementation of SPC can be achieved and substantial results can be obtained. These two projects carried out at one of the largest Indian apparel exporters factories in 2002 and 2003 under my guidance produced encouraging results. The 2002 project resulted in decrease in the averege percent defective rate in the sewing lines by 51% and increase in machine productivity by 32.7%. In 2003, SPC was implemented in multiple lines of another factory belonging to the same group. In this case, during post SPC implementation period, the % defective at the end of the line in the sewing stage reduced by almost 45%. The machine productivity per shift improved to the tune of 23% to 47 %. Rejection % ranged between 2.2 % to 3.9 %, whereas the average rejection % in the factory for the previous styles was around 5%.

Source: www.stitchworld.net March 2004 issue