Keywords

1 Introduction

One of the most important industries in the world is textile industry, it was considered one of the strongest industrial sectors and supportive of economy in Sudan since the fifties of the last century because of its significant contribution to the gross national income, there was 16 textile plant, their productivity was more than “168 million yard” per year.

Beside its contribution in national economy with added value to raw cotton it accommodated 30 thousand of labor. In the beginning of this century, this industry start to collapse and 13 factory has stopped and the productivity retreated from “168 million yard” in the last century to less than “8 million yard” in the start of this decade, on the other hand, the country’s consumption of textile products increased from less than 50 million meters to more than 400 million meters (Ahmed 2016).

This sector needs rehabilitation to return to its strongest era. Textile industry involves spinning, weaving, dyeing and finishing. It attached to cotton agriculture, wool production and other textile fibers as inputs for this industry.

As a significant and main derivative of textile industry is garment industry, the garment manufacturing can add a big value to this country, beside its contribution in national income it also provides opportunities of employment.

By and large, numerous nations started their process of industrialization by focusing on labor intensive industries typically the textile industry. This industry was at the bleeding edge of ventures driving the Industrial Revolution in the United Kingdom from the mid-eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth hundreds of years. Japan is another country that took advantage of the work escalated nature of the material business to advance industrialization and the assimilation of the country’s plentiful work (Fukunishi 2014).

In spite of importance of this industry and resources of our country, there is no focus on it from government or investor, also the garment industry is too poorly in our country, the plants of garment do not exceed five plants at this time, there is no even research are done to this sector, so it needs to develop. This paper is based on SUR Military and civil clothing factory as a case study.

This study will decelerate the importance of the analysis for production and processes, that might be help companies or even small enterprises to improve their productivity and efficiency.

2 Case Study (SUR Military and Civil Clothing Factory)

SUR Military is the main speculation of Sur International Company in Khartoum to meet the uniform requirements of Sudan Army with a limit of 600,000-sets/year. With the new extra offices, which became functional in 2016, its ability expanded to 2,000,000 sets/year. SUR Military has arrived at creation capacity to fabricate every single military adornment and gear from the rucksack and parka to socks and cordon. SUR Military is currently fit for providing items to the military and police powers of different nations in Africa and Middle East. It additionally adds to Sudan’s product income (SUR Company, https://surcompany.com) and recently they add civil clothing manufacturing to the factory and its name becomes SUR Military and civil clothing factory, the civil section is new, so it needs more study; so the paper focuses on it.

2.1 Critical Path Method CPM to General Process

Critical path method a technique used to predict total project duration with diagramming. It contains a series of activities that determine the earliest time by which the project can be completed. The longest path is the determiner of the completion date because it contains the critical tasks. CPM helps in improving future planning, facilitating more effective resources management and helps avoiding problems (Critical path method, https://asana.com/resources/critical-path-method).

2.2 Manufacturing Process in SUR Military and Civil Clothing Factory

2.2.1 Inspection

It is a process that reveals if there is any damage in the fabric with using “finished inspection and roll—open-width machine”. The process takes (15–20) minutes for 100 m of the fabric that usually is placed in one roll. The workers put the roll on the machine and start to monitor the fabric and if there is any damage the worker puts a mark on the damage place. The types of damage could be in weaving, dying or printing in the shape of knots or blots.

2.2.2 Fabric Spreading

The rolls of fabric that have been inspected at the first process will convert to layers at specific long according to the order, before the fabric spreading a paper is placed on the cutting table, so that machine can move without creating any problem in the lowest ply of the fabric the spreading done manually and automatically by using cutting room technology type machine bullmer, type “compact E 600-30” During the process of spreading the workers notice the marks of damages and cut them out, then prepare the layers to cutting process.

2.2.3 Cutting

To execute a marker paper or the design of the order they use CAD-CAM and Assyst bullmer program, firstly the design is done manually then it is converted to a computer design, the cutting is done by an automatic scissor that is linked by the network of Assyst program.

2.2.4 Numbering

Numbering of cut body parts is done by sticker machine, this machine gives every single part a number that starts with the size of order and end with the number of layer that the piece is cut from it, this technique makes the sewing process easier. Then, cut pieces of body parts are checked and faulty parts are replaced by undamaged parts in same position. Then, all parts from same ply/lot of fabric of a single piece are kept together in bundle form (it is called master bundle). The master bundle is shifted to the sewing floor.

2.2.5 Sewing

It is the largest section it contains different types of sewing machines, are distributed in different lines, every line has a specific task to complete it depends on the order type and its quantity.

2.2.6 Finishing

After assembling the parts together in sewing, they are conducted to inspect for quality purpose then ironing and packing (Table 1).

Table 1 The processes of SUR’s production line to produce Jalabia Alalla
Full size table

In the process of fabric inspection the earliest start is 0 earliest finish time (EF) is 12 h, the shift is 8 h it needs to 1 day and 4 h to complete inspection of 4000 m that the order needs. Fabric spreading takes 4 h to 4000 m of fabric but there are two machines work at same time, therefore it needs two hours to complete the activity. Cutting needs to 4.5 h to complete, and it depends on activity B, after that Pieces go Direct to numbering process that takes 2 h, it depends on activities C. Then, to sewing process it takes 16 h to product 1995 units of Jalabia, and it depends on activity E. The last activity is finishing, it takes 2.5 h, and it depends on activity F (Figs. 1 and 2).

Fig. 1
figure 1

The critical path of the process

Full size image
Fig. 2
figure 2

The bottleneck in sewing process

Full size image

3 Time Study for Sewing Process

According to the data above the production of 1995 units of Jalabia takes 41 h, and the factory operates one shift (8 h), thus the order will deliver at 5 days. The longest process is swing, therefore this paper conducted time study to it in more details (Figs. 3 and 4, Tables 2 and 3).

Fig. 3
figure 3

The different between the actual time and standard time for Jalabia sewing process

Full size image
Fig. 4
figure 4

The different between the actual time and standard time for trouser sewing process

Full size image
Table 2 The time study for Jalabia’s sewing process
Full size table
Table 3 Time study for trouser sewing process
Full size table

4 Results

4.1 Cycle Time

Cycle time is the time from pick up part of first piece to next pick up of the next piece. It had determined with stopwatch, five cycles were conducted for each operation, then the average was taken to those five cycles as standard time, the total cycle time for 28 operation equal summation of standard time over the number of operations.

$${\text{Cycle}}\;{\text{time}} = \frac{\sum Xi}{N}$$
(1)

Cycle time for Jalabia = \(\frac{21.8}{{28}}\) = 0.78 min.

Cycle time for trouser = \(\frac{4.1}{8}\) = 0.51 min.

4.2 Ideal Manpower

The ideal number of manpower can be calculated by the summation of standard time (CT Operator) over cycle time according to this equation:

$${\text{Ideal}}\;{\text{manpower}}\;\left( {{\text{person}}} \right) \, = \frac{{\sum CT{\text{Operator}}}}{{{\text{cycletime}}}}$$
(2)

Ideal manpower for Jalabia = \(\frac{21.8}{{0.78 }}\) = 27.9 ˷ 28 person.

Ideal manpower for trouser = \(\frac{4.1}{{0.51}}\) = 8.03 ˷ 8 person.

$${\text{Efficiency}}\;{\text{of}}\;{\text{manpower}} = \frac{{{\text{ideal}}\;{\text{manpower}}}}{{{\text{actual}}\;{\text{allocation}}\;{\text{of}}\;{\text{manpower}}}}$$
(3)

Efficiency of manpower (Jalabia) = \(\frac{28}{{44}}\) = 63%

Efficiency of manpower = \(\frac{8}{14}\) = 57%

4.3 Standard Minutes Value (SMV) and Standard Allowed Minutes (SAM)

Standard minutes value (SMV); it is a numerical value that represents the standard time of the operation in a standard work environment for qualified workers. With addition of machine allowance to those elements where machine is running and fatigue and personal needs to all elements (Ahmed et al. 2018).

$$\begin{aligned} {\text{SMV}} & = {\text{standard}}\;{\text{minutes}}\;{\text{value}} \\ & = \left( {{\text{average}}\;{\text{cycle}}\;{\text{time}}} \right)*\left( {1 + {\text{allowance}}} \right)*{\text{rating}} \\ \end{aligned}$$
(4)

SMV for Jalabia = 0.78 * (1 + 0.15) * 0.8 = 0.717 min.

SMV for trouser = 0.51 * (1 + 0.15) * 0.8 = 0.47 min.

Rating: is skill of operator which is observed during cycle time, it is given as 100%, 90%, 80%.

Standard allowed minutes (SAM), it is the standard operation time added to the allowance (personal allowance and company policy).

SAM = standard allowed minutes = (personal allowance + company policy) it is about 15% (Supriyadi 2019).

4.4 Production Capacity

The production capacity of a garment plant can be detected by machine (hr) capacity, line efficiency of that factory and SAM of produced item. And the accurate production capacity of a garment plant, is linked with accurate cutting room capacity, finishing room capacity.

$${\text{Production}}\;{\text{capacity}} = \frac{{{\text{machine}}\;{\text{hour}}\;{\text{capicty}}*60*{\text{sewing}}\;{\text{line}}\;{\text{efficiency}}}}{{{\text{standard}}\;{\text{allowed}}\;{\text{minutes}} \;\left( {{\text{SAM}}} \right)}}$$
(5)

4.4.1 Machine Hour Capacity

Machines (hr) capacity of a garment factory can be detected by the number of sewing lines, sewing machines, and working hours per day (Production capacity in Garments Industry, https://garmentsmerchandising.com/how-to-estimate-production-capacity-of-a-garment-factory/).

Machine hour capacity = No. of sewing line in that factory × No. of machines in each sewing line × Working hours per day.

Machine hr for Jalabia = 1 * 28 * 8 = 224 h.

Machine hr for trouser = 1 * 8 * 8 = 64 h.

4.4.2 Line Efficiency

Line efficiency is a process utilized by industrial engineers to produce garments. It is usually done by estimating the efficiency of a line. It is equal output multiply by SMV over working minutes.

$${\text{Line}}\;{\text{efficiency}} = \frac{{{\text{output}}\,*\,{\text{standard}}\;{\text{minutes}}\;{\text{value}}\;\left( {{\text{SMV}}} \right)}}{{{\text{working}}\;{\text{minutes}}}}*100$$
(6)

Line efficiency of Jalabia = \(\frac{{450{ * }0.717}}{8*60 }*100\) = 67%

Line efficiency of trouser = \(\frac{450*0.47}{{8*60}}*100\) = 44%

Then the production capacity will be as follow:

Production capacity for Jalabia = \(\frac{224*60*0.67}{{25.03}}\) = 359.79 ˷ 360 piece per day.

Production capacity for trouser = \(\frac{64*60*0.44}{{4.74}}\) = 356.4 ˷ 456 piece per day.

5 The Cost

The cost typically refers to the total cost of making product which includes the raw materials and other expenses, cost plays vital role in garment industry, so it needs to be considered (Table 4).

Table 4 The total cost of Jalabia production
Full size table

6 Discussion

SUR company cares about the quality standards which is good, but it needs to adjust the processes to meet those standards, the first problem is in inspection process, there is one machine to inspect fabric, so it takes 31% of the production time. To make the production process faster needs to bring more machines. In sewing process that take 41% of the production time; the time study decelerates that; the cycle time to produce one unit is 0.78 min for Jalabia and 0.47 min for trouser, the overall rating of manpower is 80%. The manpower utilization is 63% for Jalabia and 57% for trouser which are low the number of manpower is more than needed, the line efficiency for Jalabia is 67% and for trouser is 44%, the company needs to increase the efficiency by increase the SMV. And by increasing the line efficiency the production capacity will increase.

The total cost is 8,054,649 SDG and the revenue is 1,208,197 SDG, which is too low compared to total cost, if the company decrease 25% of manpower and increase the sales price to 30% the revenue will be 2,403,795 SDG.

7 Conclusion

This study decelerates many problems in the processes of production that need to fix, following there are some improvements that may be contributed in enhancing the productivity and increase the efficiency of line production.

Number of machines in inspection process need to be more than one. The plant has modern machines but their using is not efficient, thus the efficient use of those machines can increase the productivity to (20–30%). And definitely for best use systematic training will be required to manpower. The wages of manpower are too weak, so the company needs to increase the wages and link them with performance to make workers more motivated. Also to deliver the orders faster the company should add another shift. To gain better revenues the company needs to improve the efficiency of manpower utilization, and to increase the sales price to more than 25%.