A major reason for the decline in the Chinese apparel exports has been the rise of opportunities in the Chinese domestic market, offering equally lucrative business prospects for the apparel manufacturers. Not far behind, the Indian apparel manufacturing industry too has entered the domestic arena with companies like Gokaldas Images, B L International, TCNS, Goldenseam, Shahi and Akriti Creations having retail brands for the domestic market. Interestingly, the synergy of market opportunities has driven many large and well established domestic players to explore export market as the global economy strengthens. The move is not just a business plan or goal, but is supported by concrete preparation in terms of building in-house capacities, upgrading the level of automation, skilling the workforce and creating a strong supply chain to meet the needs of the relatively tougher export market. Two companies that fall into this category – Seven Hills International and Mittal Clothing Pvt. Ltd. – share with Team SW the strategy for competitiveness in the global market…
One of the major reasons behind the coming of age of the domestic manufacturers is the increase in quality-consciousness of the Indian customers, and timely deliveries which has pushed the domestic brands to systematize their mode of operations. This is characterized by the implementation of quality systems, technical assistance to vendors, establishing a ‘Just-in Time’ supply chain and maintaining the cost-effectiveness of the end products, because it all boils down to how competitively the product has been priced. Leading brands like Louis Phillips, Allen Solly, Arrow, Peter England, Max Retail, Reliance Trends, Pantaloons and Westside to name a few have been at the forefront of transforming the domestic apparel manufacturers.
The mark-up for quality is evident on the shop floor of Seven Hills International, a Bangalore-based company with two manufacturing units in Peenya, housing a total of 300 sewing machines and producing shirts for top end retailers like Arrow, Louis Phillips, Allen Solly etc. The company has a present capacity of 1,20,000 shirts per month and looks at achieving the standards set in shirt manufacturing by companies such as Madura and Laguna.“We have been working with companies like Arrow since 2000 and since then we have seen growth, not only in the business but also our manufacturing set-up with the help of technical and quality experts, who keep visiting our facilities for evaluation and upgradation,” states Keshav Anand, Owner, Seven Hills International.
The shop floor of Seven Hills is equipped with the latest direct-drive machine, sleeve placket preparation machines from Ngai Shing, collar pointing machines and Kansai special machine for front placket preparation. “I have critically analyzed the areas which require automation the most and also what level of automation is required. Like the direct-drive sewing machines save a lot of electricity and the various finishing equipment are necessary for making a formal shirt,” asserts Keshav, who believes in suitable automation. For the same reasons automated cutting and spreading machines do not make sense because the ROI cannot be worked out for such small quantities. The company’s niche lies in handling small quantities of shirts, which requires top notch quality and turnaround time of only a few weeks, a capability many apparel export companies are looking at acquiring to move up the value chain.
Mittal Clothing is equipped with similar levels of automation at the sewing floor for manufacturing ethnic womenswear in an organized set-up of 300 sewing machines, with in-house capabilities for embroidery and printing. “Although we are based in Bangalore, a place known for apparel with relatively low value additions and surface embellishments, we come from a background of saree manufacturers. Hence value addition is at the core of our business model,” shares Vineet Saraogi, Director, Mittal Clothing. The company has an in-house set-up of 34 embroidery machines and a printing unit. “Most of our buyers are domestic brands based in Bangalore and Mumbai, and when it comes to surface embellishments like embroidery, not many options are available in the region. Hence we have not only made the most of the opportunity but also created a strong product development and sampling team,” elaborates Vineet. Manufacturing only woven garments, Mittal Clothing has an outsourcing capacity of 700 sewing machines.
Keshav operates sewing lines with 40 to 50 sewing machines, inclusive of the part preparation and final assembly lines, and the single reason being small order quantities, ranging from 300 to 700 pieces and frequent style changeover. After the fabric has been in-housed, which takes a total of 30 to 40 days, the lead time with Seven Hills for sewing and shipping the goods is just 12 to 14 days. Buyers also keep a daily track of the production, and Seven Hills International is supposed to send daily production updates at the end of the day, segregated style, colour and size wise.“The production method of separate sewing lines for part preparation and final assembly works for order quantities greater than or equal to 1,50,000 pieces,” explains Keshav. The company has an in-house Industrial Engineering Department, which focuses on production planning, improving operator efficiency and methods improvement. The company claims that the sewing operators are working at 95% to 105% efficiency levels, while achieving an hourly target of 60 pieces per hour. “We do not need to conduct method and work study on a daily basis but we do the risk analysis for every style by making samples and identifying the issues that can arise in the production,” shares Keshav. Seven Hills International was awarded the ‘Best Vendor’ by Arvind Lifestyle last year, which Keshav attributes to the company’s performance on the parameters of quality and on-time delivery performance.
Working on fashion, Vineet claims to manufacture 60 to 70 different styles per month. Ensuring on-time delivery of goods, he has developed an indigenous Time and Action Calendar which he himself monitors and is maintained by the Production Planning Control and Merchandising department. “We do a complete breakdown of a garment starting from the number of operations, sewing machines and operators required, amount of trims and fabrics required, and lastly the wages of the operator, to work out the target cost of the garment,” details Vineet, who develops such costing based on his experience. The production manager balances the line based on the target costing. For further improving the planned vs. achieved costing percentage, the company is working on reducing its style changeover time by separating its sewing lines into part preparation and final assembly lines. “We have realized that 60% of our style variations are in the front, back and sleeve panels, which increase our start-up loss and learning curve of the sewing operators. Once we are able to separate the style variations from the assembly, the style changeover time and other similar aspects will reduce by 60%,” reasons Vineet. The layout, however, would still be the same and only the part preparation operators would be moved to the front of the line and the assembly at the back, with the line rebalanced. With an average target of 400 to 450 pieces per sewing line, the sewing operators work at an efficiency of 75% on an average, which is commendable looking at the kind of products done by Mittal Clothing.
Quality Management
Seven Hills International has a strong team of technical people to ensure right first time quality and on-time delivery. The first step towards maintaining quality starts with fabric and accessories inspection wherein first 10% of the fabrics and accessories like buttons and fusing are checked; if a defect is found in this selection, another 15% of the goods are checked; and if they do not pass the quality inspection then 25% of the goods are checked, and if they still do not pass the quality inspection, the complete lot is rejected and sent back to respective vendors.
Since the company does a lot of checked and striped shirts, plaid and stripe matching is one of the most critical aspects on the cutting floor besides maintaining all different parameters ranging from number of lays, ply slippage and conformance to cut order plan. The first measure taken to curb non-matching plaids and stripes is the alignment of the stripe or check pattern on the laid out fabric along the straight line which is parallel to the edge of the table and put across the width of the fabric lay. This ensures that the fabric is not skewed, so at the time of cutting an ‘unmatchable’ pattern is not cut. Moreover the placket, being on the face of the shirt, is the biggest indication of plaid and stripes matching, its pattern is not cut separately rather a complete panel with the left front panel and the placket is cut, later the placket is meticulously separated from the front panel.
After the patterns have been cut, they are fused and each pattern is numbered as per the style and lot numbers. Few sewing machines are also kept in the cutting department for operations like pocket mouth hemming, top stitching on the front placket, etc. Similarly, sleeve placket pressing machines from Ngai Shing are placed on the cutting floor. Now they are bundled in groups containing all the patterns required for sewing 10 shirts and before being passed on to the sewing lines, 100% cut parts are checked by the QC. Before being fed into the sewing lines, patterns of the body section like front, back, yoke, plackets and sleeve are segregated in different bundles and passed on to the parts section and similarly the collar & cuff patterns are passed on to the assembly section. In the sewing lines, a total of 6 quality checkpoints are placed for assessing the quality of the collar part, cuff part, plaid or stripe matching, placket attachment, pocket attachment and finally the hemming. Lastly, the garment is inspected at the end of the sewing line. In the finishing department, 100% inspection of the output is conducted on both the inside of the garment and on the outside. An interesting aspect of the quality system is the presence of a roving quality checker, who like in most of the apparel units would do random checks and also check the output of the 6 stationary quality checkers, as to whether they are passing goods as per the predefined quality levels.
Skill Development
The labour availability is scarce in Bangalore, but the skill set of the labour is high, requiring no additional training at the time of recruitment. Hence Vineet believes in on-the-job training for broadening the skill set of the sewing operators. Along with on the job training systems, Mittal Clothing maintains a skill matrix of the sewing operators. “Although our garments do not require that high skill levels, but we wanted to have multi-skilled operators for tackling absenteeism, who can do 3-4 assembly operations so that the production does not stop,” shares Vineet. Presently the company has two floaters or A++ grade operators in a sewing line and they know more than 5 operations of a particular garment. The company has also started reducing the number of helpers in the sewing lines by multi-skilling sewing operators and also adopting suitable automation. “Although we are into ethnic garments, there is a scope for automation. Technologies like profile stitching machines and jig sewing machines for doing patch work, can help us cut down on the excess workforce,” shares Vineet.
Growth
With a current annual turnover of Rs. 60 crore, Seven Hills International has been growing at a constant rate of 20-25%. The company plans to set-up another facility for shirt manufacturing by 2016, with a total of 300 sewing machines. Keshav claims that this project would be a state-of-the-art factory with automated machines for operations like pocket welting and lean manufacturing systems. “We would be looking at setting up lean sewing lines in the new facility, which will have packing at the end of the sewing line. Another aspect of the new lines would be to reduce quality checkers and hence reduce cost of quality,” avers Keshav. The company would be expanding majorly to cater to the new brands, which would source from them in the future and with a world-class set-up major furrow into exports is the next destination, as the company is already working with a few small European buyers.
Mittal Clothing also has plans for doubling its turnover of Rs. 40 crore, but instead of expanding the company it is looking at outsourcing more capacities for achieving the targeted growth. “We will look for companies who have the sewing capacities but not the acumen of marketing and merchandising,” concludes Vineet. Now that the systems are in place and quality is a way of life, the company is now looking to enter the international market, which has strong pockets of demand for Indian ethnic wear.
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