East West Industrial Park recently courted a few new challenges to push the frontiers and reset examples of excellence in manufacturing. Close to being the 4th largest jacket manufacturer in the world, East West Industrial’s Gazipur-based factory is now running on double shifts. The concept of double shift, which has till now been revalent in several apparel sourcing hubs like China, equates to significant planning and execution. Incidentally, the double shifts are being run to cater to the surge of jacket orders exiting China.
To unlock the value of real estate, double shifts were implemented in the factory in a phased manner by introducing the concept to two lines at a time. “The gradual implementation gave us the time to comprehend the requirements for making this programme a success,” shares Harun-Ar-Rashid, MD, East West Industrial Park. Now, the entire shopfloor works on double shifts wherein the first shift begins at 6 AM and goes on till 2 PM. Thereafter, the second shift commences at 2.30 PM and concludes at 10:30 PM. “We have carefully stuck to formals and not even ventured into the semi-formal category as the variations in semi-formal and casuals brings down the productivity of lines, and the style changeover times also rise,” reveals Mir Gulzar-A-Alam, GM, East West Industrial Park. “We are utilizing the fixed resources twice in a day, and the output got is multiplied on an average of 1.7, saving us the capital expenditure and the new gas connection hassles,” points out Alam.
Unlocking the value from optimizing real estate is not the only strategy the company is embarking on. It is also deploying a ‘zero defect’ and improved productivity. “The ‘zero defect’ programme is in response to the stringent requirements of our Japanese buyers who do not accept even a single defect in their products,” informs Rashid, and which is perhaps why the project directly involves the top management. “One member from the top management along with a set of six technical experts are working as a team on the shopfloor and personally taking up each and every line for a period of 10 days to understand and resolve what is hampering the quality,” he adds.
Focus on Industrial Engineering
“We have never lost any buyer. Once they work with us, they stay with us,” shares Alam. The company allocates lines accordingly to the key buyers round the year, and is booked for nine months from now. The confidence which the buyers place in the company’s capacities stems from the focus it gives to Industrial Engineering and also its scientific approach to running operations. Whenever a new order comes, the IE works from sampling onwards. For instance, for poly-viscose jackets with 4% lycra, we know that the productivity will be reduced. Therefore during the PD, the IE assists the Pattern Master in shrinkage calculations. Simultaneously, the IEs tabulate all the operations and the required SMV for an operation bulletin. “Based on these calculations, the samples are prepared and tagged with the IE’s name stating the productivity as per the order quantity which is then shared with the buyer,” explains Alam.
“IE today plays a big role as they are driving the operations forward with scientific analogies and methods. Their role also includes developing line plans, line balancing and to even convene the daily production meeting. We had a line efficiency of 36% two years ago. Today we stand at 50%, and the next milestone for our IE team is to shoot past the 60% level of efficiency,” informs Alam.
Gearing up for growing, from US $ 50 million to US $ 120 million by 2018, Rashid is now looking at working with new buyers, especially Japanese – as can be guessed from the focus on Zero Defect programme. The factory today produces 1,70,000 suits, 4,00,000 trousers and 80,000 waistcoats, per month by not only employing better systems and technologies, but is also making capacity expansions and adding Japanese clientele beyond its existing set of buyers such as NEXT, Moss Brothers, H&M, Raymond, Blackberrys, to mention some.
ESSENTIALS
East West Industrial Parkis a project for manufacturing of jackets, trousers and waistcoats. The company also has a textile mill in Dhaka for polyester, poly-viscose and poly-wool suiting fabrics. While the poly-viscose fabric is manufactured using fibre-dyed imported yarn from India, the raw materials for others are secured from China and Taiwan. East West today is also capable of finishing fabrics.
Impressively enough, East West has grown today to even provide product development inputs to the buyers and before starting the season, the product development team sends designs to its buyers.
Challenges of running multiple shifts
Multiple shifts have been enjoying preference in the textile industry for a long time now. On the other hand, the apparel factories are rarely seen running on multiple shifts. Speaking of the subcontinent, Sri Lanka has been the best exhibit of the concept with some factories even running three shifts a day, for all seven days in a week. Closer home, India has not achieved any significant benchmark operations based on this concept. Bangladesh’s latest undertaking in this realm has taken off well. While Rashid and his team have led East West to a nearly seamless transition and even started reaping benefits, the challenge is simplistic as it has many layers. Adarsh Sharan, COO, Matrix Clothing – an Indian apparel exporter who has extensively practised the double shift paradigm, details on its success, “The success of multiple shifts is that it is a cultural and disciplinary issue for the operator as well as the management.” Therefore as per Adarsh, the best case scenario is that the factory functions on multiple shifts from its very inception. However, if the challenge is picked up in the later stages, the successful progression of the factory to double shift cannot be taken for granted as it is dependent on cooperation from the management, HR and operators.
As per Adarsh, the operational challenges are very few – namely smooth transition between the shifts, wherein the entry gates and exit gates for the workforce of the upcoming shift and previous shift are clearly demarcated. Then there are case-to-case scenarios where the operator of the previous shift is still finishing the bundle while the timer goes off for the next shift. “Usually it is about 2-3 pieces, and for that duration the operators for the upcoming shift wait for the work to get over,” shares Adarsh, and soon adds, “Care must be taken to keep the bundle sizes to meet the balancing requirements and there are no incessantly huge bundles.” The next challenge is to find the closest clone of the operator pool, so that, “Sunita replaces Sunita and Anita replaces Anita,” as Adarsh explains. He further goes on to caution that such a set of operations will reap the best results when the factory is manufacturing long runs of standard products.
Other than this, in Bangladesh, there are clearances and consents required from the women workers, if they are willing to work between 10 PM and 6 AM.
