As a practice, on a sewing floor working in Progressive Bundle Unit (PBU) system, the cut garment components are usually bundled in units of 10 to 20 pieces to be stored in-between operation to be transferred from one operation to another. These bundles are ticketed with information in human readable forms or they are bar coded, and in both cases the bundle has to be in close proximity to the person or the scanner. Both these methods of tracking, although commonly followed, have few drawbacks as bundles have to be physically handled to collect information on the exact status and location.
NIFT, in its endeavour to provide solutions to these problems, joined hands with Avaana™ Software & Services and developed a customized Radio Frequency Identification Device (RFID)-enabled bundle tracking solution for progressive bundle unit (PBU) system. The successful implementation of the same was recently showcased to a select guest list from the industry in the NIFT sewing lab. Prabir Jana, Professor at Fashion Technology Department, NIFT, New Delhi and the man behind the development, while giving a demo said, “To invest in overhead material handling system for solving bundle tracking problem is outrageous! This system will solve the problem of bundle tracking while working in PBU system. The solution can give valuable information such as exact location of the bundles and the time taken during an operation. This not only improves the accountability of operators, but also enables the Production Manager to individually monitor the efficiency of each operator. Identification of online bottlenecks due to slow or irregular movement of bundles in a line is possible within seconds. This is simply because the RFID information form ticket can be scanned remotely in any form and from any direction.”
Bimal Sareen, CEO of Avaana™, talking about the growing popularity of RFID- based solution said, “This customized RFID solution will be able to deliver a competitive edge to the garment industry by enhancing operational efficiency and bringing down the cost.” Another advantage of this technology is at the supply chain level. RFID helps to keep track of a particular consignment with all the information like number of goods, variety, sizes, colours and types, thus reducing a possible human error of counting mistakes or theft. RFID can even help during war by tracking troops and warheads.
Rajeev Takru, Director General of NIFT, while being impressed with RFID for its applications for industry in the retail segment as well as logistics and also in war strategies, could not hide his apprehension about the cost-effectiveness of the device in the shrinking profit margin era. “Growing popularity will acquire critical mass and applied research would surely bring down the cost to make the solution feasible for garment exporters,” the developers felt. Bimal Sareen added, “Moreover RFID tags are reusable and can be embedded with new information each time once an operation is finished resulting in cost reduction and care for environment.”
In India companies like Madura have already included RFID in their production floor and retail operations. Abhishek industries, is also successfully using RFID to track semi-finished goods in griege fabric folding.