The garment manufacturing sector is a crucial sector to the global economy, but it faces numerous challenges that not only slow down its productivity and growth. But also, obstacles, such as labor shortages, supply chain disruptions, and more significantly impact the efficiency and competitiveness of garment factories. However, garment manufacturers can directly address these challenges and find new opportunities to improve and succeed in their businesses.
The Urgency to Improve
The textile and garment industry is constantly evolving, with new demands emerging each year. This increasingly competitive landscape makes it difficult for manufacturers to stay ahead of the challenges and grow their businesses.
Faced with these challenges, garment factories struggle to maintain efficiency, improve productivity, and ensure consistent quality in their produced garments. This can lead to difficulties fulfilling orders according to customers’ demands and ultimately, losing customers. Therefore, manufacturers have no choice but to face unprecedented pressure to focus on tackling these hurdles and improve their ways of production.
Facing a Set of Challenges
As global players garment manufacturers have to deal with multiple challenges that can slow down their productivity:
Labor Shortages: One of the primary challenges in the textile and garment industry is the shortage of skilled labor. As experienced workers retire and younger generations are becoming less interested in manufacturing jobs, companies struggle to fill essential roles, that may also provide them with better salaries. This shortage slows down production and hinders growth and innovation within the industry. Additionally, labor costs have been rising over the past decade as well.
Inventory Management: To keep up with demands, garment manufacturers need to implement effective inventory management systems. This also helps them to minimize costs and maximize efficiency during production. However, as demands continuously change, managing inventory and keeping an optimized stock can become challenging.
Quality Control: In garment manufacturing, consistent product quality is crucial However, material defects, errors due to workers, rework, and product recalls, have a big impact on the productivity in a factory as this leads to increased production times and costs.
Equipment Downtime: Breakdown of the garment machinery leading to maintenance time causes downtime in the production. These unplanned downtime events disrupt the production schedule and reduce the overall effectiveness and productivity of the equipment.
Supply Chain Disruptions: As garment factories rely on global supply chains for materials and machinery, they are also exposed to many different disruptions, like natural disasters and political tensions. These disruptions can lead to problems in the production process and less efficient operations due to delays in deliveries and higher materials and shipping costs.
Economic Instability: Natural disasters, political tensions, or other factors also influence global economic stability. That means, that garment manufacturers also face rising costs of raw materials, energy, and other expenses caused by inflation and economic uncertainties. These costs affect profit and financial resources, making it harder to stay competitive.
Adoption of New Technologies: New technologies have the potential to push productivity and efficiency in a garment factory to new heights. But, using these new technologies can also be hard. The costs of investments are often high and pose a challenge for garment factories to start. Additionally, integrating new systems into an existing system sometimes bears its own complexities, leading to slowing down productivity. Another factor is the proper training of workers as they also need time to adapt first.
Sustainability Pressures: With consumers demanding sustainability and environmental consciousness more than ever and regulations becoming stricter than ever, garment businesses are under growing pressure. However, implementing sustainable processes is often accompanied by high investment costs and big operational changes – making it harder to keep up productivity.
Addressing the Undeniable Challenges
Garment manufacturers have no choice but to tackle these challenges to sustain their global competitiveness. By actively facing them, factories can gain new opportunities to grow and improve the overall landscape of the textile and garment industry.
Workforce Development: To overcome labor shortages, garment manufacturers need to focus on workforce development within their own rows. This involves implementing comprehensive training programs, allowing current employees to enhance their skills, creating apprentice opportunities to attract new talents, and forming partnerships with educational institutions to keep up with industry demands. With these strategies, factories can create a skilled workforce that can drive productivity and innovations forward.
Advanced Inventory Management Systems: By using advanced management systems that use, for example, barcode scanning, and real-time tracking, garment manufacturers can gain better control and track their inventory. These automation, such as the Smart Fabric Spreading Machine SPro by OSHIMA, are connected through a digital dashboard that puts together all production data and streamlines production processes within the factory – helping managers in optimizing stock levels, reduce excess inventory, and prevent stockouts.
Robust Quality Management Systems: Strong quality management systems can aid garment factories in improving their product quality and productivity. This includes setting strict quality standards, conducting thorough inspections at each stage of production, and taking corrective actions to address any issues. To support these goals, proper training of employees is necessary. However, new technologies with Artificial Intelligence (AI) can speed up the process immensely. By implementing machinery, such as the Fabric Inspection Machine EagleAi, reliance on workers can be reduced while efficiency and accuracy are being significantly enhanced.
Preventative Maintenance: By using machinery in garment production, there is no way around preventative maintenance. Therefore, garment manufacturers should implement regular maintenance schedules, such as inspections, servicing equipment, and proactively replacing worn-out machinery parts. These procedures can minimize machinery downtime, associated with breakdowns, significantly while optimizing the productivity and efficiency of the garment machinery.
Resilient Supply Chains: Garment manufacturers can build resilient supply chains to protect themselves from disruptions. This involves building a network of several sourcing options to reduce dependence on single suppliers, implementing agile procurement strategies to quickly adapt to changing market conditions, and creating close collaborations with key business partners. In the end, it comes down to proactively managing risks instead of reacting to risks.
Cost Management Strategies: To avoid being affected by inflation and economic instability, garment manufacturers can invest in strategies to continuously monitor market trends and supplier pricing to be able to proactively adapt. This aids in optimizing resource utilization and streamlining production to reduce waste and inefficient procedures, ultimately reducing costs and enhancing operational efficiency.
Digital Innovation: In times deep into Industry 4.0 garment businesses have no choice but to embrace digital innovations. Whether it is investing in automation, robotics, and AI – these technologies help streamline production, improve quality control, and reduce production times. Additionally, adopting a mindset of innovation and regularly training employees can smoothen the adoption of new technologies, leading to sustainable growth and competitiveness.
Sustainable Practices: Investing in energy-efficient technologies, reducing wastage, and responsibly sourcing materials are all practices for sustainable and eco-friendly garment production. By actively implementing these procedures into their processes, garment businesses stay globally competitive and enhance their brand reputation. As they are also to keep up with the strict demands and regulations, brands can gain new consumers and even attract new market opportunities.
A study, conducted in the garment industry in Bangladesh, has investigated the importance of efficiency and productivity in garment factories. Results have shown how efficiency impacted productivity in garment production, meaning as efficiency improves, productivity improves, leading to higher revenue and lower manufacturing costs in the next step. The results showed that factors mentioned above, such as adopting automation, properly training workers, or implementing stringent quality standards during production, actively contributed to increased efficiency and productivity.
In a specific case, after efficiency and productivity have been successfully improved, for an order of 250,000 T-shirts, manufacturing costs could be reduced by 13,500 USD, and other costs, such as inventory, transportation, or documentation, could be reduced by 15,000 USD.
Conclusion
In the dynamics of the textile and garment industry, garment factories have to overcome the challenges to sustain their growth and remain globally competitive. By actively facing and tackling the multiple challenges, manufacturers are able to navigate through the complexities of the industry and experience new opportunities, while pushing their efficiency and productivity forward.
With more than 50 years of experience in this ever changing industry, OSHIMA has built not only high technical expertise but also advanced knowledge of the demands within the textile and garment industry. Trusted by many international brands, we provide our customers with innovative technology and groundbreaking advice to optimize their productivity and efficiency. If you are looking for a reliable partner in your journey to improve production processes in your garment factory.
{Contributed by Oshima Apparel Machinery (Taiwan)}
