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Operational Excellence in Textile Industry

  • By Faber Infinite
  • November 22, 2015

“We are, what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore is not an action but a Habit” – Aristotle.

‘Operational Excellence is a philosophy of leadership, teamwork and problem solving resulting in continuous improvement throughout the organization by focusing on the needs of the customer, empowering employees, and optimizing existing activities in the process.’

Operational Excellence (OE) is a critical driver for business success and a key part of Continuous improvement journey for any organization, regardless of industry/ sector. Continuous improvement is a never-ending journey, and it can lead any organization to world class performance. The Operational Excellence program provides a framework to understand why and how performance needs to improve.

Textile Sector is one of the oldest sector and one of the largest contributors to economies in India and across many other countries. The textiles industry is extremely varied, with the hand-spun and hand-woven textiles sectors at one end of the spectrum, while the capital intensive sophisticated mills sector at the other end of the spectrum. The decentralized power looms/ hosiery and knitting sector form the largest component of the textiles sector. The close linkage of the textile industry to agriculture (for raw materials such as cotton) and the ancient culture and traditions of the country in terms of textiles make the textiles sector unique in comparison to the industries of other countries.

Operational Excellence in Textile Industry

With global competitive market environment the competition is getting intense. Increasingly organizations from all sectors and all sizes are looking at Operational Excellence (OE)/ LEAN to eliminate waste across their value chain which ultimately helps them drive costs down and deliver quality goods and services to customers leading organizations to world class organizations.

Lean manufacturing has traditionally been thought as being applicable mostly to the discrete manufacturing industry. However, there is considerable interest in extending lean to the textile industries due to the dramatic results in manufacturing with discrete production systems. Few lean techniques initially created for discrete usage are beneficial in textile with robust design and inflexible machines.

The key focus of operational excellence in textile industry is to reduce the manufacturing throughput time from the raw material receipt till the finished fabric is ready for dispatch. It is noticed in textile industry the common challenges are as follows:

  • Capacity imbalance between spinning, weaving, process house, finishing and dispatch which results in long throughput time which finally builds up work in process (WIP) inventory
  • High pile up of WIP between department resulting in multiple handling and stocktaking
  • High WIP results in stains and damages, which call for rework later
  • Great potential for changeover/ setup time reduction at spinning, weaving and dyeing exists
  • Setup time reduction enables small lot production with higher variety
  • Tremendous potential for downtime reduction through TPM exists which impacts spare part consumption and quality
  • Cost reduction through focused defect/ quality rejection projects, consumable reduction projects, etc. are often undertaken in the lean initiatives.

Faber Infinite Consulting strives towards excellence and continuous improvement and has supported numerous manufacturing organizations by implementing Faber Infinite 360 Degree Transformation model.

Typical Improvement areas in the Textile Industry:

– Improvement in On Time In Full (OTIF) supplies to customers
– Reduction in Customer complaints and returns
– Creation of flow from raw material receipt to finish goods dispatch
– Improvement in Overall Equipment Excellence (OEE)
– Improvement in labour productivity
– Rejection Reduction
– Inventory Management through Kanban
– Low Cost Automation
– Creation of improvement oriented culture

Operational Excellence enables any enterprise/ organization and its leadership to continuously improve all areas of performance, including decision-making, ongoing investment, profitability, customer and partner services and human resources capabilities.

Ready to achieve operational excellence in the textile industry? Take the first step towards optimizing your processes and maximizing efficiency. Fill out the form below to unlock exclusive insights and strategies from industry experts. Start revolutionizing your textile business today!

Contributed and adapted by: Faber Aakash Borse & Faber Raveena Rathi