Prabir Jana

• Doctor of Philosophy
• Professor at National Institute of Fashion Technology

Apparel manufacturing is a labor-intensive sector and one of the largest sources of employment generation in several underdeveloped and developing countries. With the relatively lesser level of automation, apparel manufacturing is still heavily dependent on human skills. A safe working environment always plays a critical role, and it becomes even m...

Apparel manufacturing is a labor-intensive, skill-oriented industry that involves a complex manufacturing environment with relatively limited automation. Several factors affect manufacturing performance and result in inefficiencies in the processes. A higher level of human involvement also results in various uncertainties bringing fluctuations from...

Purpose Automation and the new buzzword, “Industry 4.0”, have dominated the media headlines in recent months. In this scenario, apparel manufacturers should not only install automatic machines but also standardise them based on specific industry requirements, and precise measures are required for daily target demands. Design/methodology/approach T...

Automating the fabric inspection process has been attempted by several researchers in the past. However, the numerous variants of fabric, such as their construction, texture, print, and colour along with the huge gamut of fabric defects which exist, complicate the process of automating defect detection, thus making it an open challenge for research...

The fashion and textile supply chain is being hailed as the highest employment generation industry and engine of growth for early industrialisation in least developed economies. The challenges in traditional fashion & textile supply chain are strategic as well as operational. While strategic challenges are structural and relationship related, gener...

The never-ending global search for a country with a low labour wage is almost bottoming out. The so-called labor-oriented apparel manufacturing industry is poised to change. Due to fierce global pressure on reducing price and lead time, the textiles and apparel producers will have to banish all waste from their supply chain. Lean manufacturing whic...

In the era of globalization and digital technologies, consumers are exposed to better products and services at competitive prices with wider options. The global competition is getting tougher, and manufacturers are finding newer ways to operate, survive, and excel in the respective domain. Apparel manufacturing is no exception to this. The dynamic...

With the advancement of technology the business environment is becoming dynamic and competitive than ever. The organizations have to adapt to the changes to survive and maintain a competitive advantage over others. The ever-increasing customer expectations have always pushed for the transformation of manufacturing systems, and as a result, the manu...

Autonomation, in simple terms, is described as automation with human intelligence. Autonomation is a self-reliant work system that is designed in such a way that it either prevents the user/work system from making errors or by detecting abnormality/error and raises alarm or on detecting abnormality, triggers a rectification mechanism to correct the...

Textile and Apparel Industry second largest employment generation sector, after agriculture gives a safe place to work as compared to other manufacturing industries. But hazards and injuries faced by operators here are not fatal immediate but subtle and grow with period of time. Repetitive motions with high frequency make sewing operations ergonomi...

Over the years, Predetermined Motion Time System (PMTS) has proved to be a powerful standardization tool in general electrical, automobile, machine shops, needle trades and even health care industries in accurately predicting the standard time for a given task. In needle trades, apart from GCD, all PMTS solutions established, commonly referred as S...

Line balancing is a crucial task for manufacturing companies in order to improve productivity and minimise production cost. Different analytical and heuristic/metaheuristic methods have been used for solving Assembly Line Balancing Problems (ALBP) for many years in manufacturing industries. Computer simulation is a new technique which has got inter...

Garment industry is a labour-intensive industry producing items of clothing and plays an important role in world’s economy. Most of the garment manufacturers work on assembly line production method by breaking the whole process into multiple activities. Seam Ripping is a manual, labour intensive and time consuming process. Numbers of manual devices...

Industry 4.0 in Apparel Manufacturing

"Industrial Engineering in Apparel Manufacturing: Practitioner's Handbook" (co-authored with Prof. Prabir Jana) is now available on Google Books and Google Scholar https://books.google.co.in/books?id=jdTVDwAAQBAJ&dq=Industrial+Engineering+in+Apparel+Manufacturing&source=gbs_navlinks_s https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=Indust...

This chapter introduces basic sewing kinematics leading to sewing automats. The initial sections explain the basic kinematics of continuous and cyclic sewing machine. The section on building blocks of automation discusses the functions of key hardware and software components in sewing automation. From the early characteristics to the recent develop...

Ever since the advent of civilization, man has always attempted to develop his methods, processes, and tools to improve the productivity of his resources by eliminating waste to maximize his earnings and enhance his living standards. This continued pursuit for higher productivity gave birth to Industrial Engineering. Industrial Engineering is conce...

The measuring capacity of a sewing line is commonly expressed as the number of garments produced per shift, hour, or month. But as garments do not have standardized work content, the number of garments is not the correct representation of capacity. Similarly, higher production of a sewing line does not necessarily mean the same line has higher prod...

The profession of Industrial Engineering has always been tied to the world of manufacturing and the design of the factories that produce consumer goods. In the beginning, there were factories, craftsmen called smiths, made tools, wagons, weapons, wheels, and horseshoes on a one-of-a-kind basis. As we moved into the age of iron and steel, factories...

Method Study and Improvement is the key to success for any process if it results in improved resource utilization by minimizing or if possible, eliminating non-value added activities from the process. Method Study as defined by Frank B. Gilbreth is “The science of eliminating wastefulness resulting from unnecessary, ill-directed and inefficient mot...

A high level of human intervention coupled with other factors such as material variations, working conditions, and dependency of human skills, make the task of target setting in apparel manufacturing more complicated, as compared to other industries. As a common practice, industrial engineers conduct the Time Study or take the help of PMTS to get t...

Machinery and human resource are the key resources in apparel manufacturing, and maximum utilization of the same is the ultimate goal of any organization. Resource Planning is one of the major activities which consumes a significant amount of time and effort of an IE at a garment manufacturing unit. Organizations struggle to arrange and allocate de...

The Industrial Engineering function in most of the factories is primarily limited to Work-Study, which constitutes Method Study and Work Measurement. Work measurement of the same method should be done with utmost care and accuracy. Deviation from the standard method may lead to spending excess time to do the same activity which leads to process imb...

There are a number of studies conducted by an Industrial Engineer regularly. Work Sampling is one such study, which has some unique characteristics which make it immensely useful to the management by highlighting the key areas of concern. The work sampling technique is capable of providing the true picture of shopfloor functioning with minimal mone...

“Companies that are not adequately engaged in Industrial Engineering are like houses built on sand. At Toyota, we have a saying: ‘IE makes money’.” – Taiichi Ohno With increasing awareness, peer pressure, and buyer’s compulsion, more and more apparel manufacturers in southeast Asia and the Indian sub-continent are setting up the IE department. Howe...

Breakdown of sewing operations and sequencing them are critically important in an Assembly Line system because the construction of a garment is planned in steps where different operators are responsible for sewing different parts of the same garment. Wherein each and every machining and non-machining operation are identified and listed in a flow ch...

With rising competition, the cost of manufacturing too is rising, making the manufacturer’s life more difficult. On the organizational front, there is always pressure, to curb the operational costs and increase productivity. On the other hand, workforce requires motivation to work. Here the question is whether monetary incentives are a key motivato...

Apparel manufacturing is labor-intensive and requires a significant amount of repetitive work; the need now is to have skilled workers so as to do these operations faster (without frequent breaks), precisely, and with high precision. Due to the repetitive and quick action, researchers have shown that sewing machine operators have substantially incr...

Achieving the best results from the minimum possible resources is the key to success. This not only brings success but makes the organization competitive and sustainable. Improving productivity has always been one of the prime focuses of Industrial Engineering. To make it happen, innovation in the product or the process is one of the most sought-af...

In recent years, Lean manufacturing practices have gained acceptance along with Industrial Engineering techniques. As far as apparel manufacturing is concerned, applications of Lean manufacturing are treated as the responsibility of The Industrial Engineering Department (IE). Both Industrial Engineering and Lean manufacturing share common objective...

Every human is unique and subject to all of the human frailties, jealousies, emotions, and work habits (Stohlman, 1986). Each individual possesses different capabilities and capacities, which consequently results in different performance levels; so it is the responsibility of the organization to identify rational ways to differentiate clearly among...

The primary functions of storage can be illustrated as receiving an item, storing the received item, retrieving the stored item as required, sending/transporting (also called handling) the retrieved item, and maintaining the receiving and sending records (Solinger, 1986). Transporting of raw materials, consumables partly finished goods, and finishe...

There are two different aspects to operator development; selection for recruitment and training to develop skill, stamina, and confidence. Selecting the right candidate is equally important as the trainability factor determines the choice of gainful recruitment. Training of workforce, in general, may be the responsibility of the human resource depa...

Layout plays a critical role in productivity improvement through efficient utilization of available resources. The prime concern while designing a layout is maximized utilization of available space and optimization of the material flow. Developing factory layout and facility design for a manufacturing plant is a one-time activity done at once while...

Performance enhancement by unconventional means in manufacturing industry.

The article discusses about the disruptive innovations that are changing the technology development in sewn product industry in recent times.

This chapter introduces different characteristics of sewing machine and work aids for best sewing performance. Any sewing operator effectively spends only about one-fourth of the time on sewing and rest of the time is spent on handling, aligning, folding, and creasing the flexible fabric component. Thus, the study of sewing equipment aims to reduce...

The drop-feed mechanism in sewing machines is universally used for apparel manufacturing, and is also one of the common reasons for ply slippage. Typical Corporation, China, had invented a new feed mechanism called X-feed. To explore the efficacy of X-feed mechanism in controlling ply slippage and seam appearance in lightweight fabrics, an experime...

Functional garments have higher functional properties and lesser aesthetic properties. They can be workwear, active sportswear, medical wear, personal protective garments, and smart garments. The fibre contents used are mainly polyester, polyethylene, kevlar, and spandex blends which can be woven, knitted and nonwoven, albeit the list is increasing...