PHASE II - Benchmarking participants’ manufacturing facilities

a) Expected results

A short survey report will be furnished via a pre-designed questionnaire for each participating company. This report will estimate the potential productivity improvements that might be expected following the participants’ completion of the workshops and in-house coaching sessions. Where appropriate an outline action plan for improvement may be prepared.

b) Activities

A questionnaire will be designed to review the companies who are participating in the project. The questionnaire will provide advance data before a site visit. The concept will be to benchmark each company against a set of established criteria relevant to apparel manufacturing. The driving force of productivity improvement will come mainly from increasing direct labour efficiency. As such, the benchmarks that will be measured will the following.

• Production output
• Operating efficiency of the direct labour force
• Number of direct to indirect employees
• Added value per standard hour produced
• Cost per standard hour charged
• Cost per standard hour produced
• Standard minutes per garment
• Raw material utilization
• Defect rate per hundred units produced
• Throughput time
• Lead time
• Style mix and variety
• Average order size
• On time delivery performance
• Style changeover time

All the above benchmarks will be measured objectively using company data. In addition, there will be some subjective measures also considered during the benchmarking exercise. These will include the following:

• Level of technology being used
• Current methods employed
• Use of management information systems
• Product development capability
• Level of housekeeping
• Capability of management
• Management techniques being used (i.e. work study, Garment technology)

These key performance indicators will then assist in the tuning of the workshops. Best practice will be discussed with the participating companies and a gap analysis will be produced that will allow the project team to focus on areas of improvement.

The Project Team, along with the international experts intends devoting two days per company to visit their factories for this task.

Benchmarking of participants’ manufacturing facilities  
(26/11/2006)

Benchmarking of participants’ manufacturing facilities is currently in progress. In this phase of the project, the consultants are assessing current operating systems and methods of companies against best practice.