HIGH REJECTION RATE: AN OPPONENT OF GARMENT

PRODUCTIVITY

Mushtaq Mangat

Assistant Professor

University of Management and Technology

mushtaq.mangat@umt.edu.pk

Pakistan Knitted Garment Industry is making every eighth garment not

able to ship and every sixth consignment not catching the nominated

vessel. Some one may have different opinion but he or she cannot

deny the fact that in last 8 years only two big vertical units for the

production of knitted garments were established in Lahore vicinity,

while more than 15 units were closed or working partially. This is

mainly due to poor performance of existing firms. No new company is

trying to join this sector due to poor profitability of this sector.

Company’s performance can be gauged from their financial gains.

More than 95% firms are not paying to their creditors as per their

commitment. In most of the cases employees salary is given in the

third week of the month and overtime after two to three months. There

might be many reasons of this poor performance and some reasons

might be out of control like, energy and raw material cost. But during

various visits and discussions with various people working in the firms,

it was observed that high rejection rate is one of the main reasons of

low productivity. It was noted during discussion with a Quality

Assurance Manager from Sri Lanka working in one Pakistani firm that

normal rejection rate in Sri Lankan firms is 3% and if it goes to 5%

whole production team is charge sheeted and asked to fix the

responsibility and ensure that it will not occur again.

As mentioned earlier rejection rate in Pakistani firms is 10 to 15% and

when it is compared to international standard it looks on higher side.

In this article main focus is to discuss reasons of this high rejection rate

in knitted garment production and their remedies.

Reasons of High Rejection Rates

During inspection and packing garment is rejected due to some faults

present

in it and source of defects can be divided into two categories:

Material defects

Process defects

In the following lines we would discuss sources of these faults and

ways to reduce them to improve productivity.

Material

In garment manufacturing mainly two types of material is used:

1-Fabric (main body fabric, collars and arm bands twill tapes etc)

2-Accessories (buttons, stitching thread labels, tags packing material

etc)

It is assessed during survey that more than 50% garment rejection is

due to material faults. This includes fabric faults due to yarn, knitting,

dyeing and improper specification of accessories.

Process

Near to 50% faults are related to cutting, stitching, finishing and

packing.

It all happens during garment manufacturing process. This may be due

to machines and or due to workers.

It is well understood that to improve productivity we need to improve

quality of material and as well as quality of process.

Material faults and their remedies

In the following paragraphs we will discuss the impact of material and

process faults on productivity and the ways to reduce their impact. All

this will be in steps and we are much hopeful that by adopting this

procedure firms can reduce their rejection rate and improve

productivity.

Step One

Rejection Analysis Report

It is must to know the reason of poor performance for improvement. If

you cannot measure it you cannot improve it. There is a dire need that

all rejected garments should be analysed and a report should be

prepared showing the rejection percentage due to different reasons.

This can be called rejection analysis. This analysis will tell us about the

contribution of different factors in poor performance. And this is wise to

address first the main contributing factors in poor productivity. Sample

of rejection analysis report format is given here under. However

necessary changes can be made to meet requirements. Note this

analysis should be carried out after closing of every work order and

finally a report should be prepared on monthly basis:

Rejection Analysis Report Format

Work Order # PO Quantity# Shipped Quantity #

Date Customer (any other information)

S# Defect Description Number of Percentage

pieces

Yarn related faults

1 Dead cotton

2 Contamination

3 Thick thin places

4 Any other

Knitting Related faults

5 Small holes

6 Needle or sinker line

7 Missing stitch

8 Oil stains

9 Any others

Dyeing and Printing Related Faults

10 Un-even dyeing

11 Dyeing patches

12 Softener patches

13 Dirt marks

14 Dyeing spots

15 Finishing lines

16 Calender line

17 Press marks

18 Any other

Accessories Related Faults

19 Writing on label

20 Packing material wrong

specification

21 Button size and colour

22 Zips, string, twill tape

etc

23 Embroidery and its

thread

24 Any other

Operation Faults

25 Variation in

measurements

26 Needle hole

27 Twisted garments

28 Machine oil stains

29 Jump stitches, broken

stitches

30 Any other

The above mentioned format should be developed after closing of

every order and it should be provided to every concern department

and as well as should be pasted on the notice board. The purpose of all

this exercise is to make people aware about the faults and the reason

of the faults. No improvement is possible with out creating awareness.

Step Two

Critical Analysis of Rejection Analysis Report

By doing analytical analysis of the above report many results can be

derived. Some examples are given here under:

1-Price of rejected garments due to knitting needles and cost of

new

needles to replace old one

2- Price of rejected garments due to soil stain during

transportation and

cost of pallets to store fabric

3- Price of rejected garments due to poor dyes and cost of

replacing low quality dyes with high quality dyes.

4- Repair of stitching machines and cost of rejected garments

due to stitching machines faults

Many more results can be derived from the above rejection

analysis and the purpose of this exercise is not to make report

rather to take certain steps to minimise the rejection rates and

ultimate target is productivity improvement. It was observed

during survey that the cost of remedy is much low as compared

to cost of rejected garments. For example cost of a new needle

set for knitting machine is quite low as compared to loss of

rejected garments due to knitting needles which company is

bearing every month. Such cost benefit analysis helps

management in decision makings.