A Simulation Study on Garment Manufacturing Process

摘要

Garment industry is an important industry and continues to evolve in order to meet the consumers’ high demands. Therefore, elements of innovation and improvement are important. In this work, research studies were conducted at a local company in order to model the sewing process of clothes manufacturing by using simulation modeling. Clothes manufacturing at the company involves 14 main processes, which are connecting the pattern, center sewing and side neating, pockets sewing, backside-sewing, attaching the front and back, sleeves preparation, attaching the sleeves and over lock, collar preparation, collar sewing, bottomedge sewing, buttonholing sewing, removing excess thread, marking button, and button cross sewing. Those fourteen processes are operated by six tailors only. The last four sets of processes are done by a single tailor. Data collection was conducted by on site observation and the probability distribution of processing time for each of the processes is determined by using @Risk’s Bestfit. Then a simulation model is developed using Arena Software based on the data collected. Animated simulation model is developed in order to facilitate understanding and verifying that the model represents the actual system. With such model, what if analysis and different scenarios of operations can be experimented with virtually. The animation and improvement models will be presented in further work.