Shop Floor Control Solves Today’s Softgoods Manufacturing Challenges

By Author: thomasgalvin
Total Articles: 612
Comment this article

Fashion and softgoods manufacturers are challenged as never before to accelerate cycle times, reduce costs, and improve quality. Demand for smaller order sizes, greater product variety, and other industry shifts have resulted in a more complex production process; where predicting, monitoring, and controlling costs is more difficult than ever before.

But after years of cost-cutting efforts, where can producers of apparel, footwear, accessories, home furnishings, and other fashion products turn to achieve the productivity gains and control they need to increase and sustain their competitiveness?

Both well-established and emerging sewn-products manufacturers across the globe are finding answers through the proven strategies of shop floor control.

Shop floor control utilizes data from the manufacturing floor to maintain and communicate status information on orders and individual operations. The process is enabled by a network of computer terminals that capture information on production events. Shop floor data is collected in either a batch (hourly, daily, etc.) or real-time ...
... frequency to provide production workers and managers with more accurate and timely information on individual, team, and overall line performance. Machine operators can use this information to measure their own performance and establish the work pace needed to meet and exceed production quotas. A broader view of this information enables managers to streamline processes, control costs, and run their operations more efficiently and productively.

In real-time mode, individual shop floor control terminals at each machine or workstation track production events as they occur; providing the most actionable information for both workers and managers. Real-time systems present managers with the information and visibility they need to quickly resolve production issues, ensure on-time deliveries, and maximize manufacturing profitability. By collecting all relevant information, the system also tracks product quality issues and automates the payroll calculation for companies using piecework incentives.

While payroll automation saves time and money, highly advanced shop floor control systems such as industry-leader Leadtec™ are capable of delivering more strategic business benefits. With more than 500 successful sewn-products implementations across the globe, Leadtec has a 30-year track record of increasing operator productivity, reducing excess labor costs, and reducing work in process; each by 20-30% or more.

In today’s intensely competitive and cost-sensitive business climate, sewn-products manufacturers from Latin America to India are discovering that Leadtec shop floor control systems present the most practical and affordable way to transform their plants into the flexible, responsive, and cost-effective operations needed to meet the current and future demands of their fast-changing industries.

For more information about shop floor control visit our site http://www.leadtec.com/