Applying Lean Six Sigma to improve garment production processes-A case study

Abstract

The company under study specializes in producing garment products. The production process of the company has so much waste, a long production time, a high cycle time, and a high defect rate, leading to low productivity, low quality, and late deliveries, affecting the competitive edge of the company. In this article we have discussed how Six Sigma can be applied to improve the company production process to reduce waste, the process production lead time, the cycle time, and the process defect rate and then to improve productivity and quality and finally increase the on-time delivery rate and the competitive edge of the company. The research methodology is based on Lean Six Sigma theory, with the platform of DMAIC procedure, including five steps: define, measure, analyze, improve, and control. The tools used in the steps of DMAIC procedure include cause and effect diagram, Pareto diagram, value stream management, work design, SMED, line balancing, Kanban systems, FIFO, autonomous maintenance, visual management, design of experiments, and control charts. After applying Lean Six Sigma tools, the company has reduced the production lead time by 89.21% from 279 to 30.1 min, reduced the production cycle time by 36% from 25 to 16 s, reduced the process defect rate by 37.45% from 14.9 to 9.32%, and then improved the on-time delivery rate.