P Raghuram

Lean manufacturing practices in textile industries - a case study

Lean manufacturing is a philosophy of eliminating waste through continuous improvement. This paper is an outcome of a case study conducted in a textile industry in south India. Though the concept of lean manufacturing has shown good results in continuous process industry, it has not been extensively used as compared to discrete manufacturing industries. Process industries, especially textile industries, have automatic machinery which are highly inflexible and have high volume/low variety products. This nature of the textile industry makes implementing lean manufacturing techniques a challenge; hence implementing lean techniques in a textile industry has been taken up as a challenge. We have chosen a combination of value stream mapping (VSM), 5S, kanban, kaizen, poka-yoke, and visual controls to improve the processes. The achievement potential scores before and after lean implementation has been highlighted using radar diagrams. The findings of this study reveal that a thorough analysis of the process, setup, and changeover time (CO), use of colour coding for identification of volume-mix, use of kaizen and quality circles which empower the workforce, are some of the various keys to a successful lean implementation in a textile industry.

A combined AHP and ISM-based model to assess the agility of supply chain – a case study

An agile supply chain corresponds to the quick responsiveness of an organisation to ever changing market demands without compromising on cost and quality of the product. The textile industry is one such industry having a volatile market demand. This paper is an outcome of a case study conducted in a leading spinning industry in South India. Various enablers and determinants of agility were identified through literature review, field study and industry study. Based on the findings of these studies a multi-level model was developed and the suitability of this model to improve the agility of supply chain was tested. For this, two methodologies - analytical hierarchy process (AHP) and interpretive structural modelling (ISM) were identified as suitable tools. The analysis of the results of AHP and ISM methodologies provide the industry an insight on how the supply chain can be made more agile. Further, the model provides the top management a clear vision of the practices to be implemented and the improvement methods to be adopted by the company for an effective management of supply chains in spinning industries.