The garment industry is a personnel-intensive industry with fierce competition and various factors such as small batches, multiple varieties, and rapid changes in customer orders. In terms of production planning, manual preparation is still mainly used at present. This article introduces PlanMateAPS’s special solutions for the needs of the garment industry.

APS software improves material supply – material requirements and automatic scheduling according to inventory constraints

A key issue that affects the delivery time of clothing production is the delivery time of fabrics.

In the manual mode, the plan can only be scheduled for 1-2 days, whichever is urgent will be done. When should orders be most efficient? How many lines can be opened to deliver goods? These are unpredictable, with emergency switching every day and often overtime work.

Scheduling according to material conditions in PlanMateAPS has a strong guiding role in material issues in the garment industry.

In Planmate, material inventory includes in-stock and in-transit. Use inventory constraint scheduling to be predictive of future production and delivery.

Schematic diagram of production scheduling according to material constraints

Raw material procurement plan and material delivery date

An important reason for frequent problems with raw material delivery is that the demand time is unclear and frequently changes.

Problems with manual production scheduling

Improvement plan:

The lead time for fabric procurement is 40 days. Considering the safety lead time of about 10 days, the garment factory should outline the production plan for the next two months, determine the production date of each order, and issue purchase orders according to the planned date. Manual production scheduling cannot produce accurate long-term plans.

Using PlanMateAPS’s automatic production scheduling, you can accurately predict delivery and production plans for the next few months, and purchase according to the automatic production scheduling plan, greatly improving the accuracy of material procurement.

Workflow scheduled using PlanMateAPS:

Use APS automatic production scheduling software to reduce learning time for garment line production

Learning means that after a new product is launched, the workers are unskilled and the production efficiency is low at the beginning. After a period of learning, the production efficiency gradually improves and finally reaches the optimal efficiency.

Clothing sewing requires learning time. For a new style, the production efficiency is only 30% when it is first launched, and it can reach 100% after one day of production.

When should production start? How many lines should be opened to ensure on-time delivery? How to arrange work orders most efficiently? These are decisions planners need to make every day.

Manual scheduling method:

Due to the difficulty of calculation and the working habits of personnel, if one line cannot meet the delivery date, two lines of production will be arranged, and both lines will start and end at the same time.

Two products, two lines, need to learn 4 times, and the production efficiency is low for four days.

PlanMate’s automatic scheduling optimization results:

Use PlanMateAPS’s automatic production scheduling to optimize start date, line opening and quantity, which can reduce learning time. As shown below:

With PlanMate’s scheduling method, you only need 3 days to learn the two products, saving 1 learning day.

Arrangement of clothing styles, colors and sizes:

In clothing production, the same order can produce multiple sizes and colors, so one customer order will expand into multiple production work orders. There is no need to relearn the same style in different sizes and colors. You need to relearn when changing styles.

PlanMate arranges orders of the same style, different sizes and colors together to facilitate production line management and reduce production line learning time.

relevant information:

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PlanMateAPS machining solutions