A Quality Value Stream Mapping Study in a Knitwear Manufacturer

Abstract

The ready-made clothing industry is one of the sectors that has a high share in export and has a direct impact on our country's economy. Today, the increase in production diversity provides consumers with the chance to choose between alternatives and creates competitive environment for businesses that strive to meet consumer needs at the highest level. In other words, being able to quickly meet the customer's desired quality product at the desired price is as important as producing the product. In this case, businesses are faced with a production process that requires low cost, in which the variety of models and the quality of goods increased, by using the existing resources of the enterprises in the most efficient and flexible way. With this motivation, a case study is implemented for Narin Triko which has an important export market share. Great emphasis is placed on quality control procedures in the company as the customers are global brands, and this leads to more handling of a product and additional number of quality controls. While this approach ensures a higher degree of quality, it also slows down production, requires extra labour, increases lead times and generates more waste. Consequently, this study aims to identify the 7 waste items of lean production and make suggestions to reduce as appropriate. A newly proposed method called Quality Value Stream Mapping (QVSM) that integrates quality focus on Value Stream Mapping (VSM) method is applied. QVSM is a model created to address, analyse, visualize, and evaluate specific quality-related problems. It is expected to suggest some changes in the way the processes work and to increase the product quality by determining the process steps that can be improved regarding the reduction of the wastes like, over processing, overproduction, waiting times, work in process, transportations, scrap, rework and inspection costs. The study started by observing and analysing the production process to collect data on flow of information, process and material, and lean wastes. Then the data are processed for drawing the Current State QVSM that integrates quality-related processes such as quality inspections, rework processes and scrapping processes to the VSM showing the lean wastes. Finally, analysing the QVSM and identifying improvements led to drawing the Future State QVSM and proposing the improvement opportunities. Proposed improvements reduced the Non-Value Adding time 42%. Thus, the new lead time would be 13% less than the previous lead time. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024.