LEVELS OF STANDARDS

 

There are various levels of standards

1. Company standards: These standards are useful to the company’s design , development, production , purchasing and quality control departments. These standards may be those developed by some other organizations and adopted by the company as it owns standards
2. Industry Standards: These standards are typically developed by a trade association or professional society . For example, American Chemical Society has for amny years maintained specifications for chemical reagents
3. Government Standards: These are standards either developed by the government or developed by some other organization and adopted by the government. The government standards generally tend to be related to safety or well-being of the people.
4. Full consensus Standards: These are standards developed by the representatives of all sectors, such as industry, consumer, government, academia, whohave an interest in use of these standards either as a producer or consumer.

Sources of Standards:

Various standards developing organizations such as American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM), American National Standards Chemists and Colorists (AAtCC), American National Standards Institution (ANSI), British Standards Institute (BSI), International Standards organization (ISO) etc are the largest sources of standards.

American Society for Testing and Materials:

ASTM is a non profit organization that provides a forum for producers, users, ultimate consumers and those having a general interest to meet on common ground and write standards for materials, products, systems and services. From the work of 132 standards – writing comities, ASTM publishes standard test methods, specification, guides, classifications and terminology. ASTM’s standard development activities encompass metals, paints, plastics, textiles, petroleum,construction,energy the environment , consumer product, medical services and other areas

American Association of Textile Chemists and Colorists:

Founded in 1921, the American Association of textile chemists and colorists ahs grown from a group of 270 charter members into world’s largest textile chemistry membership society,with close to 7000 members in the U.S and 6o countries.AATCC is a source of test methods in areas of colorfastness,wetprocessing,fibre identification and textile chemistry .AATCC has published more than 175 test methods in these areas, which are contained in AATCC’s Technical Manual published every year.

American National Standards Institute (ANSI):

The ANSI has served in its capacity as administrator and coordinator of the United States private sector voluntary standardization system for 78 years. The Institute represents the interests of its nearly 1400 company, organization, government agency, institutional and international members.

The Institute ensures that its guiding principles,consensus,due process and openness are followed by more than 175 distinct entities currently accredited under one of the federations three methods of accreditation(organization, committee or canvas)

British Standards Institution:

British Standards Institution was founded in 1901 to coordinate the development of national standards . The BSI was incorporated by Royal Charter in 1929. A non-profit disturbing organization, BSI remains independent of government , industry or trade associations.

International Organization for Standards:

The International Organization for Standards is a worldwide federation of national standards bodies from some 100 countries, one from each country. ISO is an non-governmental organization established in 1947. The mission of Iso is to promote the development of standardization and related activities in the world with a view to facilitating the international exchange of goods and services and to developing cooperation in the sphere of intellectual, scientific, technological and economic activity. ISO’s work results in international agreements which are published as International Standards.

“Total Quality Management” is an enhancement to the traditional way of doing . business. It is a proven technique to guarantee survival in world class competition. Only by changing the actions of management with the culture and actions of an entire organization be transformed. TQM can be defined as follows

Total= Made up of the whole

Quality= Degree of excellence of a product on service provided

Management= Act, art of manner of handling, controlling etc

Therefore TQM is the art of managing the whole to achieve the excellence.

TQM is defined as both a philosophy and a set of principles that represent the foundation of a continuously improving organization. It is the application of quantitative mehods and human resources to improve all the processes within an organization and exceed customer needs now and in future. TQM integrates fundamental management techniques, existing improvement efforts, and technical tools under a disciplined approach.

Four P.I s of TQM:

The four important pillars or elements of TQM are:

• Involvement of all the employees
• Proper control of all processes
• Customer satisfaction
• Continuous improvement

The six basic concepts of TQM are:

• Management commitment
• Customer Satisfaction
• Employee involvement
• Continuous Process Improvement
• Supplier Partnership
• Performance Measurement

Management Commitment:

Management should be committed to improve the quality at all levels , for which the “leadership qualities” have to be imbibed by the Chief Executive Officer. The characteristics of a quality leader are:

1. § To give priority o internal and external customer’s needs
2. § To empower subordinates
3. § To emphasize improvement
4. § To emphasize prevention of defective product
5. § To train and coach the employees and not direct and supervise them
6. § To learn from problems
7. § To communicate to everyone about TQM
8. § To continuously demonstrate improvement in quality
9. § To choose quality suppliers
10. § To implement QMS effectively
11. § To encourage and recognize team effort

To start the implementation of TQM, a “Quality Council” has to be formed comprising of the CEO, Senior managers of different departments like Design, Marketing, Finance, Production and Quality Control , a Coordinator or consultant who may be from outside and representative of Labour Union. The functions of the quality control are:

1. To develop a quality policy statement
2. To develop a long term quality improvement programmes
3. Create total education and training plan
4. Determine and monitor costs of poor quality
5. Determine performance measures in different departments
6. Devise recognition and reward system for employees

Customer satisfaction:

Customers are the most important asset of any organization’s success depends on how many customers it has. Increasingly, manufacturing and service organizations are using Customer Satisfaction as a measure of quality. Total quality management aims at meeting or exceeding customer satisfaction. Customer satisfaction is known by getting feedback from the customers, through questionnaires, rating scales, toll-free telephone services, customer meets or visits, report cards, internet, employee feedback etc.

Customer satisfaction is not” objective”, but more of subjective, which is hard to measure. It is more of a feeling or attitude. James teboul has developed a model, which depicts customer satisfaction.

Employee involvement:

Involving the employees is one approach in improving quality and productivity. Only by motivating the employees, can employees be made to get involved in the functioning of the organization . Inorder to understand how an individual can be motivated, we have to understand “Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs”. He has stated that motivation can best be explained in terms of a hierarchy of needs and there are five levels in it. These levels are survival, security, social, esteem and self-actualization. Once the lower level is satisfied, it can no longer motivate a person. Therefore, in order to motivate that type of a person, the second level has to be concentrated and so on.

Employees will be motivated by appreciation, good pay, promotion, good working conditions etc. The benefits of getting the employees involved in the functioning of the organization are:

1. Their expertise can be shared by the organization
2. Any change can be easily implemented and any corrective and preventive actions easily
3. The morale of the employees will improve
4. The organization can easily achieve its goal

Continuous Process Improvement:

It is a known fact that “perfection” is near impossible. To achieve perfection, improvement is necessary. Improvement is made by adopting the following methods.

• Viewing all work as process
• Making all processes effective and efficient
• Anticipating Customer needs
• Controlling in-process performances
• Eliminating waste and re-work
• Bench marketing
• Innovating

The 5Ms (Men, Machine, Money, Materials, & Management) constitute the input. Using the process, the product is manufactured. The feedback from the customer is got, and based on the discrepancies pointed out by him, corrective and preventive action is taken, i.e, continuous improvement is made in the process of manufacture.

The feedback from the customer is got and based on the discrepancies pointed out by him, corrective and preventive action is taken, i.e, continuous improvement is made in the process of manufacture

Supplier Partnership:

Raw materials constitute about 60% of the cost of a product. Hence the suppliers of a raw material and accessories must be considered as partners of our organization. There must be a long term commitment, trust and a shared vision between supplier and manufacturer , if a quality product has to be produced.

There are some accessories which can be manufactured by us and which can be also sourced from outside suppliers. It can be from a single supplier, or multiple suppliers. Sourcing suppliers from outside is based on the below mentioned criteria

• Criticality of the item
• Organization’s technical expertise
• Availability of supplier
• Supplier’s Management system
• Production capacity
• Price
• Flexibility of production
• Track record etc

“Just in time “concept is a very important concept as for as sourcing is concerned. Just in time means procuring the right raw materials or accessories only at the right quantity and at the right time only. This would reduce the inventory cost. The lead time is very important to implement “just in Time Inventory Control”

If the following measures can be sincerely followed, an effective manufacturer supplier partnership can be maintained:

1. Suppliers should be considered as very important for maintaining quality of products
2. Both manufacturer and supplier must respect each others independence
3. The requirements of raw materials or accessories have to be clearly laid
4. A contact has to be made for quality, quantity, price, delivery methods, payments etc.
5. Supplier should provide all data regarding his quality control
6. A product quality evaluation method has to be formulated with the supplier
7. Dispute settlements have to be clearly spelt out.
8. There must be exchange of information regarding product improvement and quality by supplier to manufacturer
9. A good relationship has to be maintained with the supplier, other than in business
10. Every move has to have the ultimate customer in mind.

Performance Measures:

Organizations must manage by “Facts” and not by “Gut Feelings”. That is organizations must take decisions based on the statistical figures and analysis and not based on a vague judgments. Each organization must develop performance measures to have factual data regarding, production, wastage, quality, etc. The areas in which performance measures have to be studied has to be decided at first. Some of the areas in which performance measures can be done are:

• § Human Resources
• § Customer complaints received
• § Production
• § R & D
• § Suppliers service ratings
• § Marketing and sales
• § Administration

The objectives of introducing performance measures are:

• 1. To establish baseline standards and reveal trends
• 2. Determine which processes are to be improved
• 3. Indicate process gains and losses
• 4. Compare goals with actual performance
• 5. Provide information for individual and team evaluation
• 6. Provide information to take decisions
• 7. Determine overall organizations performance.

Failure Mode effective Analysis:

“FMEA” is an analytical technique wherein, every component of the product is thoroughly studied for its possibilities of failure and design or other changes made to avoid failure of the components.

It is “Before the event” action and helps us to establish controls and produce a defect free, durable and reliable product, which would exceed the customer expectations. FMEA can not only be done on the product, but can also be done in other areas like Process control, maintainence etc.

The general stages of implementation of FMEA are:

• 1. Specify possibilities of failure
• 2. Specify the effect of failure and give priority number
• 3. Specify detailed action plan to rectify it
• 4. Re-evaluate the corrective action.

MANAGING QUALITY THROUGH INSPECTION:

In the beginning, to obtain an overall picture of where you stand in terms of quality, perform 100% final inspection of all styles for at least to to three weeks and collect information. The following are the defects are to look for:

• Broken buttons

• Broken Snaps
• Broken Stitching
• Defective Snaps
• Different shades within the same garment
• Dropped stitches
• Exposed notches
• Exposed raw edges
• Fabric defects
• Holes
• Inoperative zipper
• Loose/hanging sewing threads
• Misaligned buttons and buttonholes
• Missing buttons
• Needle cuts/chews
• Open seams
• Pulled / loose yarns
• Stain
• Unfinished button holes
• Zipper too short

Analyze the data collected from100% inspection. If a pattern of defects emerges, it makes a solution that much easier. If a pattern does not emerge, it means that you have widespread quality problems.

A garment can have more than one defect. Therefore, the number of defects and the number of defective samples is not the same. The most common defect found out is related to buttons. Perhaps, button quality is such that they break in

pressing, may be they are attached so poorly with the slightest stress they come off. A second area of concern here is the fabric defect. Fabric defects can be further analyzed and grouped into various categories of defects such as stains,

slubs, missing picks, dropped stitches etc. A third area of concern should be open seams. But the major problems found are unfinished buttonholes. Significant improvements can be achieved by concentrating on unfinished buttonholes and lining seams

Another major that occur is in the finishing-pressing area. Perhaps some garments are not pressed at all or material handling is such that a number of pressed garments end up wrinkled. In any inspection program it is very important to remember that the inspection program’s primary objective is to obtain information on which necessary actions can be taken. Such actions can be corrective in nature to prevent defective garments, or such actions may reflect a decision to reduce inspection frequency because of the consistently good quality of production. If you use an inspection programmes as merely a failure fixing program or a watchdog to prevent defective garments from reaching you customers.

The inspection program should not merely be a device to separate good from bad. The real value of inspection program lies in what you do with the information that you obtain from this program. The individuals selected for a quality control inspector’s job must have a lot of initiative and be able to work under the minimum supervision. They should also be tactful in dealing with people. Quality control inspectors must not be paid on a piece rate basis, but should be salaried employees. It is not how much they do , but what they do is important.

MANAGING QUALITY THROUGH TESTING:

When one mentions testing to a garment manufacturer, usually the manufacturer envisions a full fledge testing laboratory. However to effectively manage quality of garments, one does not need to have a full fledge testing laboratory. An

effective testing program can include only a pair of washer and dryer .With a washer and dryer one can find out something about shrinkage and colour fastness in laundering, durable press qualities, durability of seams, durability of fusible interlinings, if trimming and accessories will withstand appropriate washing and drying, compatibility of trimmings with the rest of garment in terms of shrinkage and colorfastness and shrinkage of zipper tape.