HIGH REJECTION RATE: AN OPPONENT OF GARMENT

PRODUCTIVITY
Mushtaq Mangat
Assistant Professor
University of Management and Technology
mushtaq.mangat@umt.edu.pk

Pakistan Knitted Garment Industry is making every eighth garment not

able to ship and every sixth consignment not catching the nominated
vessel. Some one may have different opinion but he or she cannot
deny the fact that in last 8 years only two big vertical units for the
production of knitted garments were established in Lahore vicinity,
while more than 15 units were closed or working partially. This is
mainly due to poor performance of existing firms. No new company is
trying to join this sector due to poor profitability of this sector.
Company’s performance can be gauged from their financial gains.
More than 95% firms are not paying to their creditors as per their
commitment. In most of the cases employees salary is given in the
third week of the month and overtime after two to three months. There
might be many reasons of this poor performance and some reasons
might be out of control like, energy and raw material cost. But during
various visits and discussions with various people working in the firms,
it was observed that high rejection rate is one of the main reasons of
low productivity. It was noted during discussion with a Quality
Assurance Manager from Sri Lanka working in one Pakistani firm that
normal rejection rate in Sri Lankan firms is 3% and if it goes to 5%
whole production team is charge sheeted and asked to fix the
responsibility and ensure that it will not occur again.
As mentioned earlier rejection rate in Pakistani firms is 10 to 15% and
when it is compared to international standard it looks on higher side.
In this article main focus is to discuss reasons of this high rejection rate
in knitted garment production and their remedies.

Reasons of High Rejection Rates

During inspection and packing garment is rejected due to some faults

present
in it and source of defects can be divided into two categories:

 Material defects
 Process defects
In the following lines we would discuss sources of these faults and
ways to reduce them to improve productivity.

Material
In garment manufacturing mainly two types of material is used:
1-Fabric (main body fabric, collars and arm bands twill tapes etc)
2-Accessories (buttons, stitching thread labels, tags packing material
etc)

It is assessed during survey that more than 50% garment rejection is

due to material faults. This includes fabric faults due to yarn, knitting,
dyeing and improper specification of accessories.

Process

Near to 50% faults are related to cutting, stitching, finishing and

packing.
It all happens during garment manufacturing process. This may be due
to machines and or due to workers.

It is well understood that to improve productivity we need to improve

quality of material and as well as quality of process.

Material faults and their remedies

In the following paragraphs we will discuss the impact of material and
process faults on productivity and the ways to reduce their impact. All
this will be in steps and we are much hopeful that by adopting this
procedure firms can reduce their rejection rate and improve
productivity.

Step One
Rejection Analysis Report
It is must to know the reason of poor performance for improvement. If
you cannot measure it you cannot improve it. There is a dire need that
all rejected garments should be analysed and a report should be
prepared showing the rejection percentage due to different reasons.
This can be called rejection analysis. This analysis will tell us about the
contribution of different factors in poor performance. And this is wise to
address first the main contributing factors in poor productivity. Sample
of rejection analysis report format is given here under. However
necessary changes can be made to meet requirements. Note this
analysis should be carried out after closing of every work order and
finally a report should be prepared on monthly basis:

Rejection Analysis Report Format

Work Order # PO Quantity# Shipped Quantity #
Date Customer (any other information)
S# Defect Description Number of Percentage
 pieces
Yarn related faults
1 Dead cotton

2 Contamination

3 Thick thin places

4 Any other
Knitting Related faults
5 Small holes
6 Needle or sinker line
7 Missing stitch
8 Oil stains
9 Any others
Dyeing and Printing Related Faults
10 Un-even dyeing
11 Dyeing patches
12 Softener patches
13 Dirt marks
14 Dyeing spots
15 Finishing lines
16 Calender line
17 Press marks
18 Any other
Accessories Related Faults
19 Writing on label
20 Packing material wrong
specification
21 Button size and colour
22 Zips, string, twill tape
etc
23 Embroidery and its
thread
24 Any other
Operation Faults
25 Variation in
measurements
26 Needle hole
27 Twisted garments
28 Machine oil stains
29 Jump stitches, broken
 stitches
30 Any other

The above mentioned format should be developed after closing of

every order and it should be provided to every concern department
and as well as should be pasted on the notice board. The purpose of all
this exercise is to make people aware about the faults and the reason
of the faults. No improvement is possible with out creating awareness.

Step Two
Critical Analysis of Rejection Analysis Report
By doing analytical analysis of the above report many results can be
derived. Some examples are given here under:
1-Price of rejected garments due to knitting needles and cost of
new
needles to replace old one
2- Price of rejected garments due to soil stain during
transportation and
cost of pallets to store fabric
3- Price of rejected garments due to poor dyes and cost of
replacing low quality dyes with high quality dyes.
4- Repair of stitching machines and cost of rejected garments
due to stitching machines faults

Many more results can be derived from the above rejection

analysis and the purpose of this exercise is not to make report
rather to take certain steps to minimise the rejection rates and
ultimate target is productivity improvement. It was observed
during survey that the cost of remedy is much low as compared
to cost of rejected garments. For example cost of a new needle
set for knitting machine is quite low as compared to loss of
rejected garments due to knitting needles which company is
bearing every month. Such cost benefit analysis helps
management in decision makings.