Functions of Production Planning and Control (PPC) Department in Apparel Manufacturing

Production planning and Control department is one of the important department for the
apparel manufacturing company. In the context of the apparel manufacturing primary roles of the Production Planning and Control (PPC) department has been listed below. Each functions has been explained briefly just overview about the task. To know details about the task read related articles. Job or Task Scheduling: Preparation of time and action calendar for each order from order receiving to shipment. The job schedule contains list of tasks to be processed for the styles. Against each tasks planner mentions when to start a task and what is dead line for that task. Name of responsible person (department) for the job is being listed. For example, scheduling planned cut date (PCD), line loading date etc. Material Resource Planning (Inventory): Preparation of Material requirement sheet according to sample product and buyer specification sheet. Consumption of material (fabric, thread, button, and twill tape) is calculated and estimated cost of each material. Loading production: Planner defines which style to be loaded to the production line and how much quantity to be loaded. Process selection & planning: Processes needed to complete an order vary style to style. According to the order (customer) requirement PPC department select processes for the orders. Sometime extra processes are eliminated to reduce cost of production. Facility location: Where a company has multiple factories (facilities) for production and factories are set for specific product, planner need to identify which facility will be most suitable for new orders. Sometimes there may be a capacity shortage in a factory, in that case planner need to decide which facility will selected for that orders. Estimating quantity and costs of production: Planner estimate daily production (units) according to the styles work content. With the estimated production figure, production runs and manpower involvement planner also estimate production cost per pieces.

Capacity planning: PPC department plays a major role during order booking. They decide (suggest) how much order they should accept according to their production capacity. Allocating of total capacity or deciding how much capacity to be used for an order out of total factory capacity. Regularly updating factories current capacity (production capacity). To know more read the article - How to calculate production capacity of a factory Line planning: Preparing detailed line planning with daily production target for the production line. Most cases line planning is made after discussing with production team and Industrial engineers. Read - What is Line Planning? Follow up and execution: Whatever plan is made is executed by PPC department. PPC department keeps close look whether everything is progressing according the plan. Chasing other department heads on daily basis to keep plan on track. They update order wise completed tasks on the Time & action Calendar. When they found something is going to be late they expedite and create an alarm about the delay.

How to Calculate Production Capacity of a Factory?

In Apparel Manufacturing, Production capacity is one of the most important criteria used for
vendor selection by the buyers. It is because; the production time of an order is directly proportional to vendors production capacity. So it is very important that marketing and planning personnel should aware about the production capacity of their production units. Capacity of a factory is primarily expressed in terms of total machines factory have. Secondly, how much pieces the factory produces on daily for the specific products? In general, total numbers of machines in a factory mostly remains same for a period. But factory may produce various types of product during the season. According to the product (style) category, machine requirement may change and daily average production in each style may vary. So to be specific during booking orders, planner should know exactly how much capacity he or she needed to procure the order in a given time period. A factorys capacity is presented in total minutes or hours or in pieces (production per day). The method used to calculate capacity has been explained in the following. To calculate Daily production capacity (in pieces) one needs following information. 1. Factory capacity in hours

2. Product SAM 3. Line efficiency (Average) 1. Calculation of factory capacity (in hours): Check how many machines factory has and how many hours factory runs in a day. For example suppose, Total number of machines = 200 Shift hours per day = 10 hours So total factory capacity (in hours) = 200*10 hours = 2000 hours 2. Calculation of Product SAM (SAM): Make a list of product category that you manufacture and get standard minutes (SAM) of all products you make from work study engineers. If you dont have product SAM then calculate the SAM. Or you can useaverage SAM of the products. Suppose you are producing shirt and its SAM is 25 minutes. 3. Factory Average Efficiency: This data is collected from industrial engineer. Or calculate it with historical data. Suppose average line efficiency is 50%. Read the article - How to calculate efficiency of a production line or batch? Calculation of production capacity (in pieces): Once you have above information use following formula to calculate production capacity. Production capacity (in pieces) = (Capacity in hours*60/product SAM)*line efficiency For Example: Suppose a factory has 8 sewing lines and each line has 25 machines. Total 200 machines and working shift is 10 hours per day. Total factory capacity per day is 2000 hours (200 machines * 10 hours). If factory is producing only one style (Shirt) of SAM 25 minutes and used all 200 machines daily production capacity at 50% = (2000*60/25)*50% Pieces = (2000*60*50) / (25*100) Pieces = 2400 Pieces [Note: Production will vary according to the line efficiency and during learning curve or in the initial days when style is loaded to the line] Production (capacity) planning is normally done based on sewing capacity. Having knowledge of the capacity in other processes (internal or external) is also very important. Otherwise planner may fail and will not be able to meet the dead line. Other departments such as Cutting room capacity, Finishing room capacity, Washing Capacity and capacity of the value added jobs.

What is Line Planning?

In this article, line means sewing production line or production batch. Each line contains a set
of machines to make garments for mass production and set of machines vary depending on product category.

Line planning is scheduling and allocating of orders to production lines according to product setting (product is being made in the line) and due dates of production completion. A line plan defines when a style is going to be loaded to the line, how many pieces to be expected (target) from the line and when order to be completed. For example, please refer to the following Table-1, where a simple line planning has been shown in spread sheet. During booking orders or allocating orders to the production line, planners must check what is running on the line and how many days it will take to complete the running style. Benefit of Line planning: It helps production manager as well as line supervisor with information such as what is the daily production target for line. They set their line (machines and manpower) accordingly. Line plan also provides information such as how many days style would run, what is the next style going to be loaded?

Table-1: Line Plan

Line 1 Cumm Daily Prod. Prod. loading #2341A, Qty -3000 pieces 200 250 400 400 400 400 400 400 150 loading #432K, Qty -5500 pieces 100 250 500 500 500 500 500 500 500 500 500 150 100 350 850 1350 1850 2350 2850 3350 3850 4350 4850 5000 200 450 850 1250 1650 2050 2450 2850 3000 Line 2 Cumm Daily Prod. Prod. 300 300 300 200 loading #Polo , Qty -1500 pieces 0 100 300 350 350 400 loading #YK45, Qty -4500 pieces 200 250 400 400 400 400 400 400 400 400 400 200 450 850 1250 1650 2050 2450 2850 3250 3650 4050 0 100 400 750 1100 1500 1200 1500 1800 2000 Total Daily Prod. 300 500 550 600 400 400 500 700 750 500 400 100 450 750 900 900 900 900 900 900 900 900 550

Date 1-Dec 2-Dec 3-Dec 4-Dec 5-Dec 6-Dec 7-Dec 8-Dec 9-Dec 10-Dec 11-Dec 12-Dec 13-Dec 14-Dec 15-Dec 16-Dec 17-Dec 18-Dec 19-Dec 20-Dec 21-Dec 22-Dec 23-Dec

Daily Prod. Daily production or line output Cumm Prod. Cumulative production of the style till date