Quality Assurance Process Flow

for Apparel Industry

What is quality assurance?
Quality assurance is the process of designing, producing, evaluating, and
assessing products to determine that they meet the desired quality level for
a company’s target market. It is a complex area of an apparel industry.
Quality assurance looks at a product from the first design concept until it is
sold to the consumer.

Any part of a business needs guidelines to operate efficiently, and this is

especially true with quality assurance. It is the quality controller’s
responsibility to ensure that everyone understands and follows those
procedures. The aim of quality assurance is to introduce procedures that
act as a safeguard, recognizing potential problems before they happen.

Procedures are the route for the critical path, which is the journey from
design concept to goods going into the stores. This is a continuous process
through the life of the business; the path has many obstacles and dangers,
and the procedures minimize the risk, guiding us safely through to the final
stages. This is made all the more difficult as we often work against the
clock to meet tight deadlines. In such cases, things do go wrong, but we
have to deal with problems quickly and get back on track. Procedures are a
plan of action, so that when one stage is completed, we automatically go to
the next stage, and everyone concerned know what the next stage is and,
most importantly, know what is expected of them.
 Fig: Quality check of garment
Simply put, quality assurance is the process of specifying clearly what we
want and then introducing a series of checks to ensure that’s what we are
going to get. This is the way how you protect your brand and your
company’s reputation.

You can also like: Introduction of Textile Testing: Types,

Objectives, Importance and Methods

The flow chart is given below for a typical set of procedures to control the
sampling and production process. Each stage is a stepping stone on the
critical path toward the development and finalization of the product. It is a
logical progression to minimize potential problems. Missing any of these
stages can create problems with the final production; use this as a guide,
but certainly add other procedures that might be considered important to
your business. When procedures are established, it will be a reference
point for all involved with the merchandise. Especially, buying and
merchandising departments will want to know the progress of the goods in
which they are investing so much money and hopefully make the company
a great deal of profit; mistakes are very costly.
Procedures to control the sampling and production process in
apparel industry

Buyer requests size charts and style specifications from the technologist
before visiting factories to source new ranges.
Buyer may take fabric specifications or decide on fabric quality at the
factory.
↓
Risk analysis
Range finalized, prices and initial quantities agreed with factories. Quality
control to appraise new range and suppliers with designer or buyer and
assess for any potential problems.
↓
Any revisions or updates to the specifications to be sent to the factories.
↓
Critical path timetable for sampling and production finalized by buying
and quality control—vendor to confirm.
↓
Request sealing samples, normally 2, for approval and in which sizes.
Samples must be correct to the specification and where possible in correct
fabric and color or correct fabric and nearest color or nearest possible
fabric—correct fabric and color must be approved before start of
production.
↓
Factory to send sealing samples with a completed sample report and
ticketed or labeled with suppliers name, style reference, and all parts of
your fabric specification form filled in.
↓
If samples are rejected, send detailed report describing the faults. Factory
to remake before starting production. Ask factory to contact you when they
read the report and confirm they understand how to rectify.
↓
If samples approved, seal both, keep one at head office and return one to
the factory, and approval is given to start production. Ensure factory has
completed specifications with all relevant updated information.
↓
Factory to send samples of production fabric, with test report from an
accredited testing house before start of production.
↓
When production starts, factory to send selection of sizes and colors as
requested by the customer.
A sample report should be completed by the factory and sent with the
samples with all sections completed.
↓
Send factory report on production samples.
↓
Only if production samples acceptable can approval be given for goods to
be shipped. Before shipping, when approx 80% of goods finished factory,
quality control to carry out inspection and send you a copy of the report
plus shipping date and date you should receive delivery.
↓
Delivery received and inspection carried out at a designated warehouse,
report sent to the factory, informing it if delivery accepted/rejected.
↓
If delivery not acceptable, course of action to be decided, such as 100%
inspection, and if rectification required.

Only on repeat deliveries and where the factory has made a style before can
some of these stages be missed out, and the decision to do this should only
be based on keeping a recorded history of how a factory has performed
over a given time.

As a golden rule, approval samples that have major faults, for example,
those that measure too big or too small, those that have poor workmanship
or fabric, and those that are not of the right quality, should not be
accepted, even with the pressure to keep to the agreed timetable. If the
factory cannot get the sample right at this stage, then it is very unlikely that
it will be correct for production. You should not accept factory
reassurances that the production will be correct, but you should insist on
seeing correct samples. You need to convince the factory that it is in their
interest to produce a sample that is correct before they start the bulk and
that it is their responsibility to make the time up later and get back to the
agreed schedule.

References:

1. The Fundamentals of Quality Assurance in the Textile Industry by

Stanley Bernard Brahams
2. Garment Manufacturing Technology by Rajkishore Nayak and Rajiv
Padhye