Clothes are an integral part of our lives,its hard to imagine our lives sans apparel . But ,have you ever pondered about the technical aspect of the clothes we wear?If No,lets start our journey to explore the ground zero of apparel production. But, if you are already experienced in the making of apparel ,we would have a ride through the memory lane and reminisce the first time you visited
RPV Exports Private Limited -,my first encounter with an apparel production unit. This company started in January 2013, a 100% export oriented organisation ,which specialises in kids wear. The objective of this industry visit was to know about the layout of the industry concerned and the names of machinery used in the unit.They deal majorly in round neck knitted fabrics constituting 90% of the total export and only 10% of the production is based on woven fabrics.
The main objective of this export unit is to maintain: 1. Material quality 2. Efficiency 3. Safety. RPV Exports being an export unit is a highly audited organisation, the auditor can be either the customer directly, the buying house – that places the order , or 3rd party assurers.
The entrance of the production unit greeted us with ‘The Wall of Fame’ which houses the various certifications bagged by the organisation and individually by the experienced employees. Then we moved to the meeting hall ,where we got a brief of the export house and were introduced with the very skilled and experienced staff, specializing in their specific domains. Post introductions and general guidelines on code of conduct, we made our very first step towards the Cutting Department of the production unit.The shape of the room being rectangular. For a medium scale industry, the layout was well organised and as per standard guidelines,with yellow broad lines marking the various storage,cutting,and drawing regions. Red arrows marked the path for workers, supervisors and visitors like us to move around. Upon entering we meet with organised stacks of Received fabric, the cutting department houses 8 cutting tables.First, a pattern of the cloth piece required is generated on a sheet equivalent to the size of fabric piece available, using CAD Software, these are further used to cut fabric according to the pattern on paper, by superimposing the same on the fabric sheets.the machine used for the process is known as cutting knife. The hall also holds 9 racks of checked fabric, a fabric relaxation area,and stock balance fabric region.In order to ensure safety the cutting knife operators use metallic chain gloves, and in order to prevent fly and fluff of fabric( generated during cutting) to enter our body through breathing masks were used.
Next we moved to the Stitching department ,a rectangular hall of 70*30 feet . This hall has 6 units in total, with unit 4, unit 5, and unit 6 having 2 rows each of 10 SNLS machine (also known as lock stitch machine) and checking tables at the head of each row, where the cut and printed fabric pieces from printing department are stitched. Unit 3 consists of 2 rows of 9 over lock machines each, which carry out over locking of garments obtained from previous units.Unit 2 consists of 2 rows of Flat lock stitch machines. A button-hole machine is placed between unit 1 and unit 2. The embroidery section of the department runs along the length of the room on right hand side, with 12 operating machines and is placed beside the Quality Control desk and yarn room.The department also has a fusing area with a Hashima fusing machine.
The last resort to our visit round the production unit was the Printing department, we were astonished to see a comparably neat color kitchen, a color kitchen is the section of a printing unit that holds the responsibility of mixing colors and chemicals for printing. The entrance of the department marked the stacking area where the cut fabric pieces from the cutting department are stored, and the curing machine which uses hot dry air passed through a coil in order to fix the print color. The left hand side marks the storage section for new screens. and the rest area of the hall consists of 4 printing tables. The department also has Octopus machine which is used to automatically print required designs on a fabric piece.With a brief about the process of printing on cut fabric, we moved towards the end of our tour.
The organisation of the resources and space in the industry was commendable.Through this blog I wish to express my gratitude to NIFT Kolkata, our mentor for the visit Dr. Sumantra Bakshi for providing us the opportunity to explore the layout of a production unit and, RPV Exports pvt. Ltd. management and staff, for their support and welcoming attitude.
The objective of this industry visit was fulfilled , as we were able to draw the layout of the factory to a scale, list out and label the available infrastructure and machinery of the industry as outcome.Indeed the first visit was a success and carved a niche, as it is rightly said-“First impression is the last one”.
Thank you,for your patient reading.
p.s. Providing pictures is not possible, as it would be revealing of layout of the company concerned in this competitive era.
yashodhara's blog 