In this study one heuristic assembly line balancing technique known as the “Ranked Positional weight Technique”, developed by Helgeson and Birnie was applied to solve the problem of assembly line balancing in a garment manufacturing company for one model. Information about solution methods related to assembly line balancing problems is given. Operator reduction is achieved by line balancing. Layout was modified using the template method. The aim of this article is the usage of these techniques to improve the productivity in a clothing company.

1. International Journal of Innovative Research in Advanced Engineering (IJIRAE) ISSN: 2349-2163
Issue 12, Volume 4 (December 2017) www.ijirae.com
_________________________________________________________________________________________________
IJIRAE: Impact Factor Value – SJIF: Innospace, Morocco (2016): 3.916 | PIF: 2.469 | Jour Info: 4.085 |
ISRAJIF (2016): 3.715 | Indexcopernicus: (ICV 2016): 64.35
IJIRAE © 2014- 17, All Rights Reserved Page –8
PRODUCTIVITY IMPROVEMENT IN STITCHING
SECTION OF A GARMENT MANUFACTURING
COMPANY
Anand Jayakumar A*
Department of Mechanical Engineering,
SVS College of Engineering, Coimbatore, India
jay4upeople@gmail.com
Krishnaraj C
Department of Mechanical Engineering,
Karpagam College of Engineering, Coimbatore, India
krishna.kce@gmail.com
Aravinth Kumar A
Department of Mechanical Engineering,
KGiSL Institute of Technology, Coimbatore, India
aravinthkumar004@gmail.com
Manuscript History
Number: IJIRAE/RS/Vol.04/Issue12/DCAE10082
DOI: 10.26562/IJIRAE.2017.DCAE10082
Received: 16, November 2017
Final Correction: 09, December 2017
Final Accepted: 17, December 2017
Published: December 2017
Citation: Anand Jayakumar, Krishnaraj, Aravinth Kumar (2017). PRODUCTIVITY IMPROVEMENT IN STITCHING
SECTION OF A GARMENT MANUFACTURING COMPANY. International Journal of Innovative Research in Advanced
Engineering, Volume IV, 08-11. doi: 10.26562/IJIRAE.2017.DCAE10082
Editor: Dr.A.Arul L.S, Chief Editor, IJIRAE, AM Publications, India
Copyright: ©2017 This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution
License, Which Permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author
and source are credited
Abstract— In this study one heuristic assembly line balancing technique known as the “Ranked Positional weight
Technique”, developed by Helgeson and Birnie was applied to solve the problem of assembly line balancing in a
garment manufacturing company for one model. Information about solution methods related to assembly line
balancing problems is given. Operator reduction is achieved by line balancing. Layout was modified using the
template method. The aim of this article is the usage of these techniques to improve the productivity in a clothing
company.
Keywords— Assembly line balancing; garment manufacturing industry; layout modification; ranked positional
weight technique; operator reduction;
I. INTRODUCTION
Over the past 170 years, apparel structures has changed from the custom fitting and assembly of individual hand
sewn garments to mechanised, automated and sometimes robotised mass production and distribution of ready to
wear products in the world market. Apparel manufacturing comprises a variety of product categories, materials
and styling and such complexities of manipulating flexible materials and styling and such complexities of
manipulating flexible materials and process. Therefore good balancing and small stocks of work in process during
sewing are the basic concepts to increase the efficiency of production. An assembly line is described as a set of
distinct tasks that is assigned to a set of workstations connected by a transport mechanism in detailed assembling
sequences.

2. International Journal of Innovative Research in Advanced Engineering (IJIRAE) ISSN: 2349-2163
Issue 12, Volume 4 (December 2017) www.ijirae.com
_________________________________________________________________________________________________
IJIRAE: Impact Factor Value – SJIF: Innospace, Morocco (2016): 3.916 | PIF: 2.469 | Jour Info: 4.085 |
ISRAJIF (2016): 3.715 | Indexcopernicus: (ICV 2016): 64.35
IJIRAE © 2014- 17, All Rights Reserved Page –9
In garment sewing, the components are assembled through a sub assembly process in order to form the finished
product. Therefore the production process includes a set of workstations, at each of which a specific task is carried
out in a restricted sequences with hundreds of employees and thousands of bundles of sub assemblies producing
different styles simultaneously. Generally apparel manufacturers are focussed on whether assembly work will be
finished on time for delivery, finding ways to have more efficiency, how machines and employees are being utilized
and how labour intensity can be minimised whether any station in the assembly line is lagging behind the schedule
and how the assembly line is doing overall. Therefore in order to focus on this kind of labour intensive structure a
pant sewing line was chosen for this study. The production line is analysed by considering the innovative use of
industrial engineering concepts, time study and assembly line balancing. Firstly real data taken from the factory
floor using time studies and precedence constraints are taken into consideration to model the allocation of
operations. The project was carried out at a garment factory in Chennai. Q2D122 model of pant produced in Line A
is taken for the study. In this study, one heuristic assembly line balancing technique known as “Ranked Positional
Weight Technique” developed by Helgeson and Birnie was applied to solve the problem of assembly line balancing
in a clothing company for one model. The aim of this article is to solve the problem of assembly line balancing in a
clothing company. The layout of line A was modified using the template method.
II. LITERATURE REVIEW
The assembly line balancing problem has received considerable attention in the literature and many studies have
been made on this subject since 1954. COMSOAL (Computer Method of Sequencing Operations for Assembly lines)
was first used by Arcus [6] in 1966 as a solution approach to the assembly line balancing problem. Helgeson and
Birnie [7] developed the “Ranked Positional Weight Technique”. In this method the ranked positional weight value
is determined. It is the sum of a specified operation time and working times of the other operations that cannot be
assembled without considering the operation finished. While taking into consideration the cycle time and
technological precedence matrix, the operation having the largest ranged weight is assigned to the first
workstation and other operations are assigned to workstations in accordance with their ranked positional weight
value.For the multi-model assembly line, Kilbridge and Wester[8] developed a simple method to solve line
balancing. In the first stage they formed an appointment table and then they made necessary workload balance
among workstations time taking into consideration precedence relationships and cycle times.
III. METHODOLOGY
In this study the production of Q2D122 model was investigated to improve productivity. By using the “Ranked
Positional Weight Technique” the assembly line balancing problem was solved. The layout was modified using the
template method. This Heuristic method was developed by Helgeson and Birnie of the General Electric Company in
1961. In this method, the ranked positional weight value of each operation is determined. The procedures below
are applied in order to assign operations to workstations. The ranked weight value of an operation is obtained by
summing the operation time considered with the time of other operations that come after that in series. After all of
the ranked positional weights of the operations are determined, they are arranged in decreasing order. Then tasks
are assigned to each workstation starting from the task with the highest ranked positional weight. Before this the
operation having the second highest ranked value should be selected from the remaining working operations in
order to assign to the workstation the precedence constraints the operation time the unused workstation time
should be controlled. The assignment procedure is continued until any one condition below is obtained.
1. If all the operations are assigned to the stations.
2. If there are no operations having either precedence or unassigned time constraints.
This model has 75 operations and an operation list. Its standard times, precedence relations and machine types are
listed below. After the determination of the precedence relationships between operations a technological
precedence diagram was shown in figure. Then the cycle time is calculated as shown below.
C = T/PA.
C = Cycle time.
T = Total working time in a day.
PA = Total production amount in a day.
C = T/PA = 57600/1120 = 51.42 seconds / piece
Then ranked positional weights of operations are calculated by using the method explained above and listed in a
descending order as shown in figure. As a result of balancing, it is found that n = 100 workstations are needed to
balance the line. Balancing results of the ranked positional weight technique as given in table.
Balancing loss is calculated
BL = (nxC - ∑ti ) / ( n x C) x 100%
= (100 x 51.42 – 3674.79) / (100 x 51.42) x 100%
= 28.53%
For this assembly line efficiency values are calculated.
LE = [N∑i=1 ti /(nxC)] x 100% = 75.43%

3. International Journal of Innovative Research in Advanced Engineering (IJIRAE) ISSN: 2349-2163
Issue 12, Volume 4 (December 2017) www.ijirae.com
_________________________________________________________________________________________________
IJIRAE: Impact Factor Value – SJIF: Innospace, Morocco (2016): 3.916 | PIF: 2.469 | Jour Info: 4.085 |
ISRAJIF (2016): 3.715 | Indexcopernicus: (ICV 2016): 64.35
IJIRAE © 2014- 17, All Rights Reserved Page –10
TABLE I - SAMPLE DATA
Work
Station
Number
Work
Task
Number
Ranked
Positional
Weight
Value
Precedence
Relations
Operation Name Total
Cycle
Time
Machine Type Section
1 1 142 0 Make fly box at bottom 20 SNUBT Fly Section
2 2 123 1 Turn fly box 19 Helper table Fly Section
3 3 93 2 Press fly box 30 Ironing table Fly Section
4 4 69 3 Top stitch fly box 24 SNUBT Fly Section
5 5 30 4 Serge fly and fly box 39 3TO/L Fly Section
6 6 18 5 Tack fly box overlap threads 12 SNUBT Fly Section
7 7 0 6 Inspection 18 Inspection Table Fly Section
Fig. 1 Layout before modification
Fig. 2 Layout after modification

4. International Journal of Innovative Research in Advanced Engineering (IJIRAE) ISSN: 2349-2163
Issue 12, Volume 4 (December 2017) www.ijirae.com
_________________________________________________________________________________________________
IJIRAE: Impact Factor Value – SJIF: Innospace, Morocco (2016): 3.916 | PIF: 2.469 | Jour Info: 4.085 |
ISRAJIF (2016): 3.715 | Indexcopernicus: (ICV 2016): 64.35
IJIRAE © 2014- 17, All Rights Reserved Page –11
IV. CONCLUSIONS
The Ranked Positional Weight Technique is easier to apply and has higher line efficiencies. For this reason, when
work elements are assigned to workstations, standard deviation values of standard times are taken into
consideration. This situation enables work elements to be assigned to workstations more sensitively and thus more
reliable assembly line balancing results are obtained. As a result of operator reduction, line efficiency was
improved by 7.11%. By modification of layout travel distance was reduced by 13m and work in process between
two sections was reduced.
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