Garment inspection detail

1. What is Inline Inspection in the Garment
Industry?
Prasanta Sarkar Mar 29, 2015
Inspection means checking the quality of a work or a product. Inline Inspection means checking
quality of the product in the process instead of checking at the end of the process when product is
completely made. Inline inspection in a garment factory means checking of semi-stitched
garments or partially stitched garments while pieces are still inside the line and all sewing
operations are not yet stitched.
Inline inspection is also known as roving quality checking or roaming quality checking. Inline
inspection is done for 100% of garments or certain percentage of total stitched pieces. Various
format of inline checking exits in the garment stitching.
Inline quality inspection in the garment industry

2. 1) Inline checking at check points: Quality checker checks semi-stitched garment at fixed
workstation inside the sewing line at critical operations only. This checking station is known as
checkpoint. At this checkpoint quality checker checks all operations done up to that point. 100%
garments are checked at this check points. A line may have multiple checkpoints depending on
product type.
2) Roving quality checking: A quality checker may be appointed to check garments at all
workstations in a sewing line randomly. This inline checker goes to every workstation and
randomly pick bundles and checks few pieces. He concentrates only one operation at which he
checking. Checking workstation is not provided at each workstation in the line, so this checker
checks stitch quality of the garment by standing
3) Traffic light System: Traffic Light System for quality checking is also one example of inline
inspection. You can read more about traffic light system in this article.
4) Inline inspection by buyer QA representative: Whether factory follows inline garment
inspection process or not, some buyers send their quality personnel to check garments in the
initial days of production start and middle of the production. This inspection process also known
as mid-line inspection. Quality checker checked garment following AQL and prepare reports and
give feedback to the factory representative. Factory takes corrective actions based on QA’s
comments.
Inline garment inspection is recommended by many international apparel buyers. This inspection
process improves garment stitching quality and reduce rate of defective garment at the end of
sewing line. Stitching mistakes is detected at early stage rather checking the defective garment
after garment is completely made and defects found in the starting operations. Quality checker or
line supervisor can train the operator who is making defects if he is identified by inline quality
inspector.
Purpose of inline garment inspection
1. The main purpose is to stop defect generation at source. Early detective of defective garment
can save time and money for repair work. If a defect is not detected when it made and following
processes are done on that defective piece defective piece may become more critical. This makes
more difficult to open the seam again the repair the garment. Thus repair cost would be high.
2. To improve productivity: Chances of defect generation reduces. Thus no possibility of piling
up WIP in certain operations and no chance to stopping work at few operations and let the line to
dry.
3. Early feedback to cutting department: If garments are checked inline, defects related to cutting
can be detected at the initial 2 to 3 operations. Sewing floor can inform cutting department about
the cutting issues if it exits. Based on the feedback from sewing line cutting department take
action quickly and cut following lays accordingly.

3. 4. Reduce workload of the end-of-line checker.
For styles with complex operations and having many numbers of operations, inline inspection
must be followed by factories.
In one of my earlier articles I have listed explained various inspection stages followed by
garment factories. Inline inspection is one of those inspection stages.