Union apparel (PVT) Ltd

The report on the industrial visit to

Name Index number

: K.A.S.K. Zoysa : 081049L

Date of submission : 12/22/2012

1. INTRDUCTION

Union Apparels (pvt) Ltd has 5 factories and the main facility is situated in the Maharagama while others are situated in the Marawila, Dankotuwa, Seethawaka and Waikkala washing plant. They are mainly focus on producing Casual wear, Formal wear, Retail label dilly and Retail label carlo. They are main brands are Marks & Spencer Next, Debanhams C&A Tesco Charles Vogele Tema, Matalan George American living S Polo.

A basic information about the 5 factories of union apparel are given in the following table, Factory Maharagama Marawila Dankotuwa Seethawaka 12 8 10 10 No of lines Capacity 180000 120000 150000 150000 Start year 1989 1991 1999 2001 No of workers 700 700 850 600

Maharagama and Seethawaka plant is specialized on producing formal wears while the Marawila and Dankotuwa is specialized on casual wear and the Waikkala plant is washing plant for all 4 facilities. And they are mainly focus on producing woven fabric garments. And they supply denim fabrics from the India and Pakistan, knitted fabrics are from the China and Hong Kong, woven fabrics from Taiwan and China and most of trims are imported from china.

2. Departments of the company and the functions

Merchandizing department Maharagama plant is the centralized marketing and costing department, so all the activities which are related with order receiving are completed in Maharagama plant. There are 3 types of merchandizers, who are named as, a. Design merchandizer b. Development merchandizer c. Costing merchandizer

Design Merchandizer The design team has to make their own design to buyers to attract them mainly they produce their design s for the C&A. And other main function of them is to make Trend pack when the buyers pay visits to their company. Sometimes by observing the trend pack they are approved some designs to further processing.

Development merchandizer

The development of fabrics and trims suppliers is the main function of the development merchandizers. Unlike other major factories Union Apparel dont have any garment technicians so the role of garment technicians also filled by the development merchandizers. The correcting the fit-on of the sample is also a function of the development merchandizer. The details about the construction the procedure is given by the customers them self so it makes the merchants life easier.

Costing merchandizer By the SMV given by the Industrial Engineering department and the marker efficiency costing departments makes the cost CMT cost.( cut make and trims) Then export and import cost wer added to the CMT cost with the testing cost to make then final cost of the garment then additional 5% was added as the safety price. After calculating the final cost of the product6 costing merchandizer has to deal with buyers to get the approvals for the price. If the buyer was not agreed then few modification have tobe done to get the approval. Sample process Reference sample fit sample TOP sample bulk production

Other person who is the responsible for the sample process is technical officer. The functions of the technical officer is fit the sample and make sure that the fit is in the approval range. Then after getting the approval of sample the scheduling of the PP production conduct them. Costing department The operation breakdown was given by the byers them self and the Union Apparel has not use any kind of software to find the SMV of the garment. They use their own past data to find the time for the operations. And they havent any system to make that costing part. They are using excel sheet for keep their data. Production department There are production 12 production lines in the Union Apparels and few lines were freeze they are specialized for the several buyers. The checking was done under 2.5 AQL for George and for the printing the dura wash testing. Most of the testing are done by the 3rd party like BV and ITS. The packing and hanging methods are also define by the buyers them self. The cutting section only has manual cutters they havent any automatic Gerber or Lectra cutting systems. Planning department After receiving the order and the due date by the buyers planning department has to do backward integration to find the possible cut date and possible in date. For making plans they use the fabric lead time as 45 days and the lead time for trims as the 14 days. Planning department also a centralize system for whole Union Apparel facilities so they submit weekly plan for the all 5 factories. When the demand is not able to produce with the available capacity then planning department used to place subcontracts. Most of the time, the additional demand was given to the Sanchia. But Union Apparel is more likely has to get subcontract from other manufacturing plant to full fill the capacity of the factory.

3. MAIN FEATURES IN THE FACTORY

1. Since the no of workers are less, management is easier. 2. Fully utilized work force 3. Less overhead costs 4. Centralized planning and marketing unit 5. Since it is not under BOI damage raw materials can be sold in local market.

4. COMMENTS ON THE COMPANY AND THE SUGGESTIONS TO IMPROVE THE PROCESS

Although they having a system(TOPS) to communicate, that system is not properly maintaining Poor data recording system The new technology is not implemented in Union Apparels. Poor factory layout that building capacity is not enough.