The Textile Industry

1. Introduction & Background of Study
The Textile industry is the largest manufacturing industry in Pakistan. It has traditionally, after agriculture, been the only industry that has generated huge employment for both skilled and unskilled labor. The textile industry continues to be the second largest employment generating sector in Pakistan. Pakistan is the 8th largest exporter of textile products in Asia. This sector contributes 9.5% to the GDP and provides employment to about 15 million people or roughly 30% of the 49 million workforce of the country. Textile would be used to mean fibers, yarn, fabric and ready-made garments. Garments are the highest Value adding Finished Product in Textiles. From fibers to the highest value added finished

1.3. Scope of the Research:
This research work is limited to map the value stream of garments manufacturing industry to investigate the major inventory levels. This value stream will be used to optimize the inventory levels, to reduce lead time and making the process more cost effective.
Once we are able to identify the Non value added activities we can go further to remove them from process flow to get lean and efficient.
We are not going in deep all other factors which contributing in high lead time; our focus is just to identify inventories in production flow.
1.4. Terms & Definitions
1.4.1. Lean Manufacturing:
Lean manufacturing or lean production, often simply "lean", is a systematic method for the elimination of waste ("Muda") within production system. Lean also takes into account waste created through overburden ("Muri") and waste created through unevenness in workloads ("Mura").
“The popular definition of Lean Manufacturing and the Toyota Production System usually consists of the following” (Wilson,

1.4.4. Unnecessary inventory
Keeping parts and products in inventory does not create any extra value for us in production sector. When this occurs, it only hides the problem and prevents their solutions. Additionally, keeping inventory means higher tied up capital and investment. However, it is not advisable to eliminate inventory mindlessly. Instead, the reason for the existence of the inventory must first be found.
There are two types of inventories normally observed
1. Raw Material inventory
2. Process Inventory
Two types of inventories are existed: work in process (WIP) and parts storage. WIP are the parts stored between each process and parts storage are the raw material which were brought from the main ware house to the production area to be processed.
Lean manufacturing always emphasizes on reducing inventory. This can be done either by reduction of buffer inventory or the reduction of batch sizes, or both. Buffer inventory is reduced by eliminating unwanted variations. The positive points for reducing inventory are listed below:
1. Reducing tied up capital
2. Shortening through-put time
3. Lessening risk of obsolete material
4. Smoothing production