August 1996 € Volume 6 € Number 8

Clothing Manufacturer Increases Efficiency With Conveying System And Work Process

B\assett-Walker, Inc., a division of Vanity Fair, manufactures sweat-shirts and T-shirts for retailers and private labels throughout the world. The manufacturer has 14 sewing plants in North Carolina and Virginia with its central distribution center located in Martinsville, Va.

Bassett-Walker has two buildings in their Martinsville location: one for receiving clothing from their surrounding sewing facilities is sent, and the other for shipping, where the clothing is shipped out to customers. In the receiving building, clothing arrives in large shipping containers at one of 15 receiving docks. The workers sort the garments by color, label them, bag the clothes, hang them on racks, and place them in shipping cartons to fulfill customer orders.

"As our business has grown so has our backlog," said Tim Kendrick, director of distribution and logistics for Bassett-Walker. "With the help of Mathews Conveyor Division, we have been able to develop a more efficient work process. By integrating Mathews conveying systems into our operation, we have permanently eliminated our backlog."

Bassett-Walker's former conveying system lacked efficiency. The initial design called for all incoming garments to go into a tote. The tote was then conveyed through a worker assembly line, where garments were prepared for final shipping.

This process caused two problems for Bassett-Walker. The first was non-consistent flow of product. The assembly line forced workers to be dependent on the person in line before them. This meant that a backlog was created every time any person in the line missed a beat.

The second problem that Bassett-Walker faced was that the old conveying system itself caused major backlogs of product. When demand increased, the supply could not be met. The design of the old conveying system and the outdated control logic could not handle the increased load. The old system had no flexibility.

"We used the modular manufacturing approach to create a new system," said Kendrick. Bassett-Walker determined that they could produce a significant cost savings if they created work cells. They created 34 work cells. Each cell consisted of three to six people sorting, packing and conveying their own goods.

Mathews conveying systems allows each work cell the ability to convey what they sort and pack to a specified destination without waiting for the team ahead of them. Totes can be sent to their shipping building and conveyed to storage or directly into a truck for delivery.

"Mathews helped us create a conveying system that is in harmony with the cell concept, dramatically increasing productivity," said Kendrick. "With the help of Mathews, our average worker is employed 99 percent of the time versus 70 percent, as with our former conveyor system."
Bassett-Walker trained their teams, cell by cell, in unison with Mathews' installation of the new system. As Mathews completed a new cell, a new team stepped in and went to work. By doing so, Bassett-Walker was able to keep their plant fully operational throughout the entire installation.

"Mathews also helped us reduce the floor space required for the assembly line," said Kendrick. "Mathews installed the new conveyor system alongside the packing tables. This configuration allows us to reduced the length of our packing tables from 145 feet to 60 feet.

"The bottom line is that Mathews produced," said Kendrick. "We needed to eliminate our backlog. Thanks to Mathews, we have no backlog, more space and have increased productivity. Our customers are receiving product on time."

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Jen-Coat Addresses Business Needs With Real-Time Manufacturing Software

When Jen-Coat forklift operators roll their rigs around the company's 414,255-square-foot manufacturing operations, they're not just moving raw materials and finished products. These drivers are "secretly" feeding real-time data to the manufacturer's information systems to better manage every aspect of the business, from production scheduling to customer billing.

As drivers pass over one of 247 specially designed bar code plates embedded in the concrete floors of the Westfield, Mass.-based shop, laser bar code readers capture part numbers and actual poundage and footage data for incoming raw material. Production information is also captured using wand bar code readers at each phase of the production process and information is automatically fed into process manufacturing software from DataLogix, called GEMMS, making real-time information available throughout the plant.

"Our production cycles are faster because the time operators spent keying in inventory information is now better spent running production machinery," said Pierre Levesque, director of information systems at Jen-Coat.

Facing heightened global competition and increasing customer requirements, Jen-Coat, a division of American Business Products -- one of the world's largest envelope manufacturers -- had to reengineer its corporate structure to stay competitive. The first priority in its reengineering strategy was replacing its proprietary information systems running on the Qantel operating system with an open, standard, client/server computing environment utilizing Data General hardware to put real-time information from the entire manufacturing process at employees' fingertips.

"Our previous system was a large information repository that didn't allow data sharing across departments," said Levesque. "For example, we had a stand-alone financial environment, but we kept track of inventories in several different places."

Jen-Coat looked to GEMMS process manufacturing software to increase the flow of interdepartmental data sharing, knowing this level of communication would enhance efficiency, productivity and customer satisfaction. Because the company didn't have to customize the software, they had GEMMS up and running in six months.

Jen-Coat is moving its manufacturing operations towards a Just-in-Time shop with the help of GEMMS' inventory management module. The real-time information helps manufacturing personnel ensure only the required materials are available for scheduled production jobs, while keeping product inventories as low as possible to avoid unnecessary warehouse storage costs.

GEMMS also makes it easier for employees to make sound business decisions because comprehensive, up-to-date information covering the entire manufacturing process is readily available regardless of where the employee is located. The GEMMS solution integrates Jen-Coat's product costing, inventory and distribution functions with one another. Jen-Coat also tightly integrated the Oracle financial applications, including Accounts Payable and General Ledger, with GEMMS.

"GEMMS and Oracle's relational environment give us the flexibility to meet our current business needs, while helping us address our future growth," said Levesque.

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