Quality is the acceptance level of any textile product. Given the high volume of fabrics leaving the manufacturing units every day, it is important for fabric manufacturers in India to ensure that the production quality remains high and perfect on every lot produced throughout the day. Fabric manufacturers in India must manage quality control and improve product quality to stay competitive in the challenging textile industry.
Consumers are the ultimate judge of quality, and the common issues they find in today’s textile products are wear and tear, unstable colorfastness, and durability. Increasing quality control in a production unit is an attainable goal.
In this blog, we will provide tips on how fabric companies in India can manage quality control in production. Our approaches will ensure you achieve better quality control for every textile product that leaves your factory for sale.
Importance of Quality Control for Fabric Suppliers in India
We cannot think of one or two reasons to optimize production quality, because there are countless reasons why quality can improve your exports, ROI, brand reputation, online sales, and consumer trust. However, some of the crucial reasons we can think of immediately are:
Fewer defects in the product: Addressing production problems early in manufacturing can minimize the number of defective products created.
Better compliance with international quality standards: Many international customers prefer fabric manufacturers in India that uphold certain standards in their production processes, such as OEKO-TEX, ISO, etc., certifications. Good quality control ensures these standards are complied with.
Improved consumer satisfaction: When global consumers buy products online, they trust the fabric companies in India with blind faith that they will get a product that meets their quality and design expectations. Quality control makes sure that you meet these expectations all the time. Customers will most likely make repeat purchases when they know they can count on you to deliver quality products, regardless of time and space differences.
A positive environment and improved team coordination: Since producing good quality textile products is a team effort, Quality Control pushes everyone in the company to do their best to deliver the best. Playing an active role in the manufacturing process not only creates a positive atmosphere in the company but also boosts employee morale, which may lead to better production.
Enhanced company reputation: Better and consistent quality can help improve company reputation and brand value in the international market. Exporters won’t mind paying a few extra dollars and promoting a fabric supplier in India if their quality is excellent and consistent.
How to Improve Quality Control in Textile Production
Choose Only the Best Raw Material
When constructing a house, if you use low-quality cement, bricks, and sand, your home will start producing cracks within two years. Similarly, if you choose poor-quality raw materials for your textile manufacturing, such as cheaper dyes and chemicals, the end product, i.e., your garment, will not be able to meet industry standards.
Test your raw materials in a good lab to ensure they fulfill quality parameters set by top organizations in the world. Weaving, GSM, yarn count, dimensional stability, color fastness, hand feeling, chemical activities, and intensity are a few quality control testing models for raw materials.
Implement Statistical Process Control
Statistical Process Control, or SPC, monitors manufacturing processes by applying statistical methods and insights. This helps companies control every step of the production process through technology. The objective of top textile companies in India here is to identify textile manufacturing problems by observing data changes, allowing them to address the issue before it stems, blows out of proportion and ruins the entire process.
SPC data is invaluable in manufacturing when highly granular data is available. For instance, woven fabric manufacturers can track the number of defects that take place during each production cycle in each shift, allowing them to pinpoint the root cause of each issue and take appropriate steps to curb them.
Establish Lean Manufacturing
Lean manufacturing maximizes efficiency and reduces raw material, energy, and labor wastage within the production process. Lean manufacturing helps you evaluate your current strategy and determine where it could be streamlined for improved efficiency and scalability.
Lean manufacturing and quality control go hand in hand. For instance, you might realize that you are spending a lot of time managing staff, switching machinery, and manually handling shipping and logistics. Process automation technology can systematize production processes, order management, inventory management, and shipments, lowering the number of defects and errors in production.
Check List for Quality Control in Textile Manufacturing
Quality Control in textile production must happen in all the phases of the product lifecycle, such as inspecting the requirement, raw material, process, and defects, and making
corrections simultaneously.
You must lay out the inspection protocol which involves sampling requirements as per Acceptance Quality Level, the inspection process, the defect list, and other criteria.
Proper training and skill upgradation is the key to quality control so that your staff’s expertise is aligned with your customer’s expectations. In garment manufacturing, fabric companies in India assess the following areas mandatorily:
– Fabric color, shades, and grade
– Fabric texture and hand feel
– Color fastness
– Raw material used
– Worker’s craft and workmanship
– Site quality tests like weave and knitting techniques, sewing, and snap solidity test
– Inspection of accessories like zippers and buttons, labels, product tags, barcodes, etc.
– Size, weight, and fit measurements
After each process step is inspected, QC data must be analyzed and consolidated for the action plan, which helps textile companies in India achieve improvement, monitor, assess, and review action plans, and make sure goals are adequately executed, deviations are identified, and changes are adapted at the right time.
With the increasing labor and energy cost, competitiveness in the export market, and price hikes in raw materials, a good quality control plan in textile manufacturing can help knitted and woven fabric manufacturers in India produce the best quality products cost-effectively at the right time.
