Workplace Design

TCBL HANDBOOKS

WORKPLACE DESIGN

Co-funded by Horizon 2020

TCBL 646133 – HANDBOOK RELEASED AS ANNEX VI TO D 4.4 30 June 2019

THE CHALLENGE In the fashion industry, garment assembly is either organised informally as a tailor’s atelier (with high quality but low efficiency and productivity) or with mass production, hard to adapt to customer-driven short runs. In addition, the work environment of the production line leads to a growing alienation of workers, thus reducing both the transmission and enhancement of knowledge in the sector and the quality of the final product. What is needed is a middle road approach that can allow the atelier to scale up and the factory to scale down.

Indeed, one of the greatest bottlenecks for the development of alternative models for fast fashion – new approaches that are more sustainable, of higher quality, designed to last, etc. – is the actual production of the garments. The transfer of production to South-East Asia, in the search for a lower cost of labour, is increasingly becoming a less attractive option, but brands and independents alike have difficulty when it comes to organising production facilities in Europe, especially for scaling up small scale ateliers to meet increasing demand.

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THE APPROACH To overcome these obstacles, TCBL has worked on a new workplace design able to transform garment production facilities in different contexts, from the artisanal lab to large scale production. The goal is to design a healthy, attractive and stimulating workplace based on small island configurations for the assembly of finished or semi-finished garments. The team production model adopted favours an open source approach to the actual workplace, experimenting different layouts and dimensions in more open and flexible contexts.

The possible applications of this new island workplace model are intended to range from the independent atelier to the larger scale garment factories. The benefits include that: • • • •

Workers are able to communicate with others, exchanging knowledge and skills and improving efficiency in a less alienating environment.

The final product can be of high quality, observing industrial and ethics standards.

The production will no longer require the long setup times of mass production but be able to flexibly reconfigure to adapt to customer-driven short runs.

These factors lead to significant improvements in terms of time, flexibility and cost.

Most importantly, an improved and more systematic approach to production enables independent designers to expand more smoothly to meet the increasing demand for high quality, sustainable fashion.

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THE PROJECTS Within the scope of TCBL, two specific pilot projects were carried out to test and validate different aspects of the new workplace concept.

WORTH TWILL The first was a proposal successfully submitted for additional funding to the first call of the COSME WORTH Partnership Project,1 named TWILL (Transform your Workshop in Learning Line). This was carried out in a partnership involving Sartoria Sociale in Palermo, a TCBL Lab focused on social community engagement in sewing and Coco&Rico in Paris, a small-sized production facility for independent designers.

In the first phase of the project, Sartoria Sociale tested the stellar configuration of the workstations in its open laboratory, with the goal of validating the benefits in terms of socialisation and reciprocal learning. Although the lab involves often rotating staff working mostly on individual projects, the response was extremely positive, particularly as concerns social interaction.

The stellar workplace configuration as installed at Sartoria Sociale

The next step was to transfer this experience to the more production-oriented facility at Coco&Rico in Paris. This first involved a census of the different machines used their together with their frequency of use and the types of operations carried out. This led to a proposal based on one central stellar layout with two variations – one for woven fabrics and one for knitwear – with the less-used machines against the wall. Coco&Rico had in fact been testing clip-on wheels that would allow to reconfigure layouts with greater ease.

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https://www.worthproject.eu/

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Workplace Design TCBL Handbooks Textile & Clothing Business Labs

The plan for the layout at Coco&Rico

This in turn inspired the actual re-configuration of the space, implemented by testing different variations directly with the workers involved. In the end, the plan adopted was a hybrid configuration with two smaller islands in a fixed layout.

The final configuration at Coco&Rico.

The response to this new layout was enthusiastic, particularly for the lead tailors who now were better able to communicate with and follow their assistants and flexibly schedule production.

The owner is also seeing the benefits of greater agility and turnaround time.

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Workplace Design TCBL Handbooks Textile & Clothing Business Labs

HUMAN CIRCULAR DESIGN AT KATTY FASHION On the basis of the evidence coming from the TWILL project, interest in experimenting with new workplace design began to spread to others in the network. Katty Fashion, a TCBL Associate linked to the Romanian partner Reginnova, included these aspects in a TCBL Year 4 initiative targeting circular design and a more human production process. As a larger scale facility than Coco&Rico, this represents a natural evolution of the workplace design experimentation as it scales up.

In parallel to testing new patterns and designs following ‘zero-waste’ methods, Katty Fashion also undertook a thorough review of their production facility’s layout. A wooden scale model of the product development workshop was made, first showing the current position of the different kinds of sewing machines, the large cutting table and ironing boards.

Scale model of the Katty Fashion product development workshop

Although the large cutting table didn’t allow to test the stellar workplace layout, the approach did explore the team production approach, applying it to a thorough review of the production sequence together with the workers involved. Four styles were selected as representative of the mix of orders expected for the forthcoming season: a long gown, a faux leather casual dress, a knitted fabric casual dress, and velvet trousers. For each, an analysis of their technical specifications identified the phases of assembly and the types of sewing machines involved.

To identify the production flow and location of the machines used to produce each of the selected styles, different options for positioning the machines were simulated on the scale model. These took into account the complexity of the products, their share in the estimated production for the next season and the internal communication aspects, both between designers and sample machinists as well as among the sample machinists executing different phases of the technological process.

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Workplace Design TCBL Handbooks Textile & Clothing Business Labs

Co-designing the production process for the typical styles.

Once the layout of machines and equipment for a given style was defined, prototypes were made under careful monitoring and with the support of the sample machinists to help address problems encountered during assembly. The product development team thus gained valuable feedback on the validity of the new layout and it ability to both streamline product development process and improve communication within the production team.

Monitoring implementation of the new production procedures.

The results of the evaluation were impressive: • • •

A reduction in manufacturing times of 8 ÷ 10 % in the case of the dresses, 8 % in the case of the trousers and around 9 % per total.

A significant reduction of defects in the final products due to improved communication between team members.

An improvement in the working atmosphere, with both technicians and sample machinists appreciating the changes as positive.

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NEXT STEPS The experiences presented here have engaged TCBL Labs and Associates in taking a fresh look at the layout and design of workplaces for garment production in three types of environments: social sewing, a small-scale production hub, and a medium-sized facility. In so doing, the improvements in the quality of the working environment as well as more traditional parameters of quality and efficiency can lead to a significant increase in the competitiveness of smaller, independent production facilities, as an enabler of a more sustainable fashion industry.

Further developments of this line of exploration include: • •

•

Extension of the experimentation of the workplace design and the team approach to other manufacturing contexts, including scaling up to even larger facilities.

Collaboration with those producing production management software for larger mass production operations to test the applicability (or need to adapt) to a team production approach.

Collaboration with research laboratories and equipment producers to explore different ways of using smart monitoring, IoT and similar features to both manage team production process and learn from workers’ creativity to constantly improve assembly methods.

Indeed, the TCBL Workplace Design project addresses a key textile industry need regarding the innovation of the working environment for garment production. This innovative approach can be adopted by all kinds of textile production realities as an innovative driver for a sustainable development of the entire sector, both to improve the performance of consolidated companies, help smaller ateliers to professionalise and up-scale, and to support companies needing to set up new production facilities as part of their re-shoring campaigns.

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DOCUMENT INFORMATION REVISION HISTORY This document is Annex VI to TCBL Deliverable 4.4, “TCBL Business Systems – Scaling Up and Out”.

Authors: Thanos Contargyris (MIRTEC), Jesse Marsh (Prato), Michele Osella and Elisa Pautasso (LINKS), Richard Axe (TCoE) and Frédérique Thureau (IFM).

This Annex is authored by Marco Cusenza and Jesse Marsh.

REVISION Version 1 Version 2 Version 3

DATE

AUTHOR

16.07.2019 27.07.2019 09.08.2019

Jesse Marsh Jesse Marsh Jesse Marsh

ORGANISATION

DESCRIPTION

Prato Prato Prato

First draft for comments Final draft for review Final version incorporating reviewers’ comments

STATEMENT OF ORIGINALITY This deliverable contains original unpublished work except where clearly indicated otherwise.

Acknowledgement of previously published material and of the work of others has been made through appropriate citation, quotation or both.

COPYRIGHT This work is licensed by the TCBL Consortium under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, 2015-2016. For details, see http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ The TCBL Consortium, consisting of: Municipality of Prato (PRATO) Italy; German Institutes for Textile and Fiber Research - Center for Management Research (DITF) Germany; LINKS Foundation (LINKS) Italy; Skillaware (SKILL) Italy; Oxford Brookes University (OBU) UK; imec (IMEC) Belgium; Tavistock Institute (TAVI) UK; Materials Industrial Research & Technology Center S.A. (MIRTEC) Greece; Waag Society (WAAG) Netherlands; Huddersfield & District Textile Training Company Ltd (TCOE) UK; eZavod (eZAVOD) Slovenia; Consorzio Arca (ARCA) Italy; Unioncamere del Veneto (UCV) Italy; Hellenic Clothing Industry Association (HCIA) Greece; Sanjotec - Centro Empresarial e Tecnológico (SANJO) Portugal; Reginnova NE (Reginnova) Romania, Centexbel (CTB) Belgium, Institut Français de la Mode (IFM) France, IAAC (FabTextiles) Spain, Cleviria (Cleviria) Italy, and Sqetch (Sqetch) Netherlands.

DISCLAIMER All information included in this document is subject to change without notice. The Members of the TCBL Consortium make no warranty of any kind with regard to this document, including, but not limited to, the implied warranties of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose. The Members of the TCBL Consortium shall not be held liable for errors contained herein or direct, indirect, special, incidental or consequential damages in connection with the furnishing, performance, or use of this material.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The TCBL project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 Programme for research, technology development, and innovation under Grant Agreement n. 646133.

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