Industrial Engineering in Apparel: Role and Payoff

Apparel engineers analyse, develop, and implement the methods and procedures that produce garments meeting a firm's standards for quality, efficiency, and productivity. They design material-handling and utilization processes to maximise output, lay out plants for efficiency, safety, and cost, and use methods analysis and work measurement to set plant capacity and throughput. In short, industrial engineering is the part of apparel engineering that finds the logical way to do things, and its prime objective is to increase productivity.

What the IE engineer does

Industrial engineering applied to apparel covers twelve activity areas:

1. Plant layout
2. Production flow system
3. Machines and adjustments
4. Operator performance
5. Operator training
6. Production control system
7. Cutting room
8. Quality control
9. Distribution
10. Payroll / incentives
11. Plant safety
12. Maintenance

The IE touches nearly every function that turns fabric into shipped garments.