Are you looking for building your career in the fashion industry?
Garment export houses and garment production is one area where you can find many job opportunities for your career and professional life. Big fashion brands are depended on the fashion manufacturing sector and the fashion supply chain. The global apparel manufacturing sector is huge industry. There are many job opportunities for newcomers and for them who is looking for a switch to matching job roles.
In the page, we will mainly cover various job roles (job profile) garment companies normally hire.
Various Job Profiles of Garment Factory Employees
Job profiles are listed here. By the name of job profile, you can guess what would be their primary job responsibilities in a garment unit. Short notes added for some job roles. Details jobs roles for some profiles are posted in other articles.
Product Designer:
Simply it can be called designer job. A designer in a garment manufacturing company needs to take care of making new apparel production and garment samples. They work on developing new product ranges. Work on exploring new fabrics and embellishment for their new seasons. Need to work on developing designs based on buyer’s requirements.
Apparel Merchandising:
Merchandising job is very popular and well know. This job profile considered as one on white collar job in the garment export house. Although they need work on various activities depending on the positions and job descriptions. Following are some common merchandising job profiles given to employees based on work experience.
- Merchandising Manager (MM and DMM) - Handle the group of merchandisers in a garment unit.
- Production Merchandiser – More involved in the production related orders and follow up the production order for complete executions.
- Sampling Merchandiser – Sampling merchandiser keep them involved in the buyer’s sample development.
Sampling Coordinator:
The sampling coordinator keep herself busy with coordinating with merchandiser, sampling department. They arrange all kind of raw material for making new samples. They communicate the sampling requirement with pattern maker, sampling operators and completing of the samples.
Sampling master:
Takes care of sampling department. Take sample making orders from sampling merchandiser and designers. Allocate work to the sampling operators and arrange requirement of operators and machineries. In small scale factories, patten master is taken care of sample making role and they become sampling master as well.
Garment Technician:
A technician is technical person who has skill of pattern making to understanding of product construction and quality of the samples. Good at reading buyer’s spec and narrate the spec to the pattern maker. Explains buyer’s comment on the samples and construction related issue. They can also identify the issue with pattern when garment does not fit as per spec.
Pattern Master:
The pattern master is responsible making garment pattern. Drafting patter, making paper pattern.
Operation Head:
Heads the operations in a garment unit. An operation head could be responsible for handling multiple factories. In small factories, in place of operations heads company employee a factory manager.
Factory Manager:
A managerial role. The factory manager heads a garment factory. Must have skill for human management and technical skill of garment production. Should have knowledge of garment products, fabrics, and production processes.
Store Manager (Fabric and Trims)
Store manager takes responsibility for handling all activities performed in the store.
Fabric Sourcing Manager
Explore fabric and trim suppliers for factory’s material requirement. Take care of purchasing raw materials including fabrics and trims.
Production Planning Manager
Take care of production planning and production execution related activities.
Cutting manager
Responsible for all activities of the cutting room. List of functions of the cutting department is discussed in the page: Functions of the cutting department. Inside cutting department, there are various types of job in supervisor and workers' level.
- Cutter – A person that cut fabric using cutting tools. A cutter can handle different type of cutting equipment and have good knowledge of cutting fabrics.
Sewing Operator Trainer
The sewing operator trainer is responsible for developing operator training materials. They take of training new joiner for the sewing operator. Keep record of trainees. Measure performance and training progress.
Sewing line supervisor / line leader
Line supervisors lead the product lines. Depending on the production line length and machines counts in a line, line supervisor may be responsible for one single line of multiple lines. They take care of the operators working under his/her line. They give instruction to the operator, maintain discipline with their line. Focus on daily production volume and production target.
Sewing Floor in-charge
Heads the production floor. They are manager of the line supervisors.
Production bookkeeper
Production bookkeeper keeps record of all incoming good to the production lines. Like receiving of cuttings, issuing of stitched garment to the finishing sections or other departments. They are also responsible for maintaining certain compliance policies.
Finishing Supervisor
Takes care of work of the finishing department and its activities. For small scale manufacturing, finishing supervisor heads the finishing department. For a bigger company, company employs finishing manager to handle multiple finishing supervisors.
Production Manager
Manage the production departments in a garment export unit. They have many job responsibilities.
Quality Inspector and Quality Auditors
A quality inspector normally inspects garments at various stages. They need to audit garment samples, Audit cutting quality in the cutting room. Inspect the stitched garments randomly after end line inspections. Quality inspector inspect the finished garment following AQL chart.
Quality Assurance Manager
QA manager heads the quality control and quality assurance team in a garment factory. They checks work and performance of all the checkers and quality inspectors working in different departments in the factory.
In-line Quality checker
The key task of an in-line checker is to check semi stitched garments at the fixed quality checkpoints (station). They identify defects and defective garments. Identify operations that are not stitched correctly and send back the defective garment to the operator for repairing.
Industrial Engineer/ Work Study Officer:
Takes care of IE related activities on the production floor. Read more about activities performed by an industrial engineer in this article.
Industrial engineering manager
An IE manager heads the industrial engineering department. In the IE department, there are different hierarchy of employees and their job responsibilities based on their positions.
Machine Mechanic
A machine mechanic is responsible for fixing machine breakdown happened in the production floor. They may need to repair or troubleshoot the machineries and equipment used in the other department based on their skills.
Maintenance Manager
A maintenance manager heads the maintenance departments.
Human Resources
Like any other corporate and organizations, HR department takes care all kind of activities required to follow as per compliance of the country and state. The HR team normally does required knowledge related to apparel manufacturing and production processes.
Factory Compliance officer
Following social compliance and other Govt. rules and regulation for running a factory is important for a garment export house. The compliance team takes care of all kinds of activities required to follow them.
Safety Inspector
Some companies employ safety officer but not common in small scale garment export house.
Accounting and Payroll team:
Accounting department takes care of money incoming and outgoing. Keep record of all kinds of purchases and financial transactions. Payment of bills to vendors and suppliers.
The payroll team take care of employees pay calculations and distributing salary/transferring the salary to the bank accounts and wages to all employees working in the company.
Shipping and Documentation executive:
They take care of shipping documentation for sending shipment to the port and shipment forwarders.
IT Manager (EDP Manager)
Takes care of IT related activities. IT task like manager computers, servers, software and application used by the company etc.
Conclusion:
I hope you found valuable information in this post. Though the job descriptions are not written here in details, you will get idea job types available in the garment manufacturing sector. You can explore more about other job profile in the LinkedIn pages and job descriptions of the respective job profiles.
Garment manufacturing industry employs a very large number of workforces in developing countries. Developing countries are like Bangladesh, Thai Land, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Uganda etc. Most of the workforce are tailors and operators. Other than operator jobs (sewing machine operators), there are many job positions in garment export house. Some jobs profile earns good money. You will find some satisfied job roles within the fashion supply chain.