A garment export house is basically a production house where garments are made for overseas buyers. Garment export houses take orders from buyers or buying agencies and process the order in a factory to produce finished products. To process an order from sourcing of raw material to cutting to stitching to packing to dispatch goods to buyers' materials are passed through many hands.
Works and responsibility are allocated to different departments to manage process and sub-processes smoothly. In this page, we will learn various departments of a garment export house and their primary activities.
A typical garment export house includes following departments.
List of departments of a garment export house
Merchandising and Marketing:
Communicate with buyers, meet with buyers and handle orders from order receiving to shipment. This department executes the sample development, product cost estimation, explaining the product spec to the pattern making team.
Production Planning and Control:
This department do internal production scheduling, allocation of orders and execution.
Material sourcing department:
This department source all types of items that includes raw materials, consumables, machinery and day to day requirements.
Fabric and accessory store:
All the fabric purchases for sampling and bulk order are stored in the fabric store. Fabric and accessory store manage and control inventory of a factory. Keep record of incoming fabrics, movement of fabrics to other departments. Department takes care of fabric quality checking, marking and grading fabric roll as per quality standards.
Sampling department:
Sampling department makes garment samples that is shown buyers for approvals. They take care of development samples, quality checking of the samples.
Pattern making department:
CAD / Pattern Making department makes garment patterns. They modify and adjust the garment patterns based on buyer's feedback on the fit sample.
Cutting department:
As the name says, this department is responsible for cutting fabrics for garments. Cutting department cuts fabrics as per pattern made by CAD department. There are many sub-activities including fabric relaxation, layering fabrics, cutting the lay, sorting and bundling, etc. Read more about the various functions of a cutting department.
Sewing department:
The sewing department in a factory sews fabric and convert fabric sheet into garments. This department is responsible for stitching the garments on time for orders. They take care of stitching quality.
Finishing department:
Stitched garments need to be finished and nicely fold and pack to display on retails shop. Finishing department of an export house press the garment, fold, attach hang tags and pack into poly bags.
Quality Assurance:
Responsible for quality system and assure good quality product that meet buyer's requirement. Learn more about various functions of the quality control department in a garment unit.
Research and Development:
R&D department make garment samples and analyses to make production friendly garments. This department helps factory to assess manufacturing cost of a particular product.
Testing Lab:
In export business lot of standards to be followed by exporters. This department test raw material quality standards and approve for further process.
Industrial Engineering department:
This department set standard time of a product, thread consumption, line set up. Responsible for factory productivity and efficiency controlling and improvement. Prepare production report and other MIS reports for management.
Maintenance and Electrical department:
This department takes care of machine maintenance, repair parts, wiring. They need to fix the machine related issues and machine breakdown on the production floor.
Accounting:
Like any other company accounting department is responsible for preparing employees payroll, distribution of salary etc.
Shipment and Documentation:
Responsible for export related documentation, dispatching goods to ports and communicate with buyers' warehouse and distribution center.
HR & Administration:
Responsible for human resource management, hiring employee, establish HR policies as per Govt. rules and legals.
These departments are primary department for a garment export house. There are many other departments which are not essential but helpful to run large business. Department such as garment washing department, quilting department, embroidery and printing departments, etc.
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