Real-time data-driven discrete-event simulation for garment production lines

Abstract

The garment industry, which is traditionally labour-intensive, is facing significant challenges to reduce production costs in the face of material, labour, and infrastructure maintenance cost increases. To address this challenge, various aspects of smart factory-related technologies are being adopted by the garment industry. In this study, we introduce a production line simulation approach based on real-time power monitoring data in the form of garment production workers’ individual task times. Power consumption data for workers’ sewing machines are collected using ICT-based power monitoring devices, and the data are transmitted to a cloud server through a wireless network and processed by an approximation algorithm to extract accurate task time. Power monitoring data are then used as inputs to a discrete-event simulation model to measure the overall productivity, individual productivity, and other key performance indices critical to the garment production line. The simulation results were 18.8% more accurate than the results obtained by the garment production line using a conventional approach. This study demonstrates the potential of smart factory-related technologies and how they can be implemented in different types of industries, such as the garment production industry.

Keywords:

• Discrete-event simulation
• real-time data acquisition
• power monitoring system
• garment production
• smart factory technology

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the SNU-Hojeon Garment Smart Factory Research Centre funded by the Hojeon Ltd. under Grant [number 0423-20170066].

Notes on contributors

Woo-Kyun Jung

Dr. Woo-Kyun Jung received a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the Seoul National University in 2020. He was an army officer of R.O.K. from 1997 to 2017 and retired in 2017 as a lieutenant colonel. Prior to retirement to lieutenant colonel, he served as technical staff, military logistics school instructor, platoon leader, company commander, and battalion commander. Jung’s research interests are in smart factory, soft robotics, smart/composite materials, and appropriate technology. He published over 20 journal articles in these areas.

Hyungjung Kim

Dr. Hyungjung Kim received his B.S.E. in automotive engineering from Kookmin University, Seoul, Korea, in 2004 and Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea, in 2011. He is currently working as a principal engineer at Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. Before joining Samsung Electronics in 2020, he had worked as a senior research engineer at Doosan Infracore and Doosan Robotics, and a postdoctoral researcher at SNU. His research interests include appropriate smart manufacturing, smart factory, machine learning, collaborative robots, machine tools, and 3D printers.

Young-Chul Park

CEO. Young-Chul Park is the Chairman of Hojeon limited Corp., which has 5 global corporations and over 17,000 people working in Indonesia. Since its establishment in 1985, Hojeon has been keeping partnership with global outdoor/sports fashion brands such as The North Face, Under Armour, Lululemon, etc. He won Premier Award at model Entrepreneur in 2009 and has various national award-winning careers as CEO. Hojeon will become an innovative fashion design company by transition from an OEM-ODM specialised company.

Jae-Won Lee

Dir. Jae-Won Lee is a managing director of Hojeon limited company, which is one of large apparel manufacturers. He is in charge of Research and development for the garment smart factory solution working with the Seoul Nation University from 2017. Before he join at Hojeon, he had been working at KT for 17 years not only as a business director of new business model development team but also a technical engineer in R&D centre of KT. He received a master degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the Seoul National University in 2004.

Eun Suk Suh

Dr. Eun Suk Suh received the Ph.D. degree in engineering systems from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, U.S.A., in 2005. He is currently an Associate Professor at Seoul National University. His research interests include system architecture design, system complexity assessments, product design, and technology infusion analysis. Dr. Suh's previous professional experiences includes chassis design engineering at Hyundai Motor Company and system architecture research and development at Xerox Corporation. He has several international patents and peer reviewed journal publications in the area of printing system design, technology infusion and product platform development.