Overview

Over the last few years Coats has worked with a prominent Korean company based in Vietnam, who manufacture caps for globally recognised brands.

Since the relationship began, significant productivity improvements and overall cost reductions have been achieved. This successful outcome was delivered by conducting the processes below.

Factory Floor Audit

Upon the customer’s request, we audited the embroidery machines currently in operation and identified the following issues:

• Missed stitches
• Uneven and poor stitch appearance
• Thread hairiness on logos
• Thread breakages
• Nesting in the bobbin case

It was found that the company’s productivity was low, the appearance of their manufactured logos was sub-standard and the thread quality was poor.

Our Method

As a result of these findings, the Coats Embroidery Solution Centre (ESC) team recommended carrying out an Economic Value to Customer (EVC) study on one of the embroidery machines. The ESC team were confident that Coats thread solutions would not only improve the overall embroidery quality and sewing performance; but also enhance productivity.

Following the company’s approval of the EVC, 20-head Tajima machines were monitored and manned by two operators for two days. Production output, thread breakages and rework and repairs were assessed for 5 hours 50 mins, using the company’s current chosen threads (one from China, one from Korea). The same process and timeframe was adopted using Coats Sylko Tex 27 / Ticket 120 for comparison.

The Results

The following improvements were recorded when using Coats Sylko:

• Increase in output productivity
• Reduction in thread breakages
• Reduction in reworks and repairs

Before

After

Overall, the customer was pleased with this outcome and with the improvement to the finished appearance of their logos.