Summer Research 2017:
Engineering in a Textile Factory
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The summer after my first year at Olin, I worked on a team of four students to conduct research at and engineer for a nearby textile mill. Our professor and research director, Caitrin Lynch, has been conducting a long-term anthropology project at this mill. For several years now, she has employed students to engage in her research by working alongside the factory employees, interviewing them, and designing solutions to help improve the factory's workflow.
Riverway Knitting Company (pseudonym) is a sixth-generation family run business that has been in continuous operation in New England for over 160 years. They have recently lost much of their business to overseas production where the same products can be produced at a much lower cost. The company struggles both with bringing new business in and keeping up with their current demands; this is in part due to bottlenecks in their current production process. |
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One significant bottleneck was the chute that transported large bundles of fabric from upstairs to downstairs. The chute had a cover for safety and to block noise and heat, but it severely hindered the line of sight and communication between departments. The old chute also prevented larger pieces of fabric from sliding down effectively, or at all, requiring the use of the unreliable freight elevator on the other side of the factory floor. Other problems with the original chute included the rough interior that often caused fabric pieces to get caught or rip, and the low-hanging sprinkler head inside that prevented large quantities of fabric from being loaded all at once.
We quickly learned from working alongside the users of the chute that their methods of loading fabric put significant strain on the employees and therefore limited which employees could do the job. One of the most significant hindrances to production was the inability to load the 90+ yard sewer liners down the chute. Each of these pieces had to be trucked across the factory floor to the freight elevator to move downstairs, which we learned took more than ten minutes per fabric bundle. Eliminating this would increase productivity tremendously.
Throughout our ideation processes, we made sure to involve all stakeholders of the chute. This included the workers on the receiving end who moved the fabric off of the chute and into the shear line for finishing. We learned that the old arrangement of the chute often caused the fabric bundles to land in the wrong orientation, which would require the workers at the bottom to manually flip them before they went into the shear line. Ensuring the fabric fell in the right orientation became a primary concern.
We first made sketch model mock-ups of the chute to present our initial ideas to the mill’s president and the chute workers in a hands-on, visual way. Next, we conducted a number of tests in which we involved the employees to test some options for better solutions to both the sewer liner problem and how to load fabric better in general. These included sliding the fabric down the chute while still on its pallet; layering low-friction plastic sheets between the fabric bundles so they could slide into the chute easily when pushed; using a pulley system suspended from the ceiling to tip one end of the pallet up and slide fabric in; and using a hinged pushing device to slide the bundles in. These tests proved that the ideas were feasible, but not without the cost of increased operational time. These insights told us that while we could make physical changes to the chute in order to improve visibility and communication, any new ways of loading fabric would come at the cost of time. This led us to carefully observe how each employee loaded the chute and find the most time- efficient method; from there, we could teach other employees this method.
The most effective physical improvement we made to the space was removing the chute cover and replacing it with a safer, more open guardrail system that allowed access from two sides instead of one. This allowed the large sewer liner bundles to be sent down the narrow side of the chute by placing the pallet at the edge of the chute and tipping the fabric in using an electric pallet jack. The new open layout of the chute allowed the operators to observe the chute’s current capacity from the mending perch where they normally worked using a strategically positioned convex mirror. We added plastic curtains in the mouth of the chute to block out the heat and noise of the shears below without sacrificing visibility. The new chute was also lined with low-friction plastic sides to make the fabric slide more quickly and easily. In addition, a short landing ramp was added at the top to eliminate the initial drop that often caused the fabric to land in the wrong orientation.
With regard to loading the chute, we realized that the “flip and tip” method used by one employee was most efficient and was the easiest for others to master. The pallet gets lined up with the long edge of the chute, the top fabric bundle is flipped 180° onto the floor, and then it is tipped directly into the mouth of the chute. We produced an infographic that hung in the space to instruct employees how to conduct this method properly and safely.
Our new solutions allowed a higher volume of fabric to be transported from upstairs to downstairs due to the increased communication between the departments and the physical improvements that let the fabric slide more easily. The improved processes made the jobs of the workers at the bottom of the chute significantly easier and more efficient now that they could rely on the fabric consistently landing in the right orientation. Our improvements also allowed other employees to work the chute more often, which was particularly beneficial in the event that the primary chute operators were absent.
One of the biggest success of our improvements were that the sewer liners could now be sent directly down the chute instead of sending them down the freight elevator. We estimate that this improvement could potentially save the company around $130,000 in wasted labor annually. This figure comes from estimating the frequency of the sewer liner bundles and the time it takes to transport them (about 33 bundles every two weeks at ten minutes per bundle). This improvement should allow the employees to spend more time on normal production procedures.
Overall, the employees and the executives of the mill were pleased with the improvements we had made over the summer. We had taken into account as many voices and concerns as we could, and the final solutions drew from the perspectives of employees from throughout the company. This project helped me grow as a designer by giving me more experience in working directly alongside the stakeholders of the project, by forcing me to consider all potential outcomes from a variety of different viewpoints, and by implementing a physical solution under significant time and material constraints.
We quickly learned from working alongside the users of the chute that their methods of loading fabric put significant strain on the employees and therefore limited which employees could do the job. One of the most significant hindrances to production was the inability to load the 90+ yard sewer liners down the chute. Each of these pieces had to be trucked across the factory floor to the freight elevator to move downstairs, which we learned took more than ten minutes per fabric bundle. Eliminating this would increase productivity tremendously.
Throughout our ideation processes, we made sure to involve all stakeholders of the chute. This included the workers on the receiving end who moved the fabric off of the chute and into the shear line for finishing. We learned that the old arrangement of the chute often caused the fabric bundles to land in the wrong orientation, which would require the workers at the bottom to manually flip them before they went into the shear line. Ensuring the fabric fell in the right orientation became a primary concern.
We first made sketch model mock-ups of the chute to present our initial ideas to the mill’s president and the chute workers in a hands-on, visual way. Next, we conducted a number of tests in which we involved the employees to test some options for better solutions to both the sewer liner problem and how to load fabric better in general. These included sliding the fabric down the chute while still on its pallet; layering low-friction plastic sheets between the fabric bundles so they could slide into the chute easily when pushed; using a pulley system suspended from the ceiling to tip one end of the pallet up and slide fabric in; and using a hinged pushing device to slide the bundles in. These tests proved that the ideas were feasible, but not without the cost of increased operational time. These insights told us that while we could make physical changes to the chute in order to improve visibility and communication, any new ways of loading fabric would come at the cost of time. This led us to carefully observe how each employee loaded the chute and find the most time- efficient method; from there, we could teach other employees this method.
The most effective physical improvement we made to the space was removing the chute cover and replacing it with a safer, more open guardrail system that allowed access from two sides instead of one. This allowed the large sewer liner bundles to be sent down the narrow side of the chute by placing the pallet at the edge of the chute and tipping the fabric in using an electric pallet jack. The new open layout of the chute allowed the operators to observe the chute’s current capacity from the mending perch where they normally worked using a strategically positioned convex mirror. We added plastic curtains in the mouth of the chute to block out the heat and noise of the shears below without sacrificing visibility. The new chute was also lined with low-friction plastic sides to make the fabric slide more quickly and easily. In addition, a short landing ramp was added at the top to eliminate the initial drop that often caused the fabric to land in the wrong orientation.
With regard to loading the chute, we realized that the “flip and tip” method used by one employee was most efficient and was the easiest for others to master. The pallet gets lined up with the long edge of the chute, the top fabric bundle is flipped 180° onto the floor, and then it is tipped directly into the mouth of the chute. We produced an infographic that hung in the space to instruct employees how to conduct this method properly and safely.
Our new solutions allowed a higher volume of fabric to be transported from upstairs to downstairs due to the increased communication between the departments and the physical improvements that let the fabric slide more easily. The improved processes made the jobs of the workers at the bottom of the chute significantly easier and more efficient now that they could rely on the fabric consistently landing in the right orientation. Our improvements also allowed other employees to work the chute more often, which was particularly beneficial in the event that the primary chute operators were absent.
One of the biggest success of our improvements were that the sewer liners could now be sent directly down the chute instead of sending them down the freight elevator. We estimate that this improvement could potentially save the company around $130,000 in wasted labor annually. This figure comes from estimating the frequency of the sewer liner bundles and the time it takes to transport them (about 33 bundles every two weeks at ten minutes per bundle). This improvement should allow the employees to spend more time on normal production procedures.
Overall, the employees and the executives of the mill were pleased with the improvements we had made over the summer. We had taken into account as many voices and concerns as we could, and the final solutions drew from the perspectives of employees from throughout the company. This project helped me grow as a designer by giving me more experience in working directly alongside the stakeholders of the project, by forcing me to consider all potential outcomes from a variety of different viewpoints, and by implementing a physical solution under significant time and material constraints.