Proportion Defective Chart to Monitor Apparel Production Process

Abstract

Quality management is a mechanism in apparel manufacturing that ensures customers obtain goods that are defect free and meet their needs. Each finished items of apparel industry has one or more quality characteristics that must be inspected during the production process. The objective of the study was to apply proportion defective chart (p-chart) to monitor the fraction of nonconforming apparel products. The variation in the production of apparel was examined from day one to day twenty-five. The p-chart was used to monitor the proportion of defective items in 25 numbers of samples with sample size 50 from the apparel production process. The sample proportion defectives remained within the upper and lower control limits of p-chart and revealed that the production process was in statistical control. On average, every day there was about 4% of the apparel production with defectives. On any given day, the defectives may be as high as 8.5% or as low as 0.94%. The apparel manufacturing process with defectives is not acceptable. Hence, the production department should employ other quality inspection tools and quality assurance methods to minimize the defectives in the production process.