Reading List

This is the required reading list for Apparel Manufacturing Boot Camp, updated as of 10/27/2019. For your convenience, pages open in a new tab. Pages from The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Sewn Product Manufacturing are abbreviated “EGTSPM.”
I will send the link to the quiz based on this material via email. The quiz is an open book test that must be completed no later than 6 weeks prior to the event you’ve registered for.

Test material:

In addition to the above, Pre-production sign ups should read the below too. It is also recommended for people who are serious about sewing during boot camp:

Extra credit!

You are strongly encouraged to sew samples of tutorials; you can mail them in. You can find the list here. The ones that will be most useful to you are these:

Centered zipper template
Centered zipper construction
Welt and paper jig
Welt pocket construction
Tutorial: Finishing the welt pocket

Video Links!

I’ll send these to you via email.

10/27/2019: End of Reading List

You can ignore anything below this point. I’d delete it but I may want to re-use parts of it, and WP Gutenberg being the horror that it is, I don’t know I’d ever get it back.

The reading list for Spring 2019 is a departure so if you’d read it before, there are a few additions (but more subtractions). The original list has been pushed down the page as we may need it in the future.

Pre-production people have additional assigned reading -a whole book- but production people are encouraged to read it too. Initially I’d intended to assign Training Within Industry: The Foundation of Lean but then decided that I wanted to consider The TWI Facilitator’s Guide: How to Use the TWI Programs Successfully. I apologize for the delay in making that decision, I should have realized how ambivalent I was. Please understand that I don’t want to waste your time and want to select the best material. I will update this page with the title we’ve chosen on Monday November 5, 2018. You will also be notified by email.

Note that pages from The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Sewn Product Manufacturing are abbreviated “EGTSPM.”

Required Reading

Things I’d like for you to read but are not required:

  • Natural Capitalism, Chapter 7: Muda, Service, and Flow
  • Problems in problem prevention
  • Becoming a lean manufacturer
  • You may find this interesting: a report from the National Academy of Sciences entitled U.S. Industry in 2000: Studies in Competitive Performance — specifically see the chapter on apparel manufacturing. It’s a broad sweep but you’ll learn the historic and endemic weaknesses that are inherent to the infrastructure of the industry. We can’t fix anything until we compare the odd variables of our business to how everybody else does things. Speaking of, it will also lead you to understand why other classes of manufacturing consider apparel people to be somewhat dimwitted — in part because they don’t fully appreciate the complex variables we face that they don’t.

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