Late in coming but here is a tl;dr bullet point list of what we have accomplished so far with explanations to follow :
- Found “customers” for the donated coats.
- Nailed down the design -at least four times.
- Determined the size range (6-12).
- Technical illustration.
- Made the pattern (x3)
- Cut and sewed 3 mock ups, and fit them.
- Ordered sample fabrics (guaranteed continuity).
- Checked the pattern (x2)
- Graded the pattern.
- Created first marker to determine yield.
- Costing (x3)
- Selected final fabric.
- Ordered zippers.
- Ordered trims (donated)
- Ordered cuff ribbing (donated)
- Ordered quilted lining fabric.
- Created sample marker (jump set).
- Cut shell for final sample and hopefully, sew bys.
Missing from this list is lots of stuff -to a large extent, all of the industrial engineering activities. The latter is needed to determine the amount of time we’ll need to sew this stuff up and with how many people and machines. We still don’t have a clear answer on this but should have a much better idea when we do the sew bys this week and weekend.
Indirectly, time studies introduce the subject of both design changes and equipment. Initially, we’d wanted to do welt pockets but decided that the preparation would soak up too many resources (time in marking, pressing and training) and still take longer to sew than we’d like. So we changed the design to do an exposed zipper pocket. Time studies showed that sewing one pocket would take anywhere from 1:30 to 7 minutes, depending on the experience of the operator. Fast forward, I somehow ended up on eBay and bought a welt pocket machine. Now, we’ve decided to go back to welt pockets. An experienced operator can make a pocket in 10 seconds (literally) but I’ll be satisfied if we complete one per minute. Reason is, everybody is going to want to play with the machine but even at that rate, we’ll have all 200 pockets completed in under 4 hours. Before, with the results of the time study, we estimated that we’d need 7 operators on single needle machines, to complete the pockets in a bit over 4 hours. Read More
