Innovation in case of the garment factories is the application of a sophisticated tool, called the industrial engineering. PHOTO: AFP
KARACHI: Influx of capitalism after the fall of the Soviet Union gave birth to several sceptics. Regarded as the indomitable, exploitive force of the western hemisphere, capitalism was seen as all-consuming. Nevertheless, modern tools of capitalism have provided workers a glimpse of the advantages laissez faire economics can bring.
The most intuitive way to manufacture a garment is to task a sewing machine operator. He or she will labour away for hours and produce a perfect garment, ready to be packed and exported to a western country. If you want to increase production, you add more floors, buy more machines and engage more operators.
In an official eight-hour but unofficially 12-hour working day, such an operator may produce up to a dozen pieces, depending on the garment’s complexity. This is often done at a non-negotiable piece rate. Disguised as worker incentive, it forces them to work longer, to produce more pieces and therefore to earn more.
On a typical day, our worker may take home $5 — none on a holiday, during sickness, pregnancy or when the factory has a slump in export orders.
Piece rate manufacturing is capitalism at its worst. By its very nature, it’s insensitive to human suffering and loyal only to profits. Since the end of the Cold War and the victory of the capitalist world, capitalism has emerged as the sole engine for generating wealth. Arguably, if it could be regulated well, it may even be credited for improving the human condition. Alas! In developing countries, with often a broken down regulatory compliance, capitalism goes on a rampage.
Capitalism’s innovation
In this bleak backdrop, and stunningly, the best garment factories in Pakistan and Bangladesh never resort to piece rate work. Instead, in a radical departure, their workers are paid above market salaries under fixed working hours. These rarely exceed 48 hours per week and when they do, they’re paid double the wage rate for overtime.
Apart from a calendar packed with public holidays, the workers receive two additional salaries for both Eids. They may take their annual paid leaves or could cash them. The pregnancy leave, casual leave and medical leave remain fully paid.
There’s even a leave called father’s leave in Bangladesh; that’s when a father goes on leave to provide parental care to the newborn; albeit inapplicable after the third child.
This shocking deviation from capitalism norms isn’t exactly reawakening of the latter’s conscience. It’s due to another feature of capitalism, its ability to innovate in a continuous cycle of creative destruction. The innovation in case of the garment factories is the application of a sophisticated tool, called the industrial engineering.
It allows them to produce 400% more using less than half the labour while increasing their profits, dramatically. The largesse that we see flowing towards the workers is only the trickle-down effect of a huge jump in profits.
Unlike the piece rate worker who’s given the task of producing the complete trousers on her non-specialised machine. In modern factories, an industrial engineer (IE) breaks down stitching into distinct tasks. These are assigned to several specialised sewing machines and their specialist operators.
For example, in case of a pair of jeans, there’s a task called the J-stitch. Done on a very expensive machine, it’s stitching the curved seam around the flap that covers the zipper.
The industrial engineer selects and sequences every single one of these tasks on his modern Industrial engineering software. For a men’s suit there could be more than 110 tasks while for a T-shirt there may be 14. For our usual jeans, there are only 34.
The software takes into account the sewing machine, their motors’ acceleration, braking and mean revolutions, the expected hand motions of the human operator, the length of the seam required in the operation and many other arcane variables. In the end, it answers several important questions - how many seconds it will take to perform each task? How many products shall be produced per hour and per day?
The software also adds the time taken by all tasks and tells you for example; for our jeans 13.51 minutes of labour is needed; requiring 48 machines and operators. If all goes well, they should produce 1,800 trousers per day. If worker’s real or average salary is input into the software, it tells you that the labour component is $0.2 per trousers. Compare this to a piece rate worker, who’ll produce 5 similar trousers per day after laboring for 12 hours at a piece rate of $0.9.
Starting with Crescent Bahuman in Pindi Bhattian in the early 90s, by now most of the large garment factories in Pakistan deploy industrial engineering practices on their floors.
Capitalism does not have to be the poster boy of worker exploitation. Technological innovations can often create win-win situations.
The writer is an entrepreneur who has worked in Bangladesh’s garment sector
Published in The Express Tribune, August 10th, 2015.
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