More on Joseph Abboud
21 March 2007 by Kevin Meyer
Over the past few months we've blogged twice on the story of Joseph Abboud, the suit designer that is leveraging lean manufacturing to keep their factory in the United States. They deserve the accolades, and today another even more detailed article came out in the Chicago Tribune.
The article begins by describing how the president and the union manager are working together… a lesson many other manufacturers, especially in Detroit, need to learn. Sometimes you simply have to ask for support… and explain why.
Sapienza, president of the Joseph Abboud suit factory, and Pepicelli, who runs its union, are working hand in glove. Union and management are collaborating to revamp timeworn garment-making methods in favor of manufacturing techniques pioneered at Toyota Motor Corp. Their goal: Survival in the face of cheaper foreign competitors.
To speed production and cement the factory's edge over foreign workers, [CEO Marty] Staff read up on Toyota, poring over the book "The Machine that Changed the World: The Story of Lean Production." He asked Sapienza, his team and the union to embrace Toyota principles, including "kaizen," a Japanese word meaning continuous improvement. The union agreed.
For a lean transformation to be successful, it requires support and commitment from the very top of the organization. In this case it came straight from the CEO.
How many big company executives do you know that have never bothered to visit the inside of one of their factories? Have never been to the gemba? Mr. Staff is more enlightened, and he knows the value that a lean-driven U.S. factory can more than offset higher labor costs.
He loves having the factory. "The factory is really the heart of our company," he said. Keeping Abboud's suit manufacturing in the United States has advantages, such as reduced shipping time, he said. He also believes overseas workers can't beat the quality and price of the suits Abboud produces in New Bedford, which sell in Nordstrom Inc. and Bloomingdale's. While the company is doing fine, management says the U.S. factory has to improve constantly to justify the higher salaries its workers make compared to foreign competitors. The average wage in the factory is $12 an hour, plus union benefits. That's three or four times what workers in Mexico make, Sapienza said.
The change from old-style garment manufacturing to lean's one piece flow was significant, but they recognized the opportunities.
The company is asking workers at the factory — half of whom speak only Portuguese or Spanish and many of whom never finished high school — to abandon the "piecework" method of making suits, in which every worker does only one task, and move to team-based work. It's also asking workers to speak up at kaizen meetings, voicing their opinions on how they can do their jobs better. It's a big change at the factory, whose previous owners were strictly hierarchical.
Piecework slows production. During the four weeks it takes to make a standard suit, only about 250 minutes of labor is put into the suit. Much of the rest of the time, its components are tied in bundles, sitting on a cart, waiting for the next worker to untie them and work on them. In the factory's new teams, it takes 12 days to make a suit. Team members are trained to be proficient at more than one task and are asked to do their jobs standing up, if possible, to add more speed. Workers sit close together and the carts that roll bundles of pieces from one worker to the next are gone. Once a worker finishes a piece, it moves to the next worker.
There is still a lot of work to do, and they realize that even 12 days to make a suit must include a lot of non value-added waste.
So far, there are only three teams, each with eight to ten workers, at the 600-person factory. The company hopes to move one-third of its jacket production to teams by August and all trouser production to teams by September. In the final analysis, if Toyota can make a car in 13 hours, there's no reason we shouldn't be able to make a suit in a much reduced period of time." [said Sapienza]
I know which designer I'll be supporting the next time I have to buy a suit… which isn't very often out here in California (quite honestly, I don't know if I still own a suit…). It will look nice with my pair of Allen-Edmonds.
Filed Under: Companies
I read this (and blogged it too) but the one thing I can't understand is why it takes them so long to make a suit! I mean, this is what I do, suit manufacturing (or did). This is the timeline for one lot consisting of 500-1000 suits:
Product development:
Patterns: 3 hours with a good block.
Sewing a sample, four hours max.
Fitting, can only be done once a week, one hour max.
Worse case scenario it takes another iteration cycle.
Production, usually done several months later after the item has been presold:
Digitizing and grading the pattern, 4 hours.
Marking and plotting, calculate plotting time for three markers (shell, lining fusible) maybe a couple of hours.
Spreading the goods, half a day (should be done while the plotter is running).
Resting the goods, 24 hours. The goods have to sit an entire day before they can be cut. Even with the best of tensioning devices, no one's found a solution. This is why cutting rooms have overcapacity (extra tables) so wip can rest.
Cutting, half a day.
Larger lot processing (prepping for fusing) and batching linings, another half day.
Fusing, less than a day but close to it.
Sorting, bundling, tagging etc (with piece tickets, assuming this is piece work), one day.
Now it's ready for the sewing line. Are you ready for this? It takes a good sewing line less than 30 minutes to put a suit together. Throw in some pressing, finishing (button sewing), inspecting, bagging and putting on hang tags and you're talking an hour tops.
When I read how long it took them to put a suit together, I was flabbergasted. 12 days and that's the improved figure? This is all in scheduling and flow. I wonder if they need a lean suit manufacturing consultant :). Heck, I even speak fluent spanish with a minor in portugese.
marty staff says
kathleen: it tkes 210 minutes to actually make a suit in our factory. it has taken six weeks to get it through the factory because of the batch system which is conventioanl in virtually all suit factories.
we have chosen to lean the factory, and we will be able to make the "one day suit". we however will not lean the cutting portion of manufacturing because it doesn't make sense to do this. this adds almost a week.
we moved our distribution facility to the factory, and we picked up 9 days.
while i appreciate your glib comments, perhaps you should applaud the effort in redicing 6 weeks to less than 2 weeks.
it takes 1/2 second to actually make a battery…and typically 8 weeks to go through the battery factory. why not direct your comments to that industry instead of mine, where i fight daily to insure a future for my 700 workers.
I DO applaud your efforts! Yes, I'm guilty of being glib in an industry characterized by typical turn arounds of nine to twelve months. However, you say "mine", it's my industry too, for 27 years now. Likewise, I fight daily to ensure a future for my 5,000-6,000 daily visitors imparting the strategies that will assist them in making products with integrity reduced waste and sustainable profit.
My heartiest congratulations on your efforts. I regret the omission was lacking in my previous comment.
thanks kathleen. I am appearing on a Boston tv show Monday to further discuss our initiative. We have such a long way still to go…but….since lean is a continual process we are at least in the game now.
i appreciate your comments, and one day we will get close to our collective vision.
John Hunter says
Great to see Marty Staff commenting. As you say "where i fight daily to insure a future for my 700 workers" – in order to keep up that effort you must always strive to do better. Even when you have done well you must focus on how much more there is to do. Kathleen has some great ideas on what can be done – I believe her comments were in the spirit of how much more room for improvement there is (as there is most anywhere). Keep up the great work.