International Journal of Economics, Finance and Management Sciences
2017; 5(3): 168-172
http://www.sciencepublishinggroup.com/j/ijefm
doi: 10.11648/j.ijefm.20170503.15
ISSN: 2326-9553 (Print); ISSN: 2326-9561 (Online)
An AHP Based Approach to Identify and Eliminate Most
Severe Risks of the Internal Supply Chain of Ready Made
Garments (RMG) Industries: A Case Study
Pritom Kumar Mondal*, Md. Habibur Rahman, Md. SanoarHosin, Prohlad Sarkar
Department of Industrial Engineering and Management, Khulna University of Engineering & Technology, Khulna, Bangladesh
Email address:
[email protected] (P. K. Mondal)
*
Corresponding author
To cite this article:
Pritom Kumar Mondal, Md. Habibur Rahman, Md. SanoarHosin, Prohlad Sarkar. An AHP Based Approach to Identify and Eliminate Most
Severe Risks of the Internal Supply Chain of Ready Made Garments (RMG) Industries: A Case Study. International Journal of Economics,
Finance and Management Sciences. Vol. 5, No. 3, 2017, pp. 168-172. doi: 10.11648/j.ijefm.20170503.15
Received: March 23, 2017; Accepted: April 19, 2017; Published: May 23, 2017
Abstract: Risk is a basic term for any decision making framework which can be defined as a probability or threat of
damage, injury, liability, loss, or any other negative occurrence that is caused by external or internal vulnerabilities. For having
a wide range of risks, Ready Made Garments (RMG) sector faces different difficulties in accomplishing their missions and
goals. This paper has identified different risks associated with internal supply chain of the RMG sector. To achieve the
expected outcome from this study, a renowned apparel factory named TALISMAN (BD), a branch of FCI GROUP, has been
visited. 58 risks in 11 different departments have been identified by discussing about the process with the experts and
experienced personnel of those departments along with the previous historical data of that factory. Analytical Hierarchy
Process (AHP) has been used to identify the most severe risk of each department. Some corrective actions have also been
suggested to eliminate the most severe risks of all department to enhance the overall efficiency of the supply chain.
Keywords: Ready Made Garments (RMG), Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP), Root Cause Analysis, Criteria, Risk
1. Introduction
The export oriented Ready Made garments (RMG) sector
in Bangladesh has started its journey in the late 1970s and
has become enriched in the recent few years. Ready Made
garments (RMG) are mass produced finished textile products
of the clothing industry and indeed RMG is a promising part
in the field of industrialization of this country [1].
Bangladesh earns more than 25 billion USD per year while
ensuring 4.5 million employment opportunities. Supply chain
of RMG based on taking the orders from buyer by
merchandising department and then merchandiser sends it to
production department. Then according to buyer’s
recommendation, production department produces the
product within the time limit and delivers it to the finishing
department. After finishing and packaging activities,
merchandiser delivers it to the buyer [2-3]. It has provided
the opportunity of employment to millions of unemployed,
especially innumerable uneducated women of this country. It
is making significant contribution in earning foreign currency
by export and at the same time it also improves the socioeconomic condition of this country.
In garments industry supply chain is considered as a vital
element. All processes within the supply chain, can be
categorized into three areas, which are Customer
Relationship Management (CRM), Internal Supply Chain
Management (ISCM) & Supplier Relationship Management
(SRM). Internal supply chain management (ISCM) is the
process where spotlight is totally focused on the internal
activities and relations of an enterprise. ISCM includes all
processes involved in planning, scheduling, budgeting and
staffing for fulfillment of a customer order [4-6].
In internal supply chain there are several risk factors which
hamper the supply chain decisions. This paper is based on
identifying the most severe risks and causes behind of these
risks. Here appropriate solutions have also been suggested to
overcome these barriers. In RMG sector each and every
departments of internal supply chain are closely connected
International Journal of Economics, Finance and Management Sciences 2017; 5(3): 168-172
and problems in a particular section may cause failure to the
whole organization. TALISMAN (BD), a branch of FCI
group is a reputed organization in Bangladesh, where a 15
days survey has been performed to investigate the risks
regarding to the internal supply chain. For this purpose, at
first severe risks of all the departments have been identified
and then root-cause analysis has been performed to find out
the reasons behind these risks.
In this paper a research framework for supply chain
management has been developed. This framework not only
provides the opportunity to integrate and optimize the supply
chain process of RMG industry but also reflects the actions &
values responsible for the continuous improvement of the
design, development & management processes of an
organization’s supply system and for Bangladesh that also
provides a novel approach for decision makers of supply
chain components to review and appraise the performance
toward fulfillment of ultimate goals [7-9].
Supply chain associated with agile manufacturing is an
important sector that identifies the relative importance of
existing practices, brings into sharper focus to the most
relevant types of supply chain practices, identifies key
elements of contemporary supply chain management
practice, facilitates the growing use of global supply for
innovative products and ensures the essential roles of
intermediaries in such supply chains [10-12].
Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) which is a
mathematics and psychology based technique for organizing
and analyzing complex decisions, has been applied to find
out the most severe risks in the internal supply chain of
TALISMAN (BD). Firstly, department wise different
decision making criteria have been identified and then
compared with each other to get the relative importance of
each criterion. Then the risks have been identified and
compared with each other for each criterion to get the relative
rankings of each risk with respect to each criterion. Finally,
the relative importance of all criteria and relative rankings of
all the risks with respect to all criteria are multiplied to find
out the final rankings of the risks. Among a list of risks of a
certain department, the risk which corresponds to the
maximum ranking value is considered as the most severe
risk. Some necessary corrective actions have also been
suggested to overcome the identified most severe risks of
each section of the internal supply chain.
of each department have been identified by discussing with
the experienced personnel and analyzing the previous data of
the corresponding department. Then decision making criteria
have been identified for each department and the risks of
each department have been compared with respect to the
corresponding criteria. The procedure of identifying the most
severe risk is same for all the mentioned department but in
this paper the procedure has been shown for cutting
department only. By discussing with the personnel of cutting
department and analyzing historical data, following risks
have been identified as the frequently occurred risks.
Risk 1: Passing the defective parts and overlooking
bundling fault because of ill QC checking.
Risk 2: Rejecting the quality fabric because of Type 1 error.
Risk 3: Occurring more shrinkage in fabric than expected,
which will differ the size and make defective product.
Risk 4: Occurring miss-print, miss-placement, shade
variation, overlapping, color matching etc. because of
improper checking of cut panels
Risk 5: Having low cutting capacity because of not
considering check matching style, number of fusing parts,
number of parts in the garments, order size, fabric types etc.
After identifying the most frequent risks, decision making
criteria related to cutting department have been identified and
which are quality (Q), required time (RT), required
manpower (RM) and reliability (R).
The comparative worth of each criterion has been shown
in Table 1 which is referred as matrix A. Matrix A is a pair
wise comparison matrix where it can be seen that the
importance of quality is two times greater than the
importance of required time and required time is three times
important than reliability and so on. Table 2 represents the A4
matrix which is obtained to make the analysis more accurate.
Table 3 represents the Eigen Vector matrix which is nothing
but the ratio of row sum and total sum. Eigen vector matrix
represents the relative importance of each criteria and from
this matrix it can be seen that quality is the most important
criterion and reliability is the least important one.
Table 1. Comparative worth matrix (matrix A).
Q
RT
RM
R
2. Methodology
In this paper, a systematic approach has been followed
which starts with analyzing the existing situation of internal
supply chain of TALISMAN (BD). There are 11 different
departments named cutting, sewing, inspection, finishing,
safety, human resource, merchandising, sampling, quality
control, inventory control and transportation in the above
mentioned supply chain. The main objective of this study is
to find out the most severe risk of each department and this
objective has been accomplished by implementing Analytical
Hierarchy process (AHP). At first frequently occurred risks
169
Q
1
0.50
0.33
0.25
RT
2
1
0.50
0.33
RM
3
2
1
0.50
R
4
3
2
1
Table 2. Worth multiplication matrix (matrix A4).
Q
RT
RM
R
Q
71.09
40
23.13
13.83
RT
118.86
67
38.67
23.13
RM
205.94
116.11
67
40.08
Table 3. Eigen Vector matrix.
Q
RT
RM
R
0.48
0.27
0.16
0.09
R
365.30
205.94
118.86
71.10
170
Pritom Kumar Mondal et al.: An AHP Based Approach to Identify and Eliminate Most Severe Risks of the
Internal Supply Chain of Ready Made Garments (RMG) Industries: A Case Study
Table 4 represents matrix B where pairwise comparison has
been shown between the mentioned risks of cutting department
with respect to required time criterion. From matrix B, it can
be understandable that risk 3 is four times important than risk 1
and risk 5 is ten times important than risk 1 and so on. Matrix
B4 has been represented by Table 5, which has been computed
to make the procedure of identifying the most severe risk more
reliable. Table 6 shows the relative ranking matrix, which has
been computed by dividing row sum by total sum. This
relative ranking matrix represents the relative severity level of
the identified risks with respect to required time criterion and
here risk 5 is the most severe risk
Table 4. Pair wise comparison matrix (matrix B).
Risk 1
2
3
4
5
Risk 1
1
3
4
6
10
2
0.33
1
3
4
3
3
0.25
0.33
1
2
2
4
0.17
0.25
0.50
1
5
5
0.10
0.33
0.25
0.20
1
Table 5. Multiplication matrix (matrix B4).
Risk 1
2
3
4
5
Risk 1
148.4
359.4
714.4
970.4
1917
2
69.5
169.5
336.5
455.6
891.3
3
31.6
76.7
152.7
207.4
409
4
28.9
69.1
139.1
192.6
374.9
5
14.1
34.2
67.3
903.3
183.4
Table 6. Relative ranking matrix.
Risk 1
Risk 2
Risk 3
Risk 4
Risk 5
0.035
0.087
0.173
0.235
0.470
Then the relative ranking matrix of the above mentioned
risks has been calculated for other three criteria (quality,
required manpower and reliability). Table 7 represents matrix
C where the relative rankings of all the risks of the cutting
department with respect to all the selected decision making
criteria have been shown. The severity level has been
computed by multiplying matrix C with the Eigen Vector
matrix. Table 8 represents the severity level of all the risks of
the cutting department and it can be seen that the risk 4 is the
most dangerous risk because it corresponds to the highest
ranking value. The same procedure has been carried out for
other 10 departments (sewing, inspection, finishing, safety,
human resource, merchandising, sampling, quality control,
inventory control and transportation) to find out the most
severe risk of each department.
Table 7. Overall relative ranking matrix (matrix C).
Risk 1
2
3
4
5
Q
0.265
0.168
0.135
0.352
0.078
RT
0.036
0.087
0.174
0.236
0.470
RM
0.166
0.165
0.088
0.120
0.460
R
0.193
0.177
0.295
0.263
0.073
Table 8. Severity level of risks.
Risk 1
Risk 2
Risk 3
Risk 4
Risk 5
Severity level
0.181
0.147
0.153
0.276
0.243
3. Result and Discussion
AHP has been used to identify the most severe risk of each
department by repeating the procedure discussed earlier.
Each department has different decision making criteria and
this criteria are used for calculating the relative rankings of
the risks. The risk of a particular department which
corresponds to the highest relative ranking has been
considered as the most severe risk of that department. Table 9
contains the list of the most severe risks of each department
with the corresponding relative rankings. Root cause analysis
has been performed to investigate the main reasons of the
most severe risk of each department. After finding the root
causes, some corrective actions which are necessary for the
elimination of the most severe risks, have been also
suggested in this paper. Corrective actions has been
determined by consulting with experienced personnel and
workers of all the departments. Table 10 represents all the
possible causes and corrective actions regarding the
department wise most severe risks.
Table 9. Department wise list of most severe risks with relative rankings.
Department
Risk
Relative
Ranking
Cutting Department
Occurring miss-print, miss-placement, shade variation, overlapping, color matching etc. because of
improper checking of cut panels
0.276
Inspection Department
Occurring α or β error because of the 10% sampling of fabrics, trims and accessories
0.226
Sewing Department
Passing the defective sewed parts without being properly checked at the different checking points.
0.250
Safety Department
Not getting enough space to escape from fire through emergency escape door.
0.396
Finishing Department
Having incomplete finishing and packaging activities at the end of the lead time
0.394
Human Resource Department
Not being able to control the workers from taking parts in clash and unauthorized activities
0.247
Merchandising Department
Wrong costing calculation during order taking times
0.349
International Journal of Economics, Finance and Management Sciences 2017; 5(3): 168-172
171
Department
Risk
Relative
Ranking
Sampling Department
Not taking the acceptable sample size according to the buyer’s recommendation
0.239
Quality Control Department
Not providing quality check points at required places in different departments
0.345
Inventory Control Department
Sending wrong fabric from store to cutting department because of having improper or wrong SKU data.
0.576
Transportation Department
Not delivering the final product within the lead time.
0.287
Table 10. Reasons and solutions of the most severe risk for each department.
Department
Reasons
Solutions
Printing has been performed in panel form to reduce the
fabric consumption.
Placing checkpoints before sending the cut panel to print
machine
Not doing printing activities after the cutting of fabrics
into required parts.
Putting standard worksheet in the checking point and
providing trainings to the checker
Selecting wrong sample size.
Putting standard worksheet in the checking point and
providing trainings to the checker
Following improper inspection procedures and having
unskilled checkers.
Ensuring cent percent checking if there is a constant
problem in any raw material and claiming for
compensation cost to the suppliers.
Having improper checking environment
Maintaining supplier evaluation score cart and giving
feedback to suppliers
Cutting Department
Inspection Department
Providing training to the checkers to develop their skills
Having insufficient checking capacity and wrong checking
methods
Sewing Department
Safety Department
Establishing the right checking method (Clockwise or
Counter clockwise etc.)
Passing sewed parts without checking
Establishing a positive culture so that production people
does not pass garments without checking
Not having trained volunteers and lacking of safety
knowledge among the workers
Arranging training programs
Not maintaining the compliance issues regarding fire
safety and occupational hazards
Informing the safety department rapidly if there is any
possibility of occurring fire
Not having proper manpower and lacking of consciousness
in safety department
Marinating a good alarming system and checking the
effectiveness of the system time to time
Occurring sudden machine breakdown
Having alternative ways of overcoming sudden machine
breakdown
Not having enough man power to complete the activity of
packaging in time
Employing skilled workers and training the workers
whenever it is necessary
Finishing Department
Not providing wages, bonus, over time wages timely and
fairly
Human Resource Department
Merchandising Department
Providing the wages, bonus, over time wages timely and
fairly
Following the national and international labor law
Not providing the general and fringe benefits to the
workers
Providing a suitable working condition considering the
physical health as well as mental
Not considering the different variable costs accurately
Considering different variable costs such as maintenance
cost, machine break down cost etc. during the time of
ordering
Getting faulty fabrics and trims which increases the cost
for transportation, reordering and so on
Selecting suitable suppliers based on quality of fabrics,
trims, price and lead time
Not considering the suitable time of ordering and not
getting the discount
Placing order when discount can be achieved based on
time or lot size
172
Pritom Kumar Mondal et al.: An AHP Based Approach to Identify and Eliminate Most Severe Risks of the
Internal Supply Chain of Ready Made Garments (RMG) Industries: A Case Study
Department
Reasons
Solutions
Not understanding the design sent by the buyer
Sampling Department
Lacking of skilled sampling personnel in the sampling
department
Recruiting skilled sampling personnel in the sampling
department
Lacking of knowledge about CAD and general design
Getting precise design of the sample from the buyers
Not planning efficiently regarding the position of in-line
and outline quality check points
Recruiting skilled quality experts who can easily identify
the proper location of quality check points
Having unskilled quality checker
Employing skilled quality checker who can find out the
quality faults easily
Lacking of proper management of SKU
Having proper computerized management of SKU data
and updating data regularly
Not arranging fabrics in the store in a proper way
Managing the fabrics in the store according to SKU
Getting faulty fabrics and trims during different operations
such as cutting, sewing, finishing etc. which causes
reworking
Checking the fabrics and trims properly by the inspection
department
Occurring Sudden machine break down
Having alternative ways of overcoming the sudden
machine break down
Quality Control Department
Inventory Control Department
Transportation Department
Chain Management, The South East Asian Journal of
Management, Volume 4, (2010).
4. Conclusion
The Readymade Garment Industry is a significant and
essential business sector in the economy of Bangladesh as
the majority portion of her foreign currency are being
earned by this sector. But with the increase of the
competition level, the amount of risks is also increasing day
by day. So RMG sector must have its own method to
overcome those risks. And to be more competitive in the
Global market, Bangladesh needs to maintain standard
supply chain management procedures by analyzing the
whole process. This paper has shown a way to identify the
most severe risks of the internal supply chain. Here root
cause analysis has also been performed to find out the main
causes behind the risks and also some corrective actions
have been suggested to overcome the risks.
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