How is Standard Allowance Minute Calculated in Textile Manufacturing?

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SAM is the textile industry’s most widely used tool by woven and non-woven material suppliers. Everything in fabric production, particularly garment creation, depends on SAM – Standard Allowance Minute. 

What is the Standard Allowance Minute?

Whether you are establishing an online fabric store in India or are a seasoned fabric supplier on TEXchange, Standard Allowance Minute can help you measure the time for a task to complete, allowing you to effectively plan your budget, supply chain, and other resources. 

To explain this simply, the Standard Allowed Minute is like the timer for making a single garment or a bundle of greige fabric. It’s a big deal in garment-making because it helps measure how quickly and efficiently clothes are produced. SAM is crucial for figuring out how much time it takes to make a piece of clothing, setting realistic production goals, estimating costs, and ensuring the quality is up to par.

Think of it this way: SAM is the time it’s supposed to take to do a specific job, like weaving an Indian silk saree in a handloom. But this time isn’t just the essential sewing time; it includes extra minutes for things like preparing yarns, running the handloom, designing the embroidery, and even lunch breaks, weekends, and festive holidays. So, it’s like a total time package for getting the job done.

The industrial engineering department is responsible for determining and calculating SAM for the assembly processes of garments, employing a standardized calculation method. SAM encompasses the operation’s allowed time, incorporating allowances such as bundle allowance, machine allowance, and personal allowance into the Standard Minute Value (SMV) obtained for the operation. 

Why SAM Calculations are Important

SAM serves as a guiding tool in production, particularly for common items such as T-shirts, formal shirts, trousers, sarees, kurtas, and jackets. These SAM values aren’t random figures; they offer swift approximations to streamline our production processes. Think of them as efficient shortcuts for gauging your factory’s capacity and planning accordingly.

With your SAM calculations, you can figure out the right machinery you need and even estimate the cost of cutting each garment and adding accessories like bows and buttons. 

But here’s the thing: the initial SAM is considered an optimal scenario where everything goes smoothly and efficiently. It’s at 100% efficiency. However, things might not always go perfectly in reality, so they adjust this time based on how things usually work. It’s like setting a more realistic goal for the team to hit.

How do You Calculate the SAM in Garment Production using a Time Study?

SAM Calculation Using Time Study is a manual, commonly used, and simple approach to determining SAM through the formula:

Standard Allowed Minute = (Cycle Time × Operator Rating) + Allowance %

Here’s a concise guide to applying this method:

Operation Selection: Choose the operation for SAM calculation.

Cycle Observation: Observe the operation, noting where the cycle completes. In sewing, a cycle typically involves picking up the part, sewing, and dispatching it.

Time Measurement: Use a stopwatch to record the time taken for one cycle. Take at least 5 – 10 readings, excluding any abnormal ones.

Average Calculation: Determine the average of the five cycle times. Assign an operator performance rating (75% to 125%).

Basic Time Calculation: Use the formula Basic Time or SMV = Cycle Time × Operator Rating to find the minimum time for the task.

Allowance Addition: Consider labor limitations and add allowance to calculate SAM.

SAM = (Cycle Time × Operator Rating) + Allowance %

Allowance percentages vary between organizations; they could be fixed or include factors like bundle handling, machine delay, personal, and contingency allowances.

SAM can also be calculated using software solutions and synthetic data, where information is fed into a software program, and the result is generated based on the Time Minute Unit (TMU). 

Hope this helps you plan your resources before signing up on TEXchange Global’s online textile trading platform. Just like SAM, TEXchange also helps you seamlessly buy textile online using its dynamic features and promising automation tools.

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