Jute Manufacturing Thought: Assorting

(Introduction: Well, it's already goodbye to Jute Industry. I have worked a full year in this sector and learnt a lot. Few thoughts were initiated, couple of are successful, and so many thought still in my mind.

Right now, full time Daddy :D

Just dropped my daughter to her school, and waiting at my friend's office. Instead of reading, just wrote one of my thought today. Hope you would enjoy it!!!)

Jute sector is run by mostly casual workers. Obviously, there are pros and cons of having casual workers and so as permanent workers. Throughout the whole segment of this discussion, casual worker management will be a vital part. ?

In this part, I would discuss the Assorting Part. ?Assorting raw jute is the first step of jute yarn manufacturing within the industry. I was totally surprised to see that this process is run by Casual Workers (or by contractors). Let me clear about being surprised. Assorting is the first step that means, this process controls the whole manufacturing process in both productivity and quality. So, there must be full control of management on this step. This step can never be a bottleneck.

But this is run by casual workers! You can not expect to create a bonding with causal workers or even a marginal sense of responsibility to the organization by maintaining this casual relationship. As a result, these casual workers don’t feel any Ownership to the organization. They often remained absent. They remained absent beginning of the week, they remained absent if there is rain or weather is hot. They don’t return to work after Eid vacation, they left organization when there is seasonal works, and so on. Why they are doing this? Because, working at Jute Mill is never their first priority. Management has failed to change their People Management system even at this Millennium Era.

So, Assorting section must have permanent workers so that the number would be stable always (5% absenteeism and 3 % Migration must be considered. It is also less than the weekly absenteeism rate). Production management will have a smooth input so that conditioning and batching will be always as per SOP.

Again, Jute industry still maintaining weekly payment. So, after each payday, they are facing some habitual absenteeism 4 times per month. If they can be able to convert the payment system monthly, this habitual absenteeism will be reduced by 75% which means scope of improving around 10% production per month. (Big Smile!!!)

(But actually, to mitigate this loss, production management usually compromise in Conditioning Time, which is too risky if you are focusing on Quality).

Another issue is, Assorting is done on daily demand basis. It is obvious that there is huge chance of being biased to fulfill the daily demand as per grade. As each worker is given a target (average 1.2 ton per day), they try to fill up the target. Also, it is fully manual process. So, the daily grade wise demand pushes the workers and Assorting management to fill up the target. As a result, grade lowering and grade up often occurs which is just compromise the product quality also has a huge impact on product cost.

Once upon a time, assorting was done in two stages. Primary (Kaccha Jachai) and Secondary (Pakka Jachai). But to reduce process cost, now only it is done only one stage. So, daily mill demand is working as a compromising factor in assorting.

Mill management should give an effort to be advance in Assorting. Like, they must assort the jute in advance and stock as per grade. So, assorting will be done as per grade not focusing on daily demand. If they can be advance in assorting, as per daily demand jute can be delivered maintaining proper grade. No chance of being biased will be there.

Generally, 2 to 3 months jute stock always kept in mill. If they can assort the just after arriving in mill premises, this stock data can guide the procurement team to purchase more accurately as per sales plan.

I am not sure as I don’t have much data to make a concrete remark. But assumption says, this advancement of assorting would increase production by 10% to 15%. And also, reduce the raw material cost by 1% to 2% (Finger Crossed!)

Happy Manufacturing!!!

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