My Exposure to Pakistan Textile Industry

About 2 months ago, on 20th October 2017, I was one of the very few fortunate, who were given the opportunity for an exposure and experiential learning trip to Afroze Textile. I am truly grateful to my ACC-301: Cost Accounting Course Instructor, who gave me the opportunity to explore Pakistan’s Textile Industry. And I must say, its big and there is huge potential in Pakistani Textile Industry and I think government should support Textile Industry with regards to Pakistan Economic Policy and Trade Policy needs to focus on our exports, where traditionally textile has played a key role and now is seeing decline and we cannot afford to lose our gems.

So, I have lived near North Nazimabad and the Buffer zone between North Karachi, North Nazimabad, F B Area and Gulshan and in my numerous trips back and forth Gulshan, I have passed by Afroze Textile, twice the numerous times I have traveled to Gulshan. And I always wonder what is it like to see inside the huge textile hub. Even from the outside it is huge and when I went inside, I found out to be larger than my institution. 

Moreover, I have heard about extreme difficult life and in textile sector. The employee regulations, industrial labour laws, Health, Safety & Environment and Employee Grievances. The tough life, over burdened with work and tighter deadlines. The overtime stress, 3rd party labour salary issues and quarrels. Yet these industries are key players of high quality textile products in the world. 

Furthermore, Textile sector contributes too much to our economy. Or maybe it used to.Now most of our exports have moved to Bangladesh. I believe for Pakistan this industry needs to reach its full potential. Pakistan Economic Policy should allow more facilitation to our trade policy and enhance exports. The year 2015 showed textile export revenue to be about $13,453 900,000. There can be incredible growth here and decline can be counter acted.

The security and gate protocol was efficient. And their facilitation to 30 students from IoBM was well organized and we were soon seated in their conference room. The best part of that conference room was that it was decorated and well placed with the export product samples. And their Quality and Compliance Manager gave us a briefing and showed us their business-corporate intro video. And then our class was broken down into two groups of 15 students and we were ready for the tour in no time.

 Firstly, we went to design department, that collaborates from foreign clients and at times it takes months. Then order is processed. Then we saw a huge beaching plant, which was the core equipment and major machinery. This is where the whole process and operation starts up. The raw cloth is bleached and that goes through gas and other chambers. This is by far the largest machinery and has to well maintained as it processes 80-90 metres cloth per minute and about 3,000,000 metres/month. This machine is the core and the most expensive one.

Then the cloth goes to Rotary production which is again a bit huge machinery and here gas/steam is also applied and there are 5 of such machinery. Next there colouring dyeing machine that the clothes pass one by one on a small rotor of single colour and it has 12 colours rotors and one by one colour a design is completed. This again is a large size machinery and here colour like inks of a printer have to replaced. They are 2 of these here. Then there is also ICHINO and further machines.

Next we were shown Power Plant, although we were not Electrical Engineering students but with my Electrical Engineering and Applications sales plus of Power products, The is the heart of the industry, It was itself a sector and the whole factory is vast enough so unfortunately we couldnot explore this area much but this power plant provides 3MW of electricity which is required to be cost effectiveness. Power Consumption and Electricity expense here are key indicators for costing purpose. 

Then came the favourite part of female colleagues. We got explore, Digital Printer, where designs of Sana Safinaz and J. sort brands were printed on cloth and this was bit private due to client confidentiality. But the printer was huge and fast, similar to a printer in for our PC but huge, over here there was no PC but Siemens panel with touch interface. The machine cost about 7 crore PKRS. So apart from these branded products, the products for cloths, curtains, pillow covers and all these heterogeneous productions and variables are divided into categories: A, B and C and even the D products. After cutting , stitching and QA by manual labour: A B are exported and C is other business but even the D products are not for waste, they enter inexpensive local markets.

There was also Chemical Testing Laboratory where I got to see Centrifugal equipment and Chromatograms. Lastly, one my interest object was a PC with Oracle Database and ERP for productions. It was recording production Data with respect to Sales & Operational Planning. And I spoke to the Senior Engineer there and discussed Oracle V Microsoft Dynamics for productions. At the end I got see that ERP is implemented in these huge factories and productions are also going to Digital Transformation.

 Overall, the key concern on managers was how the macro economics of world has shifted a huge chunk of their business to Bangladesh but were hopeful as they were more experienced and seniors, plus we have advantage of local Cotton. We are truly grateful to Mr. Atif Ahmed from Afroze Textile. So finally we had some refreshments from Afroze Textile and exchange gifts from our side. I wish Pakistan Textile returns back to its old lost glory and serves the country as it used to. I m truly indebted to my course instructor Mr. Tauseef Ahmed Qureshi. Lastly, but not the least, Mr. Arif and Sir Qureshi were also discussing how Textile Industry can collaborate with Academia for Business students to be able to grasp further on texile business and offering an elective course seems feasible idea and recommendation from my end.