PurposeThe aim of this paper is to study the operator activities in garment industry and the percentages of distribution of operations and to analyze the personal and delay allowances by observing the operations and deriving the ratios within a manufacturing period.Design/methodology/approachA work sampling technique is used. Relevant reports (1978‐2004) are studied to give the basis and methodology of the technique. In accordiance with work sampling techique, the operations to be observed in a sewing room are defined, the number of observations and observers required for each day and the procedure for making observations are determined and the distributions of work flows are calculated.FindingsIt is found that 72.7 per cent of working time in an general sewing room was spent for productive activities and 23.2 per cent for personal and unavoidable delay allowances.Practical implicationsWork sampling technique gives information about personal and delay allowances in a work flow of any sewing room. When the distributions of activites are determined, it is possible to find which activities are most responsible for low efficiency. For this purpose, standard operations time in a sewing room should be determined by time measurement studies and work flow should be organized.Originality/valueThis paper deals with an actual sewing room and gives general information about the distributions of activites in work flow which should be used for organization of any sewing room.

Electrospinning of polyurethane (PU) is widely used to fabricate breathable fabrics for applications in outdoor sportswear, and can be used to produce a highly porous structure, which is an essential property of a breathable fabric. To increase the breathability of the fabric, herein we describe the use of a metal mesh as the ground electrode in place of the conventional planar electrode during electrospinning. This electrode geometry results in an electric field that leads to the electrospun fibers being predominantly stacked over the metal wires of the mesh, with fewer fibers over the holes, resulting in larger pores in the membrane. The average pore size and thickness of the membrane were compared with those of a membrane fabricated using a conventional planar electrode. A quantitative analysis performed according to the Korean Industrial Standards (KS) indicated improved breathability.

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Polyurethane (PU) coating became popular in recent decades to achieve water resistance in clothing fabrics with enhanced visual properties. But reduced breathability of coated fabric is a setback for the clothing industry; therefore, there have been various attempts to achieve breathable water-resistant coatings. A new and facile method of enhancing breathability of PU-coated fabrics, which has been called micro-cracking, has been recently studied and highly encouraging outcomes have been obtained for the use of the process in industry. But when any process is considered to have industrial applications, it is essential to conduct not only the optimization but also modeling studies to find out whether the outputs are predictable; the process is controllable and allows us to see how the results are affected by process parameters. This work conducts a modeling study of micro-cracking processes of PU-coated samples to complete this evaluation. For this purpose, an artificial neural network (ANN) and a least square support vector model (LS-SVM) are developed for the prediction of various properties of PU-coated fabrics after micro-cracking. The results showed that the effects of micro-cracking process on various properties of coated fabric could be predicted through ANN or LS-SVM modeling; specifically, the ANN exhibited better performance in the test set of the data. Thus, it is concluded that the results and the measurements were found to be compatible for defining the process as an industrial alternative.

This work investigates the effect of various silicone based softener particle sizes on woven cotton fabric properties. Twilland plain-woven 100% cotton fabrics dyed with red and blue reactive dyes were used to observe how the softeners acted on different weave patterns and colors. Fabrics treated with macro-, micro-, and nano-emulsion softeners were assessed for softness, tensile strength, and colorfastness with respect to laundering, perspiration, and crocking. Macro-emulsion softeners gave softer cotton fabric than micro-and nano-softeners. Micro-emulsion softeners had the most favorable tensile properties. Micro-and nano-emulsion softeners imparted better washfastness and perspiration fastness. The effects of silicone softener particle size and fabric construction properties on the softness, fastness, and mechanical properties of the treated cotton fabric were studied.