Author's : Mannan Saeed & Saleem Ahmad
Introduction
Kohinoor is a textile mill which was
established in1958 at Rawalpindi. Initially two departments
were available to be worked on which
were spinning and weaving but later on the firm expanded
and added dyeing ,printing and stitching
departments to its manufacturing process. Kohinoor is
well known mill for its best clothes,fabrics ,bedsheets,hosiery , men’s and women’s wear like
formal shirts , T shirts etc .Kohinoor
mills are situated in GujarKhan and
Lahore. Kohinoor is
an export oriented company of
Pakistan who mostly export most of its products Asia, Europe
,USA and Australia. Here in Pakistan
they have a shop known as fair price shop near Peshawar
road Rawalpindi where they sell
those products which are not suitable to be exported or else
known as faulty items ,overall
considering the local market and the low prices for high quality
formal shirts etc they are favored
by most of the customers. Kohinoor overall having its own
production unit and having a large
market has got no brand recognition itself. Kohinoor works
as a material provider to many
companies international such as Levis ,
GAP , Columbia Sports,
JC Penny ,Ann Taylor etc and in
local its customers are Nishat besides
having its own mill they
prefer to contact Kohinoor to
fulfill their order for their customers. The problem is Kohinoor
doesn’t want to get itself known as
a brand rather as a manufacturing company for many of the
other companies , If Kohinoor makes
its own brand then they fear of losing their sales and profit
as they would then be no longer
taking the order for Nishat and others as it would then be busy in
creating their own brand .Secondly
they don’t have any process , capacity and other financial
arrangements to start their own
brand. According to our study they want to work
like the
workers in Sialkot making footballs
and at the end brand gets to be recognized is the Nike.
Ten Management Decisions
} Goods and service design: what is required operations of each of
other OM decisions
} Quality: determine the customer’s quality
expectation
} Process and capacity design: determine the process of production
} Location strategy: judgements regarding nearness to customers and
suppliers regarding cost factor
} Layout strategy: required integrating capacity needs,
personal levels and inventory requirement
} Human resource management: determine how to recruit, motivate and recruit
personnel
} Supply chain management: decide how to integrate supply chain into the firm strategy
} Inventory management: considers inventory holding and ordering decisions
} Scheduling: determine
and implement short term schedule that meet customers satisfaction.
} Maintenance: requires decisions that consider facility capacity, production
demand and maintain a stable process .
10 Decisions
implemented in Kohinoor Mills
1.
Goods & Service Design
GujarKhan and Rawalpindi are the only two cities of Pakistan where the
spinning cells of
Kohinoor are situated. According to Mr Naveed the Yarn Marketing Manager
he said that
Kohinoor has conditioned itself to take long term orders like taking 3
months order in
advance . Their total production for yarn constitutes for 28,800,000 Lbs
per annum .
There are five units of spindles with a total of 85,500 spindles which
helps to spin thread
on a pin are situated at Rawalpindi, four units of a total of 65,500
spindles are situated at
GujarKhan which makes a total of nine units of 151,000 spindles .The
Thickness of yarn
(dhaga) depends upon the type of
yarn which one is going to use to make the fabric .
There are three types of yarn :-
1.
Course Count which contains 6 singles to 40 singles
of yarn
2.
Medium Count
which contains 40 singles to 60
singles of yarn
3.
Fine Count
which contains 60 singles to 100 singles of yarn
These three counts are the thickness
of the yarn .Some of the cotton types
are Pak cotton , Indian
cotton, American cotton, Egyptian
cotton and Russian cotton .People say that what’s the
difference between the Pak cotton or
Indian cotton because they are just different because of the
country otherwise geographically
these two countries are the same .The answer to that question
would be that the Pak cotton differs
because of its flexibility which is not found in Indian cotton .
Pak cotton is favorable in
making hosiery products like
undergarments, sweaters etc .For
maintaining the quality there has
been several house labs installed in the mill to ensure that there
is no compromise on the quality or
the product that leaves the Kohinoor Mills textile Limited.
2.
Managing Quality
All divisions
of the Kohinoor Textile Mills are ISO 9001-2000 certified. Customers are
also involved
in the process by asking them for their
feedback via various online surveys
conducted by
the Mills authority and sometimes university students are also provided
with the tasks
to evaluate the mill performance from the customer viewpoint .Kohinoor
mill has yearly
audit conducted by an international company
UK based known as LRQA
(LLOYD’S
Register Quality Assurance ).Other than that
the Mill has their own local
body which
conducts its survey in the mill twice or thrice an year. Kohinoor Mills
measure its
quality by four stages :
1.Blow Room
Testing : In this test the raw cotton
which comes from mostly Okara,
Multan and
other parts of the Pakistan is blown into bits by bits to remove any debrie or
dust particles.
2.Drying
Section : The cotton is then dried in order to remove any humidity or wetness
so
that to produce
the desired quality yarn.
3.Carding Department : Reblowing the
cotton to make sure the unwanted particles or
removed for sure.
4.Simplex : Making the fine thread
for the clothes.
3.
Process and Capacity
} Four main production processes
•
Spinning :
It is the process for making yarn from textile fibers on spinning machines like
ring spinning
machines ,air jet spinning machines etc
.Kohinoor Mills use air jet
spinning
machines. Types of yarn which are processed are cotton yarn and blended yarn.
•
Weaving: The weaving process consists of five basic operations,
shedding, picking,
beating-up,
left off and take upShedding: Separating the warp yarns into two
layers by
lifting
and lowering the shafts, to form a tunnel known as the ‘shed’. : Passing the weft
yarn
(pick) across the warp threads through the shed. Beating-up: Pushing the newly
inserted
weft yarn back into the fell using the reed. Let
off: The warp yarns are
unwound
from the warp beam during the above three processes.
Take
up: The woven fabric is wound on the cloth beam during the above three
processes..
( Lycra,
Nylon, Polyester filament/fibre, Tencel, Linen, Bamboo, Modal, Viscose, Wool,
Polypropylene,
Acrylic, Soyabean and Silk etc)
•
Dyeing and printing :
it’s a type of process in which the fabric is colored.In dyeing
initially one
color is produced but in printing process various types of colors are
produced.Dyeing
is done on grey fabric whereas printing can be done on grey and
colored fabric.In
dyeing color is applied on the both side of the fabric where as in
printing only
one side of fabric is colored.(Anti-Bacterial, Easy Care, Scotch Guard,
Water Repellent
and Fire retardant finishes)
•
Stitching:It is the sewing of the fabrics and furs
etc with the help of a needle and a thread.
•
(Bed linen, Down
proof fabric, Curtains, Decorative fabrics, Shower curtains)
4.
Location Strategy
The
four processing units are established at
Lahore and Rawalpindi.Spinning ,
processing and made ups are done Rawalpindi mill where
as weaving is only done at
Lahore.
Rawalpindi location is strategic its because the mill is situated near the
border of
Rawalpindi
and Islamabad so its easy for the mill to be easily contacted by its customers
by
both of the twin cities and so as it is easy for the Kohinoor mills to contact
some of its
suppliers
because of the industrial area being situated in Islamabad especially the I-9
sector
of Islamabad .It also helps the Mill to access the airports for export purposes
where
as
the Rawalpindi has a wide range of area which is why the three processing units of the
Kohinoor
mills are situated at Rawalpindi , there is also a motorway near by which helps
the
two cities mills to be inter connected like Lahore and Rawalpindi.
5.
Layout Strategy
It constitutes as the efficient inventory system which is why they have an
efficient use of
software known as Oracle which is
widely used in the mills. The efficient
monitoring of the
inventory makes sure that the
customer gets its order delivered on time and they are able to get
their raw materials on time to do
so. Not only that the mill makes sure that they only take those
orders for which they have the
capacity to do so like if Nishat says
that they need to have want
to use Kohinoor Mills dyeing and
printing section for the coloration of its fabrics of 500,000
units in a month then the mill owner
should need to check that their fabric coloring machine is
coloring properly and they do have
the storage room to store the raw materials provided by the
Nishat.
6.
Human Resource Management
According
to Kohinoor their most valuable resource
is their people .Not only this there
is no
discrimination of anything including gender ,cast or color as it was seen in
our visit
to the mill
women were seen working side by side in the stitching department. Not only
this they take
a great care of their employees such as the Kohinoor employees have been
provided with a
free housing society so that they don’t have to worry about renting any
house or
building a new one. Not only that but during the tough energy crisis in
Pakistan
where
electricity shortage is been experienced ,Kohinoor has their own power plant
which helps to
perform their own processes efficiently without experiencing any
electricity
shortages .People living in the housing societies have been provided with
special
benefits of free electricity for up to a
limit like they only are to pay RS 210 a
month .For gas
it is also absolutely free but now they are thinking of installing meters and
start to charge
their valuable resource a little bit .In Lahore Kohinoor Mills each day all
of its
employees are fed with free lunch which
helps them to motivate where as they are
provided with
to holidays a week whereas in Rawalpindi only one day a week holiday is
given. There is
a school near by the society which provides education to the employees
children at a
low price. For medical there is a clinic in the mill which provides free
medical check
ups to the employees not only that all of the employees are entitled to be
treated under
medical insurance at civil servant hospital for any of the harmful diseases
such as cancer
etc. Early on there were parties held every month for the employees to
release their
work tension not only that there is a cricket ground too build in the society
where various
teams of the Kohinoor mills used to compete against each other but now it
has ended due
to the changing of the management. There
are fire place grounds , state of
the art safety
equipment's such as sirens, water sprinklers , water cylinders etc. to tackle
any unhappy
situation.
7.
Supply Chain Management
Kohinoor
as already mention mostly takes long term orders after calculating and
analyzing it
it fulfills the order and make sure
the mill runs at its full capacity and deliver the promise quality.
Required raw material are analyzed
for cost and quality through the testing phases like if the raw
material ordered by the Kohinoor is
not fit to the quality or has some faults then the Kohinoor
management immediately contacts that
supplier and inform him about this query and then the
further action is taken. Types of
yarn are Pak cotton with least thick yarn known as course count
which is used to make flexible
clothes like sweaters ,under garments
etc . Medium count which
is a mixture of Pak, USA, Russian
,Egyptian cotton then there is a fine
cotton which includes
USA , Russian , Indian and Egyptian cotton . Then there is super
fine cotton which includes
American and Egyptian cotton which helps in making export
quality formal shirts.
8.
Inventory Management
Kohinoor
inventory mostly depends upon looking at the demands and taking long term
orders. The total production of Yarn
is 28,800,000 LBS per annum. Due to the usage of the
software known as Oracle the inventory
managed perfectly with the proper procedures to take
note on the total capacity of the
mill and the capacity free enough to use .How much time would
it take to complete the order ant to
start an another one.
9.
Scheduling
First with the
efficient employees training and usage
of heavy equipment like air jet
looms and also
with the usage of the software Oracle Kohinoor has make sure to deliver
its product on
time maintaining the quality as promised to the customers which is why
many
international companies and local companies who besides having their own mills
and production
units prefer to Kohinoor Mills to make their orders. For only this reason
the employees
of the Rawalpindi Kohinoor Mills are entitled to serve their Saturday at
the Mill sometimes to meet the require demand and to
tackle the seasonal demand
winter cloth
collection , Christmas collection etc.
10.
Maintenance
To ensure high
quality sophisticated house labs have been installed to make sure to check
the materials
especially the arrived raw material or the material send from the supplier or
the customer
through which the final product or cloth has to be made. Each year an audit
is done by an
international company known as LRQA (Lloyd's Register Quality
Assurance ) not
only this some local audits are also done within years to eliminate any in
efficiency ,
corruption or any other gap which is lowering the company performance or
moral.
