Tailored for Efficiency

Five years ago, sewing contractors Gary and Esther Dunbar considered moving their Montebello factory to Mexico.

Stagnant sales, shrinking profit margins and a flood of cheap imports had the couple preparing to join the exodus of U.S. apparel firms headed for the border.

Then came the hard part. Telling G.S. Dunbar’s 200 workers that their jobs were moving south.

“Some have been with us 25 years, and I worried about what would happen to them,” Gary said. “We decided to stay, but we knew we had to change.”

Today, a state-of-the-art assembly line speeds garments around the Montebello factory, where employees are churning out uniforms and women’s wear more efficiently than ever. It’s a half-million-dollar investment by the Dunbars, who are betting their survival on new computers as much as on their trusty sewing machines.

G.S. Dunbar is part of a modest but growing cadre of Southern California sewing contractors and apparel manufacturers using sophisticated technology to battle low-wage foreign competitors. In an industry that’s synonymous with low-tech sweatshops, smart manufacturing is the future for domestic producers looking to scale the wage gap with superior quality and lightning-fast turnaround.

“The companies that will survive are those that reinvent their businesses,” said Paul Miner, manufacturing manager for the Apparel Technology and Research Center at Cal Poly Pomona. “That means new technology or updating their manufacturing methods to stay competitive.”

Few industries in the United States have felt the impact of global competition more than America’s textile and apparel makers. Industry employment has been tumbling for nearly 25 years, from 2.4 million workers in 1973 to 1.5 million in 1996, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That 39% decline compares with just an 8% drop among all manufacturing workers over the same period.

Los Angeles, in contrast, has proved a welcome aberration. Apparel production jobs in Los Angeles County have risen nearly 20% since 1990 to 114,900 in 1997, according to the Economic Development Corp. of Los Angeles.

Industry watchers attribute Los Angeles’ vigor to the unique niche it has found producing up-to-the-minute fashions for women and juniors.

Retailers are constantly pushing for shorter lead times on seasonal merchandise and clamoring for faster reorders of hot-selling items. The region’s scrappy contractors and small manufacturers have responded with snappy turnaround on short production runs that can’t be filled quickly overseas, according to Joe Rodriguez, executive director of the Garment Contractors Assn. of Southern California.

“We’re small, we’re flexible, we turn on a dime and we take the crud work that nobody else wants,” Rodriguez said. “That’s the reason we exist.”

But observers say Southern California’s resilient industry is at a crossroads, its future jeopardized by slow adoption of smart production methods that are being embraced even in developing countries. While computerization is commonplace in the design and pre-production functions, changes have been slower to trickle down to the shop floor, where the needle hits the fabric.

Part of it is the very nature of the work. In contrast to the heavily automated textile plants of the Southeast, which produce huge volumes of uniform fabrics, the Los Angeles area’s apparel and textile industry is constantly shifting among different styles and materials.

“They crank it out in three weeks and never see it again,” said Sharon Tate, dean of academic affairs for Los Angeles Trade Technical College, which operates one of the state’s largest apparel design and production training programs. “It’s tough to get economies of scale” that would justify new equipment.

Another factor is the Southland’s seemingly endless supply of cheap immigrant labor. A 1995 study of the apparel industry by Southern California Edison concluded that many local companies continue to rely on slow wage growth to reap productivity gains rather than invest in new technology or worker retraining--a race domestic producers can’t possibly win in the long run.

The Southland’s approximately 4,000 sewing contractors are particularly hard-pressed to change. Undercut by illegal shops and squeezed by manufacturers for ever-lower prices, most are reluctant to commit to a huge capital investment when they don’t know where their next contract is coming from.

“Many of them are worried about meeting payroll, let alone investing in training and technology,” said Linda Wong, work force development director for the Community Development Technologies Center, which is working to strengthen the local industry.

The combined effects of the North American Free Trade Agreement, a rising U.S. minimum wage and a fierce determination to keep alive a business they founded in 1967 finally persuaded the Dunbars to act. Today the G.S. Dunbar factory floor brings the past and future of garment making into dramatic contrast.

Sewing-machine operators in one half of the factory sit in uniform rows facing the front like students in a schoolroom. Mounds of fabric stacked around them, these workers assemble clothing through a traditional process known as “progressive bundling.”

This decades-old system is named for stacks, or “bundles,” of precut fabric containing the pieces necessary to assemble between 10 and 20 garments. A worker opens one of these bundles, performs a single task such as sewing a zipper on each unit in the pile, then reties the bundle and passes it along to the next worker, who sews another component. The pattern is repeated until finished garments emerge.

But there’s not a bundle in sight on the other side of the shop floor, where an overhead conveyor whisks garment pieces to sewing operators, who quickly stitch a collar or a pocket before the machine shoots the clothing down the line. This computerized mover, manufactured by Connecticut-based Gerber Garment Technology Inc., is called a “unit production system,” since garments are manufactured one unit at a time rather than as part of a series or bundle.

The visual contrast is nothing compared with the efficiencies the Dunbars say they’ve gained with the new system. The work force has been pared slightly, to 165, and labor costs have been further reduced because employees spend more time sewing and less time handling bundles.

Quality is up and computerized work flow is smoother and more predictable. Last year G.S. Dunbar posted $3 million in sales. Now the company is gearing up to triple the size of its automated assembly line. Still, the industry veterans warn that this investment won’t pay off for every small shop.

“You have to be totally committed to retraining your people and changing your whole operation,” Esther Dunbar said. “It’s a big risk with no guarantees.”

Investing in technology was a risk that Brian Kennedy couldn’t afford not to make at Cali-Fame of Los Angeles Inc., a Boyle Heights maker of golf caps and other sports head wear. Undercut by foreign competitors paying workers pennies an hour, the family-owned company, founded in 1925, needed a quantum leap in productivity if it hoped to survive another 70-plus years.

The production manager pushed his family to invest in a computerized production system, not only to cut labor costs but also to get a handle on where orders are at any given time. That tight control has enabled Cali-Fame to slash turnaround to as little as three weeks, down from 12 to 16 weeks under the old system. Such progress has given the company a leg up in its market niche supplying custom head wear for country clubs and corporate outings.

The $300,000 system paid for itself in just a couple of years, Kennedy said, though the cost has been steep for workers. Three years ago Cali-Fame employed 250 workers. Today that figure is just 150, but Kennedy is unapologetic about the downsizing.

“Everybody in this business is facing the same thing,” he said. “If you don’t change, you’re not going to be around to employ anybody.”

Industry experts say small producers don’t necessarily have to spend hundreds of thousands to boost efficiency.

At the apparel research center at Cal Poly Pomona, Miner is preaching the gospel of “modular” or “team-based” manufacturing. Developed in Japan, this system has more to do with retraining workers and reorganizing work flow on the shop floor than investing big bucks on technology.

The basic premise of modular manufacturing, Miner explains, is grouping sewing operators into teams of eight to 10, who work together on a garment from start to finish. Each member is trained to perform multiple jobs, pitching in where necessary to prevent bottlenecks in their mini-assembly line.

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That might not sound revolutionary, but it’s a major departure from progressive bundling, in which stationary operators perform a single task over and over, concentrating only on their individual output.

Miner contends that modular manufacturing results in higher quality and calls it ideal for the quick-turnaround, low-volume production runs that are the bread and butter of the local industry. He says the system has attracted a fair amount of interest from local apparel makers, but few converts so far.

“Progressive bundling is how contractors have worked for the last 30 to 40 years,” he said. “Unfortunately, doing it the old way because that’s how it always has been done isn’t going to cut it.”

Pete Butenhoff, president of Textile/Clothing Technology Corp., an apparel research institute based in Cary, N.C., estimates that one-third of the productive capacity in America’s apparel industry has made the switch to either unit production or modular manufacturing.

“That doesn’t sound like a lot until you realize that seven or eight years ago nobody had even heard of team-based manufacturing,” he said.

Butenhoff predicts that the next big opportunity for America’s garment makers will be in “made-to-measure” clothing. Long the province of the wealthy, custom garments are already being produced affordably at apparel factories such as Oxnard-based Workrite, thanks to cutting-edge technology.

Facing the same competitive pressures as other apparel manufacturers, the maker of protective industrial clothing and flame-resistant uniforms decided three years ago to invest heavily in new equipment. Today, every phase of the company’s operation has been upgraded--from computerized design and robotic cutting to automated inventory tracking.

Those tools have significantly lowered Workrite’s cost to make custom-fit uniforms, a small but important part of the company’s business, according to President Kenneth Wenzel. At a time when competitors are sending more of their production offshore, Wenzel says his firm has increased its market share by concentrating on making uniforms quicker and better than foreign manufacturers.

He credits technology with giving him the edge and believes that other Southland apparel makers will have to make that decision sooner rather than later.

“Our business isn’t different from any other,” Wenzel said. “You either choose to make the investment or get out of the business.”