Track: Modeling and Simulation

Abstract

The Ready-Made Garments (RMG) Industries are the major contributors to the export-oriented economy of Bangladesh. In the current competitive market, efficient production planning has become a key strategy to meet buyers’ timeline and ensure timely shipment of the finished goods. Several issues or factors cause major deviation of the actual production from the planned production. This research has explored the major factors that affect the efficient production planning, by causing major deviation of the actual production from the planned schedule, in the RMG industries of Bangladesh, by using a Multi Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) tool. In this paper, first, the factors affecting the efficient production planning has been identified through expert feedbacks and literature review. Then, a Decision-Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) method has been utilized to find out the priority ranking of the identified factors and to explore the interrelationships among the factors through a casual diagram. From the results obtained from this study, ‘low productivity’ has been identified as the most critical of all factors, while ‘fabric delay’ has been identified as the least critical one. The research findings are expected to help the managers of the RMG and other similar industries to enhance the efficiency of their production plan in order to improve their overall profitability.