The Plant Exterior

Located in the outskirts of Lahore at Raiwind Industrial Area, the sister concerns’ US Denim & US Apparel Plant Facilities were constructed in 2005 and are extremely well-maintained, above traditional industry standards. The grounds are large and aesthetically designed so that each factory building is surrounded by greenery. This makes sense as in case of future expansion, the new buildings can be constructed on the parklands.

The car park is situated right at the entrance and although plant workers do not park vehicles there, this is more because of the fact that they are all availing transportation facilities provided by the company rather than because they are not allowed to park in the area. However, other non-management staffs such as executives in administration, and marketing etc. do park their cars in this vicinity.

What we found impressive about the plant is that the buildings and grounds are well-labelled – each building has been named, warning signs are posted from place to place and there is a gathering point in case of emergency.

Manufacturing

US Denim makes different kinds of denim fabric while US Apparrel makes denim stiched denim clothing, both of which change depending upon customer requirements. Owing to this variability in fulfilling customer demands, the fabric is manufactured and/or stitched in customer-wise batches, whereby the production process is started separately for each customer.

The layout of the plant floor at US Denim has been designed to take maximum advantage of the batch processing such that the output of one process is the input of the next. The entrance of floor is where the finished goods inventory is placed ready for shipment. Then comes the raw material of balls of yarn in the form of ropes of thread which goes through warping. Immediately thereafter, warped ropes from the creels are dyed