What is Garments Inspection | Steps Involved in Garments Inspection

Last updated on June 24th, 2023 at 05:24 pm

Definition of Garments Inspection

The inspection that is done for controlling the quality of garments is mainly meant to examine in bare eyes. Checking of the fabrics of garments, sewing, button, thread, zipper, measurements of garments etc. with the standard process is called the inspection. In each section of a garments industry, there are arrangements for inspection. The main purpose of inspection is to identify the faults at the earliest possible steps for production of garments and earlier the defects will be detected lesser will be the wastage of time and money.

For conducting successful and meaningful inspection, steps can be adopted as per the ‘inspection loop’ described below. First, identify defects through inspection, inform about the defects to the concerned person, identify the causes of defects, and rectify them.

• Raw material
• In Process and
• Final

In garments industry, raw material means mainly the fabrics, but sewing thread, zipper or chain, interlining etc. also may be considered under the items of raw material.

Fabric Inspection

Just the moment for production of garments, fabric is required, which is the main element of garment. Local or foreign that means whatever be the country of origin of fabrics, the quality of fabrics should be well judged before purchasing of fabrics, because, if not so, both time and money may be wasted. Specially, due to the low grade fabrics, burden of irreparable loss may have to be borne. Some factories do inspection after reaching the fabrics at their factories. But it is wise to do the fabric inspection at sellers factory.

Sewing Thread Inspection

Frequent breaking of sewing threads during sewing of garment indirectly influences on the production of garments and its quality. It is necessary to mention here that in running condition of machine, the sewing threads run through the needles at a speed of 140 to 165 K.M per hour. The strength of thread may be decreased from 2 to 32% due to the friction of threads with the various parts of machines and fabrics. For this reason, before purchasing of sewing threads, the below mentioned characteristics of threads should be verified –

• Ticket number
• Sew ability

Chain (Zipper)

Chain or zipper is a special part of a garment, which if defective, the garment may be unfit for wearing. Need to be ensured beforehand about the below issues so that the defects related to the zippers should not arise.

• Dimension
• Stops
• Uniform color
• Puckering
• Slider
• Lock
• Arrow mark

The process of inspection of the various parts of a garment before joining is called in-process inspection. In garments industry, inspection is done in each section starting from spreading to finishing. The main objective of in-process inspection is to identify the defects in the primary stages of various sections and to adopt the necessary steps to rectify the defects. Because, the defects detected as earlier, its rectification cost will be lesser. In order to control the quality of garments, the measures that can be adopted in the steps of garments making, are discussed below in steps:

Marker Making

If mistakes or defects occurred in marker making, the quality of garments will be lower. So all the matters involved in marker making, should be inspected properly. As for example, need to examine whether the labeling or code numbers have been placed properly in each of the patterns drawn in the marker.

Fabric Spreading

The defects during spreading of the fabrics, for which the quality of garments may be lower, should be taken care at the time of spreading of fabrics. As for example, during spreading, fabric should be spread as per the length and width of the marker and the edges of fabric both in the directions of length and in width have to be aligned. Otherwise, the wastage of the fabric will increase.

Fabric Cutting

The most important precondition for making of high quality garments is the cutting of fabrics in high quality. So the factors related to fabric cutting, should be inspected carefully. As for example, whether the dimension of the patterns and the cut fabrics are exactly same or not should be inspected.

Fabric Sewing

In garments manufacturing industries, the most specious and the most important section is the fabric sewing section. The jobs of each sewing machine operator of this section should be regularly inspected, and specially, it is to be specified that up to what level of faults in each job is acceptable, and always arrangements should be made for identifying the defects through inspection, and to adopt measures for rectifications, and to control the defects.

Pressing or Finishing

The main objective of pressing or finishing is to make arrangement so that garments look good, because, in most of the cases a customer takes the buying decision of the garment based on whether it looks good or not though buying of a garment also depends on its price, quality, standard etc. For this reason, pressing or finishing is very much important.

Final Inspection

In the final inspection, mainly the whole inspection of garments is done, because, before this stage, there is no opportunity to do inspection of a complete garment. This final inspection is very much important from the buyers end. In this final inspection, mainly the size of the garments, form fitting, and the defects of the garments are inspected.