Factory Photos & Exhibits: Chinese & Indian Textile Industry

1. Chinese and Indian factory photosThis pack contains three parts:1) An extended set of exhibits from the paper 2) Some additional photos from Indian textile factories, from visits I made to Tarapur (near Mumbai) in August 20103) Some additional photos from Chinese textile factories from visits I made to Shengzezhen (near Shanghai) in August 2010 You are welcome to use any photos that might be helpful for research, presentations, teaching etcNick Bloom, Stanford University, August 2010nbloom@stanford.edu

2. Extended exhibitsAdditional Indian photosAdditional Chinese photos

3. Exhibit 1: Factories are large compounds containing several buildings. Factory surrounded by extensive grounds A group of three buildings within a factory compound Factory offices (left) and goods loading bay (right) Factory entrance with gates and a guard post

4. Exhibit 2: These factories operate 24 hours a day for 7 days a week producing fabric from yarn, with 4 main stages of production (1) Winding the yarn thread onto the warp beam (2) Drawing the warp beam ready for weaving (3) Weaving the fabric on the weaving loom (4) Quality checking and repair

5. Exhibit 3: Many parts of these factories were dirty and unsafe Garbage outside the factory Garbage inside a factory Flammable garbage in a factory Chemicals without any covering

6. Exhibit 4: The factory floors were disorganized Fire extinguisher 3 years past its service date Instrument not removed after use, blocking hallway. Old warp beam, chairs and a desk obstructing the factory floor Dirty and poorly maintained machines Tools left on the floor after use

7. Exhibit 5: The inventory rooms had months of excess yarn, often without any formal storage system or protection from damp Yarn without labeling, order or damp protection Yarn piled up so high and deep that access to back sacks is almost impossible Different types and colors of yarn lying mixed

8. Exhibit 6: The parts stores were also disorganized and dirty Spares without any labeling or order No protection to prevent damage and rust Spares without any labeling or order Shelves overfilled and disorganized

9. Exhibit 7: The path for materials flow was often obstructed Unfinished rough path along which 6 heavy warp beams were taken on wheeled trolleys every day to the elevator, which led down to the looms.This steep slope, rough surface and sharp angle meant workers often lost control of the trolleys. They crashed into the girder or wall, eventually breaking the trolleys. So now each beam is carried by 6 men. A broken trolley (the wheel snapped off) At another factory both warp beam elevators had broken down due to poor maintenance. As a result teams of 7 men carried several warps beams down the stairs every day. This was slow and dangerous, with two serious accidents in our time at the factory.

10. Exhibit 8: Routine maintenance was usually not carried out, with repairs only undertaken when breakdowns arose, leading to frequent stoppages. Warp beam being unloaded off a broken loom Parts being cleaned and replaced on jammed loom Workers investigating a broken loom Loom parts being disassembled for diagnosis

11. Exhibit 9: Quality was so poor that about 20% of manpower was spent on repairing defects at the end of the production process Large room full of repair workers (the day shift) Workers spread cloth over lighted plates to spot defects Defects are repaired by hand or cut out from cloth Non-fixable defects lead to discounts of up to 75% 11

12. Extended exhibitsAdditional Indian photosAdditional Chinese photos

13. The weaving looms are typically bough second hand from Europe & US USA Italy Germany UK

14. Producing cloth involves first getting the warp yarn aligned and then weaving the weft yarn at right angles Before weaving there is warp yarn only (threads in just one direction) After weaving (adding the weft yarn) there are threads in two directions, hence the check pattern

15. Typical Indian factory scene – somewhat chaotic but working

16. Better organized factories have areas demarked with lines, and trolley equipment round only in these areas

17. Offices have some basic computer equipment (this was one of the most high tech firms, most have two or three PCs which are about 5 years old)

18. The ERP operator in one of the firms who had been kindly providing us with the weekly performance data

19. Almost all the non-management labor in Tarapur (near Mumbai) were migrants from the North West (Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Orissa etc).

20. Factory workers usually share rooms in town or live in make-shift accommodation

21. Typical scenes near factories in Tarapur. By 2010 in Mumbai you never see any green space (or factories) as land is too expensive

22. More typical scenes near the factory

23. Typical view from the factory window (a chemical factory)

24. You also notice an amazing amount of stuff on the streets – here some concrete pipes are either abandoned or awaiting sale

25. Advert near a factory - for some reason there is no economics being offered – how will they learn about clustered standard errors and RBCs?

26. Weavers walk or cycle to work

27. Signs like this in the factory are very standard – when banks make loans they use the buildings and equipment as collateral, and check monthly

28. Some of the equipment is old – this is a 30 year old warping loom

29. Workers constructing an effluent treatment plant (to reduce pollution from dyeing chemicals). Apparently required for exporting to Europe.

30. Fabric dyeing vats (fabric in put inside with dyes, heated and stirred)

31. Firms made fabric for shirts, suits and furnishing (shown here). This is then used as an input by the apparel and furnishings industry .

32. Jacquard looms (more advanced, requiring double height ceilings)

33. Plant managers office – pretty basic and very noisy (70 weaving looms are behind the camera)

34. Some factories have been buying new hi-tech equipment – this is a horizontal embroidery machine (the design is shown on the LCD).

35. A warp beam on a trolley. Warp beams contain yarn woven in one direction (the warp) and to make fabric need yarn woven in the other direction (the weft). There are hundreds of these beams in typical factory.

36. The team arriving at one of the factories

37. Finally, firms often have problems with unions so resort to some quite extreme hiring practices to avoid this Photo courtesy of Kevin Boudreau from a metal forging firm

38. Extended exhibitsAdditional Indian photosAdditional Chinese photos

39. Chinese factories were more modern buildings with notably more cars (and almost no bicycles) When I visited China in 1992 there were bikes everywhere just like India, now almost completely gone

40. Factories are large, spacious and well laid out – in fact look generally cleaner than even US and UK factories I’ve seen

41. Chinese Factories also had much less manpower – typically one worker per 10 looms (one per four looms in India)

42. The looms were all purchased new – in this case from Toyota

43. Chinese factories had better worker facilities (worker coolers, worker canteens etc.) although like India the workers were there 7 days a week for 8 to 12 hours each

44. A Chinese worker checking quality on the loom – a basic piece of Lean manufacturing (check quality before the end)

45. Another Chinese worker checking quality on the loom – this time for a cotton loom (the picture before is for polyester)

46. Chinese factories had about 70% women. In India women only worked in checking and repair (more dexterous work) All employees I saw were young (less than 30 I would guess) so there is clearly a demographic question here about where are the older workers (not in factories) and what happens when these workers age?

47. A warp sizing machine (wraps the yarn around warp beams plus starches it to increase yarn strength)

48. So much cotton dust in some corners of the factory that it looks like it’s snowing

49. This is despite the air filters and cleaning that occurs

50. Textile mills tend to cluster – this was across the road for the factory we visited in Shengzezhen (near Shanghai)