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Productivity and industrial engineering

PMTS, SAM and Line Balancing: Building One Technical Basis

A consistent technical basis helps costing, planning and production work from the same definition of garment work content.

8 min readArjun M
Navvi PMTS style library showing structured garment engineering records

Work measurement affects more than the production target

Predetermined Motion Time Systems (PMTS) help industrial engineers establish Standard Allowed Minutes (SAM) from a defined work method. These values influence costing, capacity, manpower, target setting, performance review and incentive discussions. Inconsistent values therefore create disagreement across several management systems.

Start with the operation definition

Work measurement cannot correct an unclear operation sequence. The garment, method, machine, quality requirement and handling conditions need to be understood before the time value is applied.

Create an approval system

A technical standard becomes useful when the factory controls how it is created and changed.

  • Defined method and responsibility
  • Version and style control
  • Clear allowance policy
  • Review of unusual values
  • Approval before use in downstream planning

Use the value to plan the line

The operation breakdown and work content provide a technical starting point for manpower and balance. Actual deployment must also consider skill, learning, machine constraints, feeding and production conditions.

Compare standard and actual for the right reason

A performance gap should lead to investigation, not automatic blame. The team should check method adherence, work supply, quality, downtime and whether the approved conditions were present.

Technology supports consistency

Navvi PMTS helps industrial engineers prepare and reuse structured work-measurement outputs. Its value depends on the engineering rules, competence and factory review process established around it.

Start with clarity

Move from a management question to a factory-specific action plan.

Begin with a focused conversation or apply for a free factory profit leakage assessment.