The government will begin inspecting non-garment factories to ensure compliance and strengthen workplace safety for workers. “The Tampaco fire is another big lesson for us,” Syed Ahmed, inspector general of the Department of Inspection for Factories and Establishments or DIFE, told The Daily Star by phone yesterday. “We will start inspecting the non-RMG factories to ensure workplace safety for workers. ”The DIFE that was created after the Rana Plaza collapse is responsible for ensuring workplace safety and compliance in the factories.Both the labour and employment minister and the secretary agreed to open inspections into the non-RMG factories, mirroring the effortthat are ongoing to upgrade fire, electrical and structural safety in garment factories, Ahmed said. However, Ahmed could not immediately say when the inspections will start. “We will prepare a project proposal and submit it to the government and other donor agencies so that the inspections can begin as soon as possible. ”Since the Rana Plaza collapse in 2013, Accord and Alliance, two foreign inspection agencies, have been inspecting 2,000 garment factories to fix the fire, electrical and structural flaws. Another 2,000 garment factories, which are not members of the Accord and the Alliance, are being inspected under a government initiative in collaboration with the International Labour Organisation. The non-garment factories were not in focus as everybody was busy with safety in the garment factories after the Rana Plaza incident killed 1,138 workers, he said.He could not mention the number of the factories, which are labour intensive, after the garment sector. Primarily, it might be difficult to manage the fund as foreign agencies such as the Accord and the Alliance may not come into the non-garment sector, he added. The government will bankroll the inspections and it takes more than $7,000 to carry out a complete preliminary inspection on a garment factory, he said. Ahmed said the inspection of structures and boilers is mandatory as the majority of the non-RMG factories are old and require immediate inspection. On the compensation for the people affected by the Tampaco blaze, Ahmed said the labour ministry has already declared a compensation of Tk 200,000 for the families of each dead worker. We will provide the fund to the victims from the recently formed Worker Welfare Fund. The victims may get more money after the completion of the assessment.”Ministry officials and doctors are preparing a list of the workers who died or were injured to give compensation, Ahmed said.

The optimisation of fabric usage is something that a seasoned readymade garments (RMG) entrepreneur wants to attain all the time. And intelligent software can provide this optimisation solution, saving up to 10 per cent of material costs in the process. Banking on this idea, Threadsol, one of the most successful Indian tech start-ups, has successfully implemented and marketed its RMG material and production planning software across the world in just four years after it was founded in 2012. With a presence across 12 countries including Bangladesh, the Singapore-headquartered company is now eying to take the country’s RMG sector—the biggest export earner of the country—to a whole new level. During a recent visit to Bangladesh, Threadsol co-founders Manasij Ganguli and Mausmi Ambastha told The Independent that integrating technologies with the RMG sector was the new future.

The motivations

Mausmi Ambastha, who is the chief operational officer (COO) of Threadsol, is in a perfect position to blend technologies with textile and RMG industries. Being a student of computer science and a professional practitioner in the Indian textile and garments industry for eight years, she had the idea of bridging both worlds. “Use of technology is an omnipresent thing these days. I was surprised to find that a large industry like RMG has not been using technologies to make things easier and optimise the process,” she said. Observing the industry, she realised that there was a dire need for advanced and practical software that could optimise usage of fabric. Thus was born the idea of intelloCut—the flagship intelligent software of Threadsol. Mausmi Ambastha, along with her husband Manasij Ganguli, a software engineer with over 15 years of industry experience, and three other friends—Madhumita Phukan, Abhishek Srivastava and Bratish Goswami (all from tech industries)—decided to implement the idea of creating RMG material and production planning software. Ganguli, who is the CEO of Threadsol, had his own reason to venture out in this unexplored avenue of designing RMG software. After having worked in big multinational software companies like TCS, CSC, Impetus Technologies, and RS Software for more than 10 years, he joined Terracotta, a tech start-up based in San Francisco, USA. He was one of the early members of the start-up and witnessed the company grow from a bunch of tech nerds to a full-blown organisation with 30 employees. Later, it was sold for USD 90 million. “After experiencing those exciting times in the start-up sector, it was really hard for me to go back to the rut of an MNC. The dynamics and energy of start-ups are addictive. So I was thinking about launching a start-up of my own,” said Manasij Ganguli.

Tech tonic

Ambastha said fabric is the most important raw material and accounts for 70–80 per cent of the cost of garment production in the apparel industry. “By saving fabric, labour and time in an efficient and smart way, the input-output ratio can be enhanced and profits can be maximised,” she said. With this idea, the Threadsol team designed and developed its flagship product—intelloCut—which is intelligent material planning and optimisation software. Throwing light on the product, Ganguli said it measures, predicts and optimises material utilisation and productivity for the sewn products industry (apparel, footwear, automotive, home furnishing, technical textiles, etc.). “This software estimates the fabric requirements accurately and lets you buy exactly what you need. So there is zero wastage. It also generates the most suitable and optimized cut plan from millions of possible combinations.” Ganguli said the software also groups fabrics with similar width, shade and shrinkage in order to ensure high standards of quality and increased profitability. “And most importantly, it gives you complete control over your factory’s practices by getting real time status and complete tracking,” he added. After developing the software, it was first deployed at Madura Garments (Aditya Birla Group and makers of the apparel brands Van Huesen, Allen Solly, Peter England, Louis Philippe, ByFord, etc.), where intelloCut saved approximately USD 1 million a year during the trial run in May 2013. After the initial success of intelloCut, Threadsol was able to raise USD 200,000 from a consortium of early stage and angel investors, led by Blume Ventures and including Google India head Rajan Anandan. That investment aided them to expand. Later, Threadsol conceptualised and developed intelloBuy, which is intelligent material buying prediction software. It predicts the width and shrinkage of the fabric before it comes in house to estimate buying consumptions by tracking a vendor’s past records. Ganguli said they are now in beta testing stage of their third product intelloTrace, which is the world’s first NFC-based production management system. It will help manufacturers track every inch of fabric right from the store to finishing and shipment. “We have also developed support applications like intelloGreen—a smart tablet application that replaces on-floor lay slips currently used in the apparel cutting floor, rendering their industry paperless and green.”

Threadsol in Bangladesh

ThreadSol entered the Bangladesh garments market in 2014. In less than two years, the country’s largest manufacturers, including Pacific Jeans, Dekko Group, Unifil Group, Hirdaramani’s Kenpark and Regency, Fakir Fashions, Epic Group, and Urmi Group, are users of ThreadSol. Suresh De Silva, GM at Regency, said, “IntelloCut has reduced our efforts by effectively handling multiple fabric groups and planning all end pieces, which would otherwise be wasted. Indeed, it’s a solution worth recommending.” Anas Shakil, the company’s business development head, Bangladesh, said, “Kenpark and Regency are truly benefiting from IntelloCut. The wastage in both the facilities has been reduced to less than 1 per cent, which is remarkable.” About its future plan in Bangladesh, Manasij said, “Bangladesh is earning more than USD 25 billion from the RMG sector and is eyeing to earn USD 50 billion by 2021, which is very much possible.” “But you have to understand that if technologies are not integrated in this sector, then the import bill for fabric and materials out of that USD 50 billion export money will be around USD 16 billion, which will shrink the profitability,” he said. He added that to maximise profits, all the manufacturers in Bangladesh needed to understand the benefits technology can bring to their production floors and move towards more efficient manufacturing.