The client
Phantom Screens is a manufacturing company in British Columbia, Canada which serves customers throughout North America.
The need
The client discovered that thread was not being consumed in the bills of materials during sewing operations. This oversight needed to be corrected, and the cost of this oversight needed to be determined.
The solution
Spools of thread are purchased by weight. The manufacturer did not know the length of thread on a spool. The first mystery to be solved was to calculate the conversion factor between weight and length. I weighed a 12-inch length of thread on a jeweler’s scale with 0.01g precision and calculated the conversion factor.
The next step was to convert between thread length and seam length. I measured the thickness of the material with digital calipers, and had a machine operator sew through a sheet of white paper with black thread so that I could count the number of stitches per inch.
The last step was to determine the length of thread being used in each product. This was relatively straightforward for most products because the spline was attached to the mesh on one side only. However, the more expensive products had zipper spline sewn around the entire perimeter of the mesh, so two dimensions would need to be considered instead of just one.
The thread was added to the product configurator to ensure that it was properly consumed by all future products sold. The last 12 months of sales history were analyzed to determine the cost of thread used but not properly consumed during that time period. The total cost was relatively minor.