NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF FASHION TECHNOLOGY,

HYDERABAD
APPAREL QUALITY MANAGEMENT
PRESENTATION
CASE STUDY:

QUALITY MANAGEMENT IN H&M AND ITS

EFFECT IN ITS SALE

Presented by:
RAHUL KUMAR
SHIVANGI JAIN
(DFT- Vth Semester)

INTRODUCTION
Nowadays, we cannot imagine a world without textiles, and especially without quality textiles. The
customers realized the importance of quality when they would not pay for product which are not
equivalent to value of money that they have spent.
The consumer movement are growing stronger to protect the right of consumers. Thus, all the producers
are trying to offer to their clients the best quality items, making efforts to assure this quality level with
specific practices of fair trade and excellent quality of textiles.
Top quality textiles are much celebrated by the customers, and the company producing them are
winning the global competition among uncountable numbers of well-established clothing lines, thus
dominating the world of textiles and clothing industry.
Additionally, the business owner must walk the fine line of maintaining artistic integrity while
remaining commercially appealing identifying consumer trends, finding distributors, gaining brand
recognition and maintaining profit as well as the reasonable pricing level with the brand itself.
Talking about western high fashion clothing lines, the brands that comes to mind are Chanel, Donna
Karan New York, Giorgio Armani, Versace and many others.

 The increasing competition in the clothing market has forced manufacturers to put into practice the concept
of total quality and adopting zero defects policy.
Total quality management is defined as people focused management system that aims at continual increase
of customer satisfaction at continually lower real cost.
Whereas, zero defects policy is defined as the management-led program to eliminate defects in industrial
production.
The actual direction is to reduce the importance of product checking and enlarge on the process control.

This paper presents case study in the issue of quality management for high
fashion clothing line called H&M ( Hennes and Mauritz) management
principles and practices . H&M though regarded as the prominent figures in
leading fashion industries, they are still at the trapped in the issue of man
power, fair trade policy and raw material issues.

DEFINITIONS
Quality management (QM) has become an all-pervasive management philosophy.
QM has been defined as a philosophy or an approach to management made up of a set of mutually
reinforcing principles, each of which is supported by a set of practices and techniques . These activities
include formulating a quality policy and setting quality objectives. They also include quality planning,
quality control, quality assurance, and quality improvement.
Whereas a quality management system is a set of interrelated or interacting elements that organizations
use to direct and control how quality policies are implemented and quality objectives are achieved.
A process-based Quality Management System uses a process approach to manage and control how its
quality policy is implemented and quality objectives are achieved. A process-based QMS is a network of
many interrelated and interconnected processes (elements).Each process uses resources to transform inputs
into outputs.
Since the output of one process becomes the input of another process, processes interact and are
interrelated by means of such input-output relationships. These process interactions create a single
process-based QMS.

COMPANY SPECIFICATIONS
Our case study is achieved based on quality manufacturing process in a famous clothing company of
H&M. H&M has been at the forefront of affordable for some time now. From its Swedish base, Hennes
and Mauritz has grown into a major multinational clothes and cosmetics retailer.
Just the place for fashionistas, it now has over 1500 outlets in 28 countries. H&M was one of the first to
challenge the retail clothing sector by delivering fast fashion at low prices.
The company offers different concepts for women, men, teenagers and children and includes everything
from modern basics to high fashion. The collections are supplemented by matching accessories,
nightwear, underwear and cosmetics.
However H&M does not have factories of its own but has a multitude of designers and buyers and works
with around 700 independent suppliers to produce clothing collections for almost everyone, all at
affordable prices.
H&M lives by its business concept, fashion and quality at the best price. As H&M does not own any
factories, thus they bought its goods from independent suppliers from Asia and Europe. Today H&M
operates in 38 countries with around 2000 stores and 76,000 employees all working to the same
philosophy of To bring you fashion and quality at the best price.

H&M TEXTILE QUALITY CONTROL

Quality Control: AQM performs quality control and inspection services for different customers from all over
the world. Using international standards such as ISO 2859, our Quality Controllers (QC) method consists to
check different control points:
Conformity: The QC checks the conformity of the product (design, colours, raw material) with the PreProduction Sample (PPS) and other technical files.
Quality: Our QC checks for defects (fabric defects, colours defects, accessories and label defects, manufacturing
defects) and classifies them accordingly.
Measurement: Following the measurement chart, our QC checks the measures for each size of the product.
Packaging: Our QC checks the quantity of cartons, size of cartons, their weight, shipping marks, etc.

Concept of Quality:
Simply, quality refers to one or more desirable characteristics that a
product should possess. Quality is inversely proportional to
(unwanted) variability.

PROCESS ANALYSIS
On the aspect of training, it is the quality management principle that management must provide the
workforce with knowledge and training, the workforce must understand H&M objectives and processes as
well as their role fits in the organization so that they contribute efficiently in the improvement of H&M.
Juran suggests that in order to achieve a quality workforce contribution, management should:
1. Motivate the workforce to make a contribution;
2. Provide them with required training to enable them to make a contribution.
. As regards to the issue of ethics in business, H&M offers sustainable fashion as part of encouraging the
campaign of sustainable development.
. The vision is that all H&Ms activities are conducted in an economically, socially and environmentally
sustainable manner. As part of their policy of sustainable fashion, H&M is the world largest user of
organic cotton.
. The target of H&M is that for all of the cotton H&M uses to come from more sustainable sources by 2020.
Cotton from more sustainable sources means organic cotton, recycled cotton or cotton grown under the
Better Cotton Initiative.

H&MS QUALITY ENDURANCE

According to report on Fashion Branding Practices of H&M, H&M works pro-actively to ensure
quality. Every H&M order undergoes a variety of tests before it reaches the store.
For example shrinkage, twisting, color-fastness and pilling tests as well as chemical and product safety
testing like flammability. Around 500,000 laboratory tests are carried out annually by H&M, the
suppliers, and independent third-party test institutes.
The H&M Global Quality Department sets standards and requirements for all products and brands
within the H&M group, based on customer expectations, health and environmental concerns, product
safety and legislation. All H&M suppliers are contractually bound to comply with these requirements.
Demands are particularly high when it comes to baby and childrens products, and H&M has long been
a driving force within the standardization of the safety of childrens wear.
H&M apparel products are washed to see whether shrinkage, wringing and color fastness meet H&Ms
requirements. By far the majority of H&M apparel products are washable with no significant changes
occurring.

H&MS QUALITY ASSURANCE PRACTICES

H&M QUALITY COST

(1). Prevention Costs:
Product/process design.
Process control.
Burn-in.
Training.
Quality data acquisition and
analysis
(2). Appraisal Costs:
Inspection and test of
incoming material.
Product inspection and test.
Material and services
consumed.
Maintaining accuracy of test
equipment.

(3). Internal failure Costs:

Scrap
Rework
Retest
Failure analysis
Downtime
Yield losses
Downgrading/ off-spacing
(4). External failure costs:
Complaint adjustment
Returned product/material
Liability costs
External costs

Quality control in H&M are as follows:

SAMPLE SECTION
MARKER MAKING
FABRIC SPREADING
FABRIC CUTTING
SEWING SECTIONS
FINISHING SECTION
SEWING THREADS
ZIPPERS

Quality Control System:

On- line quality control system
Off line quality control system
On Line Quality Control System:
This type of quality control is carried out without stopping the production process. During the running of
production process a set up is automatically performs and detect the fault and also takes corrective action.
Online quality control comprises with the raw material quality control and the process control.

Off Line Quality Control System:

Performed in the laboratory and other production area by stopping the production process consisting of
fabric inspection and laboratory and other test. Correction steps are taken according to the test result.

To ensure quality.

inline inspection report

100% inspection report
Pre-final audit report
Initial instruction report
Trainee practice report
Quality checking report
Methods checking report

Statistical Quality Control (S.Q.C) :

It is the application of statistical tools in the manufacturing process for the purpose of quality
control. In SQC technique attempt is made to seek out systematic causes of variation as soon
as they occur so that the actual variation may be supposed to be due to the guranted random
causes.

1. Descriptive Statistics:
Descriptive Statistics involves describing quality characteristics and relationships.
2. Statistical process control (SPC):
The application of statistical techniques to determine whether a process is functioning as desired
3. Acceptance Sampling:
The application of statistical techniques to determine whether a population of items should be accepted
or rejected based on inspection of a sample of those items.
Variations of Statistical Quality Control (S.Q.C):
Allowable or cause variation
Assignable or preventable variation

Some test for quality control textile finishing:

Shrinkage Test
GSM Test
Tensile Test
Tearing Test
Colour Fastness Test

Rubbing fastness Test

PH Test
Shade Matching Test
Fabric Width Test

CONCLUSION
A business cannot flourish in the long run if it doesn't give its customer what it promises to.
Being a customer it is easy to understand this but for a business it is usually not.
The main focus of a businessman is to make profits and not necessarily to satisfy the customer.
It would not be wrong to say that the only time the businessman realizes that customer
satisfaction is important is when he understand that this is directly related with his profitability
margins.
This has been realized the hard way by the western organizations that customer satisfaction is
vital for their survival and growth.
So, in order to achieve the highest levels of customer satisfaction, they have put in considerable
amount of research on the concept what is now known as Quality Management Systems
including its various tools and methodologies.

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Businessweek March 2013
Business Insider 2013

THANK YOU