Energy, water, and material-waste improvement

Learning objectives

• Define resource-use KPIs per good garment (kWh, litres, grams).
• Map high-use steps and stratify by machine, recipe and load.
• Improve utilities without compromising quality, safety or compliance.

Problem and CTQ

Resource use per good garment is often excessive while product quality, safety and compliance must remain protected. Normalize every KPI by good output and product mix.

DMAIC path

• Define boundary and baseline; validate meters and material balance.
• Map high-use steps; stratify by machine, recipe, load, leak, idle and rework.
• Never claim reductions caused by lower volume.

Improvement choices

• Leak and idle control; load optimization.
• Recipe/process redesign; heat/water recovery.
• Right-first-time and reuse/recycling with risk approval.

Control plan

• kWh/garment, water litres/garment, chemical grams/garment, waste kg/garment; cost, quality and compliance guardrails.

Garment-factory example

A dye-house cuts water from 82 to 61 L/kg through load standardization and rinse optimization while shade pass % improves 2.4 points and MRSL compliance is unaffected.

Common mistakes

• Claiming a per-garment reduction that is really volume mix.
• Reusing water without a documented chemical-risk approval.