Int J Adv Manuf Technol (2005) 27: 152158

DOI 10.1007/s00170-004-2161-0

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

W.K. Wong C.K. Kwong P.Y. Mok W.H. Ip C.K. Chan

Optimization of manual fabric-cutting process in apparel manufacture

using genetic algorithms

Received: 28 November 2003 / Accepted: 1 March 2004 / Published online: 26 January 2005
Springer-Verlag London Limited 2005
Abstract In apparel manufacturing, experience and subjective
assessment of production planners are used quite often to plan
the production schedules in their fabric-cutting departments. The
quantities of cut-pieces produced by fabric-cutting departments
based on these non-systematic schedules cannot fulfil the cutpiece requirements of the downstream sewing lines and minimize the makespan. This paper proposes a genetic algorithms
(GAs) approach to optimize both the cut-piece requirements
and the makespan of the conventional fabric-cutting departments
using manual spreading and cutting methods. An optimization
model for the manual fabric cutting process based on GAs was
developed. Two sets of production data were collected to validate the performance of the model and the experimental results
were obtained. From the results, it can be found that both the
makespan and cut-piece fulfilment rates are improved in which
the latter is improved significantly.
Keywords Fabric-cutting Genetic algorithms
Production scheduling

Nomenclature
X
N
i
j
i , j

Job (fabric lay)

Maximum number of jobs
Job setup (spreading) order and i = 1, 2, . . ., N
Job processing (cutting) order and j = 1, 2, . . ., N
Setup and processing sequence of jobs
Production order of job X and = 1, 2, . . ., PO

W.K. Wong (u) C.K. Chan

Institute of Textiles and Clothing,
The Hong Kong Polytechnic University,
Hunghom, Kowloon, Hong Kong
E-mail: tcwongca@inet.polyu.edu.hk
Tel.: +852-27666471
Fax: +852-27731432
C.K. Kwong P.Y. Mok W.H. Ip
Department of Industrial System and Engineering,
The Hong Kong Polytechnic University,
Hunghom, Kowloon, Hong Kong

Quantity of garments of job X

Length of fabric lay of job X

s(X i ) Setup (spreading) time of job X i
c(X j ) Processing (cutting) time of job X j
m
Number of spreading tables in the fabric-cutting
department

1 Introduction
In apparel manufacturing, fabric cutting is done before assembly.
The performance of the cutting department, which is generally
neglected by manufacturers, is a critical factor on the smoothness
of downstream operations in sewing lines and hence the overall
efficiency of the apparel manufacturing plant. Since the late 80s,
some apparel manufacturers have implemented the computerized
fabric-cutting systems in their apparel manufacturing process.
The demands on fabric-cutting departments for greater accuracy,
faster throughput, larger fabric and labour savings have driven
the adoption of computerized cutting systems.
However, many manufacturers still rely on the manual
method for the fabric-spreading and cutting operations in their
fabric-cutting department. Before daily spreading and cutting
operations start, the production planners of cutting departments
need to plan the production (spreading and cutting) schedule so
as to minimize the idle time of operatives and fulfil the fabric
cut-piece requirements from different sewing production lines.
The production planning is normally based on their experience
and subjective assessment which is not a systematic method
and an optimal schedule cannot be obtained. As a result, idle
times occur on the spreading and cutting operatives which in turn
increases the overall makespan of cutting departments. The cutpiece quantities produced cannot fulfil the different requirements
of each downstream sewing production line.
As most of the apparel manufacturers and researchers emphasize the importance of sewing process, research has been
done to improve the operation of sewing lines. However, the productivity of cutting departments, which plays a significant role

153

on the smooth flow of work in the sewing lines and thus the
whole manufacturing plant, is often neglected. Jones [1] investigated a table loading system to which a rough spread/cut ratio
was proposed by comparing the estimated total spreading time
to the estimated total cutting time so as to assist management in
handling balancing problems. The further the spread/cut ratio for
a specific spread was from the optimum ratio, the more dramatic
the effect of this spread would be on balancing the tables. However, the determination of operative assignments relied on the
experiences and subjective assessment of the production planners of cutting departments. Another limitation is that decisions
are made on an as-needed basis without planning.
Hui et al. [2] attempted to solve the problem of fabric
roll planning in spreading using genetic algorithms. The optimal combinations of the fabric roll sequences for each fabric
lay were derived in order to minimize fabric wastage during
spreading. Though the fabric roll sequence for each fabric lay
was studied, the spreading sequence for all fabric lays, which
has a great impact on the productivity of cutting departments
was not considered. A lack of proper planning and scheduling
causes much anguish among manufacturers when the supply of
cut pieces do not meet the requirements of production units.
Skyes and McGregor [3] proposed the use of object-oriented
technology to design a computer simulation model for the pinning and cutting processes in apparel manufacturing such that
the fabric-cutting manager of fabric-cutting departments could
estimate the effects of various resource allocation to meet production goals. Wong et al. [4] proposed a spreading and cutting sequencing model to minimize the idle time of a computerized fabric-cutting system. Studies of optimizing cut-piece
fulfilment, which refers to the quantities of cut-pieces required
by sewing lines, has been neglected. This is a critical factor
on the smoothness of downstream operations in sewing lines,
which affects the overall efficiency of the apparel plant and the
delivery date of the whole production order to the customers
substantially.

improving the overall operation efficiency. Spreading operatives

need to continue to spread new fabric lays (jobs) once they
have finished the present jobs. The purpose is to reduce delay due to switching from spreading to cutting. However, because of the limited length of spreading tables, idle time can
occur when there is not sufficient free area on the spreading table available for the new fabric lay. In a cutting department with multiple spreading tables, m, a first-come-firstserve rule is applied. For a given job sequence, jobs are allocated to different spreading tables with the use of the following
rules:
1. Allocate the first m jobs, X i (i = 1, . . ., m), to the m spreading tables.
2. If any of the spreading table has enough room for the job
X i+1 (free area > fabric length (X i+1 )), allocate X i+1 to
the first available spreading table and set i = i + 1.
3. If there is no spreading table available (free areas of all
m tables < fabric length (X i+1 )), wait until enough spreading area is obtained by clearing up the cutting jobs X j
queues.
4. Repeat procedures 2 and 3 until all the jobs in the sequence
are allocated subsequently.
In manual cutting systems, cutting operatives cut the fabric
lays according to the spreading sequence, i.e. i = j , at each
spreading table. However, idle time occurs when the cutting operatives have finished the current job while the new job is still
being spread and not yet ready to cut. According to the described
job placement mechanism, the operation sequences at different
spreading tables are defined for a given job sequence. Thus, the
system makespan time, which is defined as the maximal operation duration of the m spreading tables, and the completed
number of garments of different production orders, , at various
instants can be calculated accordingly.

3 Optimization model for the manual fabric cutting

process using genetic algorithms
2 Mechanism of job placement in manual
fabric-cutting systems

3.1 Coding or representation

One of the major objectives of a job sequencing problem is to

minimize the makespan/idle time. The job placement mechanism of a manual cutting system is first described to explain the
way for calculating makespan time. The manual cutting system
investigated in this project is assumed as an efficient model.
The model is referred to the fabric pieces being taken away,
after spreading and cutting operations, from the spreading tables for bundling operations, which can help to make room for
the new fabric lay spreading. In an efficient fabric-cutting department, a group consisting of four operatives is assigned to
each spreading table. The group is divided into two subgroups
in which two operatives are responsible for fabric-spreading.
The remaining operatives are responsible for cutting the fabric lay which has already been spread. The division of labour
allows operatives to focus on their competent operations, thus

In this paper, genetic algorithms (GAs) are used to optimize

the job processing sequence in a manual fabric-cutting department. To apply GAs in solving an industrial optimization
problem, it is usually assumed that a potential solution to the
problem may be represented as a set of variables. These variables (genes) are joined together to form a string of values
(chromosome). The string can be of binary digits, integers
or real numbers. Although the binary representation proposed
by Holland [5] is the most widely accepted one, GAs are not
restricted to binary representation. The choice of representation in GAs is related to the nature of the problem. In this
job sequencing problem, it is convenient to use integer chromosome representation to indicate the job sequences. It can
be noted that the setup sequence (spreading) is the same as
the processing sequence (cutting) in manual cutting systems.

154

An example of integer chromosome representation is shown

below.
Chromosome: 3 7 10 1 2 5 8 4 6 9
Job sequence: X 3 X 7 X 10 X 1 X 2 X 5 X 8 X 4 X 6 X 9
It has been defined early in nomenclature that each job has its
attributes such as production order (PO) number, , number of
garments, , spreading time, s, cutting time, c, etc.
3.2 Fitness function
In GAs, a fitness function is defined to measure the fitness of
each individual chromosome to determine which to reproduce
and survive into the next generation. Thus, given a particular
chromosome, a fitness function returns a single numerical score,
fitness, which is proportional to the ability of the individual that the chromosome represents. The fitness score assigned
to each individual in the population depends on how well that
individual solves a specific problem. In most of the job sequencing problems, minimizing the makespan/idle time would be the
objective. In a fabric-cutting department environment, job sequencing sometimes not only requires minimizing the makespan,
but also requires maximising cut-piece fulfilment rates. Let
denote the set of feasible sequences between fabric lays (jobs).
For a given sequence , fitness () can be defined as
() = makespan () + order ()

(1)

where makespan () and order () are the makespan fitness and

cut-piece fulfilment fitness, respectively. In Eq. 1, makespan fitness, decreases as the makespan time, Tmakespan, of job sequence
increases.
makespan () = Ttarget/Tmakespan wT

(2)

In Eq. 2 Ttarget is the target completion time, and wT is the

weighting for makespan factor.
The cut-piece fulfilment fitness is defined as
order () =

PO

CR


=1 =1

()

()

()

C /D w

3.4 Genetic operators

In GAs, crossover and mutation are the two major genetic operators to provide genetic variations to the population by bringing
in chromosomal changes. Crossover, as the name implies, exchanges information (gene) among chromosomes. Mutation
randomly alters some genes in chromosomes. However, applying such genetic operators may cause lost features in some genes
and result in infeasible solutions. In order to prevent such infeasible solution in the job sequencing problem, uniform order-based
crossover and inversion mutation are adopted.
3.4.1 Uniform order-based crossover
Uniform order-based crossover has the below procedures.
1. Randomly select two parents for mating from the population.
2. Generate a mask binary string with the same length as its
parents.
3. Fill in some of the positions in the children by copying them
from parents wherever the mask binary string contains a 1.
4. After that, a list of the elements in parents associated with
a 0 in the mask string is recorded and these elements are
permuted so that they appear in the same order as they appear
in the mating parents.
5. Finally, these permuted elements are filled into the gaps in
the children in the order generated in the previous step.
The uniform order-based crossover preserves part of the first
parent while it incorporates information from the second parent.
More specifically, this operator respects the absolute positions of
jobs in one schedule and the relative orders of jobs in the other
string. Figure 1 illustrates the uniform order-based crossover employed in this job sequencing problem.
Crossover is not usually applied to all pairs of individuals selected for mating. Indeed, the crossover operation is a random
process with an application likelihood, which is called the probability of crossover: a typical probability of crossover is between
0.6 and 1.0. If crossover is not applied, offspring are produced
simply by duplicating the parents.

(3)

where C() and D() are the respective completed and required number of garments of the th production order ( =
()
1, 2, . . ., PO) at the th checking run ( = 1, 2, . . ., CR), and w
is the corresponding cut-piece fulfilment weighting.
3.3 Initialization
The evolution procedure begins by randomly generating an initial population of integer strings (chromosome) in which each
such string represents a processing sequence, , of the job. Each
chromosome is processed according to the manual cutting job
placement mechanism described in Sect. 2, and thus obtains the
makespan time and cut-piece fulfilment rates which facilitate the
fitness evaluation using Eq. 1.

Fig. 1. Uniform order-based crossovers

155

2. Generate a random number, , between zero and the total

fitness.
3. Return if the first population member whose fitness is added
to the one of the preceding population members, is greater
than or equal to .
Fig. 2. Inversion mutations

3.4.2 Inversion mutation

In GAs, mutation is another genetic operator that is applied to
each offspring. Compared with crossover, mutation is only seen
as an background operator in GAs. However, previous research
shows that though mutation is of a generally low probability
of use (small value of mutation probability), it is a very important operator because it becomes more productive while the
population converges [6]. In this job sequencing study, inversion
mutation is used. Under inversion mutation, two points are chosen randomly along the length of the chromosome. The genes
within the two selected positions are inversed in order and the
rest of the genes are left as they were in the parent. Thus, for example, Fig. 2 shows an illustration where genes between the fifth
gene and the seventh gene are mutated.

In roulette wheel selection, the chance of a parent being selected is directly proportional to its fitness. In the example shown
in Fig. 3, from a population of ten chromosomes with a set of fitness evaluations totalling 80, six individuals are selected by the
biased roulette wheel scheme, according to six random numbers
generated from the interval of 0 to 80.

3.6 Elitism
Since the biased roulette wheel selection processes are based on
the survival of the fittest and are in random nature, there is no
guarantee that some fit individuals will be selected. In order to

3.5 Parent selection

In nature, different individuals compete for resources in the environment. Some are better than others. The better ones are more
likely to survive and propagate their genetic materials. This process of natural selection is mimicked in GAs using selection
schemes in which parental chromosomes with higher fitness have
a greater chance to producing offspring than parental strings with
lower fitness. One of the most widely used selection schemes is
called the biased roulette wheel scheme in which each current
string in the population has a roulette wheel slot sized in proportion to its fitness [7]. The biased roulette wheel scheme can be
described as follows:
1. Sum the fitness of all the population members; call the result
total fitness.

Fig. 3. Biased roulette-wheel selection scheme

Fig. 4. Flow diagram of genetic algorithms

156

improve the selection mechanism, De Jong [8] therefore introduced elitism. Elitism is an addition to many selection methods
that forces the GAs to retain some of the best individuals in each
generation. This elitist strategy copies the best individuals of each
generation directly onto the succeeding generation. Such individuals might be lost if they are not selected to reproduce, or are
destroyed by crossover or mutation. The elitist strategy can increase the speed of the domination of populations using the best
individuals and provide an improvement of the GAs performance. Elitism is thus considered in this job sequencing problem.
Fig. 5. Layout of a fabric-cutting department consisting of four spreading
tables with examples of fabric lays being spread

3.7 Evolution
After the initialization, evolution is caused to occur in accordance with the standard genetic operations of crossover, mutation and selection. The evolutionary process is allowed to continue until no further increase is obtained in the finesse of the
fittest binary string or the pre-defined maximum number of generations is reached. Thus, the fittest string will result and the
optimal job sequencing can be determined. The operations of
GAs can be represented by a flow diagram as shown in Fig. 4.

in which each schedule 48 jobs were setup and processed by a

manual cutting system. The cutting department consists of four
spreading tables, each of length 600 ft, as shown in Fig. 5.
The job sequences for the cases, A and B, adopted by the
industrial practice are shown in Figs. 6 and 7, and those job
sequences generated by the GAs are shown in Figs. 8 and 9,
respectively. The results obtained by GAs are maximized for
the fitness function explained in Eq. 1, where the target completion time (makespan) is Ttarget = 960 min and the cut-piece
fulfilment rates are evaluated at two checking times, 480 min and
960 min, for both cases A and B. Assuming the makespan fitness,
makespan (), and the cut-piece fulfilment fitness, order (), are of
equal weightings, thus the weighting parameters are defined as

4 Case studies
Two sets of real production data denoted as cases A and B, are
used to demonstrate this multiobjective job sequencing optimization problem. All the data listed in Table 1 was obtained from
the fabric-cutting department of a Hong Kong-based garment
manufacturing company in China. These two-day spreading production schedules were recorded in the fabric-cutting department

wT =

PO

2

w()

(4)

Table 1. Detailed job characteristics

(A)-Job (X n )
Production order ()
Qty of garment ()
Marker length ()
Spreading time (s)
Cutting time (c)

1
2
3
4
4
1
3
7
30 116 114 66
103 136 139 132
50 90 90 57
24 47 47 47

(A)-Job (X n )
Production order ()
Qty of garment ()
Marker length ()
Spreading time (s)
Cutting time (c)

25
9
2
68
17
24

(B)-Job (X n )
Production order ()
Qty of garment ()
Marker length ()
Spreading time (s)
Cutting time (c)

1
2
3
4
2
1
1
3
33 140 316 224
91 170 170 130
48 121 254 161
24 47 47 47

(B)-Job (X n )
Production order ()
Qty of garment ()
Marker length ()
Spreading time (s)
Cutting time (c)

26 27 28
6
5
7
33 300 94
91 158 132
48 233 77
24 47 47

25 26 27
5
3
1
14 78 58
137 105 170
23 59 57
47 47 47

5
6
7
8
9 10 11 12 13 14 15
6
8
8
8
8
7
5
9
2
8
6
15 224 224 224 300 118 300 10 200 300 98
89 130 130 130 130 172 158 106 175 130 169
30 161 161 161 209 104 233 20 170 209 87
24 47 47 47 47 47 47 47 47 47 47

16
2
14
87
29
24

29 30 31 32
2
7
6
3
33 14 140 146
91 137 170 140
48 23 121 113
24 47 47 47

33
9
8
81
23
24

34
3
2
73
16
47

35 36 37 38 39 40
9
1
8
4
3
6
3 78 224 53 228 316
72 105 130 171 148 170
18 59 161 96 172 254
24 47 47 24 47 47

5
2
3
72
18
24

9
2
14
87
29
24

10
2
5
81
20
24

11 12 13 14 15
3 10 11 10
3
21 94 118 94 116
73 132 172 132 136
34 77 104 77 90
24 47 47 47 47

6
7
2
2
8 316
81 170
23 254
24 47

28 29 30
2
6
6
42 300 300
91 130 130
60 209 209
24 47 47

31
1
42
91
60
24

8
2
4
85
19
24

32 33 34 35
2
4
3
1
2 228 224
6
68 148 130 101
17 172 161 21
24 47 47 24

36 37 38 39
1
3
1
2
14 300 104 10
87 158 171 106
29 233 174 20
24 47 24 47

17 18
9
6
4 200
85 175
19 170
24 47

23
4
13
93
28
24

24
8
21
73
34
24

41 42 43 44 45 46 47
6
6
4
2
2
3
4
14 58 104 98 316 94
6
87 170 171 169 170 132 101
29 57 174 87 254 77 21
24 47 24 47 47 47 24

48
9
5
81
20
24

16 17
1 10
13 146
93 140
28 113
24 47

19 20
2
6
42 52
91 171
60 53
24 47

21 22
6
2
42 140
91 170
60 121
24 47

18 19 20 21 22 23 24
1
1
3
1
2
3
3
33 30 300 200 140 224 224
91 103 158 175 170 130 130
48 50 233 170 121 161 161
24 24 47 47 47 47 47

40 41 42 43 44 45 46
1
2
4
1
1
5
2
15 98 114 98 53 66 200
89 169 139 169 171 132 175
30 87 90 87 96 57 170
24 47 47 47 24 47 47

47 48
4
2
2 52
73 171
16 53
47 47

157

Fig. 6. Job sequences adopted by the industrial practice for the case A

Fig. 8. Job sequences generated by the optimization model using GAs for
the case A

Fig. 7. Job sequences adopted by the industrial practice for the case B

Fig. 9. Job sequences generated by the optimization model using GAs for
the case B

and w()
= 1 for all production orders. The total production
orders are PO = 9 and PO = 6 for the cases A and B, respectively. The production targets at check-time 480 and 960 min are
listed in Table 2.
The makespan and cut-piece fulfilment rates are compared
in Table 3 for job sequences adopted by industrial practice and
those optimized by GAs. It can be found that with the use
of GAs, the makespan was improved slightly from 1209 to
1200 min for case A and from 1209 to 1203 min for case B. In
addition to the makespan improvement, the cut-piece fulfilment

Table 2. Production targets of different production orders (PO)

(A) PO
D(1)

1
97

2
422

3
292

4
103

5
300

6
484

7
146

8
759

9
16

194

843

584

206

600

968

292 1517

32

(B) PO
D(1)

1
561

2
463

3
856

4
339

5
99

6
300

927 1711

678

198

600

(2)

D(2)

1122

Table 3. Comparison on makespan time and cut-piece fulfilment rates of job sequences adopted by industrial practice and those generated by GAs
(A) PO
(1)
(1)
C /D Ind.
C(2) /D(2) Ind.
C(1) /D(1) GA

Cut-piece fulfilment rate

4
5
6
100%
0%
100%

7
100%

8
0%

9
100%

Avg.
64%

100%

100%

100%

49%

100%

82%

1
0%

2
100%

3
67%

100%

71%

50%

67%

makespan

100%

47%

100%

100%

100%

55%

100%

69%

100%

86%

C(2) /D(1) GA

100%

89%

84%

74%

100%

70%

100%

65%

84%

85%

(B) PO
C(1) /D(1) Ind.

1
100%

2
100%

3
0%

6
0%

Avg.
61%

C(2) /D(2) Ind.

72%

74%

55%

100%

100%

50%

75%

C /D GA

97%

100%

35%

100%

100%

100%

89%

GA

59%

92%

73%

100%

100%

100%

87%

(1)

(1)

C(2) /D(1)

Cut-piece fulfilment rate

4
5
67%
100%

1209 min
1200 min

makespan
1209 min
1203 min

158

rates at check-times were improved significantly. In case A, the

average cut-piece fulfilment rates have increased from 64 to 86%
and from 82 to 85% at the check-time 480 and 960 min, respectively. In the case B, the average cut-piece fulfilment rates have
increased from 61 to 89% and from 75 to 87%.

the customers. Extensions of the proposed method to incorporate

the influence of the skill level of operatives, fabric characteristics, complexity of apparel style, etc. on the production schedule
using fuzzy concept are now under investigation.
Acknowledgement The authors would like to thank The Hong Kong Polytechnic University for the financial support in this research project (Project
No. G-YD75).

5 Conclusions
This paper proposes a genetic algorithms approach to solve the
optimization problem of the manual fabric-cutting process for
apparel manufacturing. Experiments were conducted to validate
the performance of the proposed method. The experimental results have indicated that the production (spreading and cutting)
schedules generated by GAs can improve both the cut-piece fulfilment rate and the makespan using the same number of operatives. The results also indicated that the shop-floor management
in the industry is capable of generating a production schedule
with a short makespan since slight improvement can only be obtained by using GAs approach. However, their schedule with a
short makespan cannot guarantee that the cut-pieces provided
by the cutting department can fulfil the requirements of sewing
lines. The proposed GAs approach has been proven as an effective method to increase the cut-piece fulfilment rates significantly
which directly affects the smoothness of downstream apparel assembly processes and thus ultimate delivery time of apparel to

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