2011

Internship Report on UNIQLO

Tanjeem Hossain Institute of Business Administration Jahangirnagar University 12/9/2011

Table of Contents

Topic

Page

Introduction .1

Office

.. 2

Factory

. 3

Conclusion

.4

Introduction
19491994: rise in Japan
Since March 1949, a Yamaguchi-based company, Ogori Shji (which, until then, had been operating men's clothing shops called "Men's Shop OS") existed in Ube, Yamaguchi. In May 1985, they opened a unisex casual wear store in Fukuro-machi, Naka-ku, Hiroshima under the name "Unique Clothing Warehouse". It was at this time that the name "Uniqlo" was born, as a contraction of "unique clothing". In September 1991, the name of the company was changed from "Ogori Shji" to "Fast Retailing", and by April 1994, there were over 100 Uniqlo stores operating throughout Japan.

1997: "SPA" strategy

In 1997, they adopted a set of strategies from American retailing giant The Gap, known as "SPA" (Speciality-store/retailer of Private-label Apparel), meaning that they would produce their own clothing and sell it exclusively. Uniqlo had begun outsourcing their clothing manufacturing to factories in China where labour was cheap, a well-established corporate practice. Japan was in the depths of a recession at the time, and the low cost, high-quality goods proved popular. Their advertising campaigns also proved fruitful.

1998 present: first Tokyo store and overseas expansion The goal of 5 trillion yen by 2020
On September 2, 2009, Fast Retailing Co., Ltd. announced that the company would target annual group sales of 5 trillion yen (about 61.2 billion US dollars) and pretax profit from operations of 1 trillion yen (about 12.2 billion US dollars) by 2020. This means that the company is aiming to become the worlds biggest SPA with a continuous growth rate of 20% per year.

Uniqlo Dhaka office has arrange an internship program where some selected candidates are called for office and factory experience as production management trainee. It is an experience of three days working for uniqlo. I have divided the whole experience into two section. Office Factory

Office
As Uniqlo is a very flat organization they arrange their office in a different way. There is a big room for the production and quality controllers to work as a unit, a conference room, inspection room, team meeting room, guest room. Uniqlo members have to work from Monday to Friday. Saturday and Sunday are holidays. In Monday each and every employee have to be present by 7:30 cause meeting through TV conference is held every week to see the condition of Uniqlo worldwide. It is a weekly reporting style. Uniqlo reports everything weekly so that error could be minimized. After the TV conference Knit team and Oven team starts team meeting with the Takumi and other superiors. Here the weeks achievement, work In process, problems, suggestions are given and analyzed. After the launch break the weekly meeting of Dhaka office is held. Here overall progress and suggestion about both production and sales of Uniqlo are discussed. Then the employees plan for their next weeks program and look forward. Tuesday to Thursday the production and quality controllers work in the factory and in Friday they provide the feedback of their ongoing activities in the Head office.

Some highlighted events in the office TV Conference is a unique matter where I see Tokyo, Shanghai, Vietnam & Shenzhen participate live meeting discussing the achievement of the week. We were given the knowledge of FR group corporate philosophy and 23 management principles. In team meeting all the point that are discussed are written on a white board. Then after the meeting an employee take a picture of it and mail it to all which work as a meeting minute. All of us were given an introduction on how to control the quality of knit and oven garments.

Factory
The factory has a structured process of manufacturing garments product. The quality is controlled in different stage of the manufacturing. The production process includes: Material management Warehouse Cutting process Sewing process Washing process Finishing process Product control Quality control The fabric that come into the warehouse is kept in a prescribed way of Uniqlo to protect the quality of the product. After that comes Fabric inspection. Here we have to inspect the fabric to ensure its quality. The faults that are found here are Bad mark, Hole, Slab and Color contamination. After that shrinkage test of the fabric is done and reported. Shrinkage test: Normal temperature 40 time 10 min High temperature 60 time 30 min Next comes sewing line where the garment is put together. Here the environment is controlled to avoid any sort of contamination. The regulations are instructed from Uniqlo. Then the finishing process is a very sophisticated process. It includes wash, uncut thread inside process, measurement, Iron, Outside uncut thread, lot, recheck, needle check, Pack and boxed. Responsibility of production and quality controller: After sourcing the factory the first sample is made and sends to Tokyo. There different test has been done and approval comes. After that app sample is made and confirmed. This is the sample which will be the dummy of the production. If any product fails to meet the app sample

it will be rejected and made again. During this OTM1 and OTM 2 is done. Uniqlo has recruited a third party named Marubeni who supply the fabric and also ensure quality for better production. Marubeni sourced K2 logistics in every level to ensure the quality of the product. Then comes the product check. There are two types of checking. Inline check: When the product is almost at the finishing line some random garments are picked up and checked for errors. Random check: When the garments are packed and boxed one random box is picked and checked for error. Places that needs to be checked: There are four areas of a garment. A, B, C and D. A is the most important zone. Things that need to be checked are: 3D Check, Tearing in back pocket, insect issue, mold issue, size, button, collar, hand, cuff, side, label, zipper, uncut thread, metal part etc. Faults that are found during checking: Skip stitch, Broken stitch, Color fly, Dust look, Oil mark etc. These errors are marked as major and minor errors and need to be reported. After that when everything is examined and the confirmation is given by the production and quality controller the product is shipped.

Conclusion
This production management and quality control career is one of the exciting careers to have. It brings different skills of a person to exercise and bring the output. Uniqlo is running at a great pace to achieve its 2020 goal and I want to see myself playing an important role to achieve that goal.