Cal Poly Apparel Manufacturing Demonstration - Year 3 Final Technical Report

The Cal Poly Demo Demo was established to be a research and demonstration manufacturing activity to support the Defense Logistics Agency DLA and the Defense Supply Center, Philadelphia DSCP. The DLAs Apparel Research Network ARN focus for the Demo included several areas of activity. The Demo was directed to study the costs and problems associated with the manufacturing of military apparel items. The Demo factory activity was required to produce commercial as well as military products to meet the DLA objective of shared production. Since the Southern California apparel industry is primarily small businesses producing low volume fashion products, the Cal Poly Demo factory needed to reflect the size and capability of its customer audience to be a credible demonstration to industry. In addition, the DSCP was having difficulty placing certain low volume products on contract with commercial producers. Thus, the Cal Poly Demo factory chose to specialize in producing and studying relatively low volume products such as the Marine mens short sleeve dress shirt, Marine maternity dress uniform and maternity Battle Dress Uniform. Some specific challenges and general issues concerning the manufacturing activity included 1 use of modular manufacturing as an alternative manufacturing process 2 equipment issues 3 production planning for military and commercial work and 4 meeting cash match requirements.