Over the last weeks, I shared 18 short posts on LinkedIn about the most common myths in apparel production – beliefs that sound logical on the surface, but quietly destroy throughput, quality, and credibility on the shop floor. 

Each post is a small piece of the puzzle. Together, they show how factories can move from rule-of-thumb thinking (“add more people”, “start earlier”, “more inspectors”) to system thinking: flow, buffers, bottlenecks, and better use of people and technology.

Below you can find the full series, grouped into two parts.

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Part I – Line & Efficiency Myths (1–10)

These myths live inside cutting and sewing lines. They push managers to fight symptoms instead of managing flow and bottlenecks.

• Apparel production myth #1: Doubling the speed of the sewing machine will double production! 

• Apparel production myth #2: Adding more people always increases output
  

• Apparel production myth #3: A line cannot work with 100% efficiency
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• Apparel production myth #4: Reduce standard time to improve efficiency

• Apparel production myth #5: Perfect line balancing increases production

• Apparel production myth #6: Everyone must be highly qualified and fast

• Apparel production myth #7: Tracking output KPIs is enough to perform well

• Apparel production myth #8: Bottlenecks are evil

• Apparel production myth #9: Start early to safely finish on time

• Apparel production myth #10: Better efficiency requires closely monitoring each operator

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Part II – Quality, Compliance & Sustainability Myths (11–18)

These myths live in quality rooms, audit checklists and PowerPoint decks – and often block factories from turning good intentions into real performance.

• Apparel production myth #11: We need to be more agile

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• Apparel production myth #12: Going digital makes us more efficient
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• Apparel production myth #13: Better quality requires more quality controllers
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• Apparel production myth #14: We need a fast repair service to ship on time

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• Apparel production myth #15: Better quality is expensive

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• Apparel production myth #16: Technical compliance is expensive

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• Apparel production myth #17: Social compliance is expensive

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• Apparel production myth #18: Sustainability is expensive

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The Bigger Picture

Across these 18 myths, one pattern keeps repeating:

Factories often work harder instead of working smarter on flow, buffers, quality at source, and aligned incentives.

When we challenge these myths, we open the door to:

• Higher RFT with smaller repair teams,

• more stable on-time delivery without permanent overtime,

• technical and social compliance that supports the business instead of just ticking boxes.

If you are a factory owner, IE, quality manager or a buying office working with suppliers in Egypt or similar environments, you may recognize parts of your daily reality in these myths. 

Feel free to reach out if you want to turn them into an improvement roadmap for your own operations.