Safety and Quality initiatives in manufacturing

Wacoal regards maintaining product quality as a social responsibility, and implements strict quality control throughout the entire process from material procurement to shipping.

Before commencing full-scale production

At Wacoal, before commencing full-scale production, we go through processes such as "considering materials," "evaluating functionality (wearing, testing, and durability)," and "producing prototypes." During this period, we conduct quality verifications for the constituent parts, semi-finished products, and finished products according to their functional characteristics. These verifications are carried out from multiple perspectives, including the products' safety, durability, ease of handling, wearability, and appearance.

Manufacturing Process

Manufacturing brassieres involves a variety of processes, from procuring raw materials through to stretching, cutting, sewing, inspecting, and shipping. Each process includes various quality inspections. Wacoal only offers customers finished products that have passed all of these inspections as well as the final inspection.

Sewing Specifications and Standards

Sewing is done by hand because it requires the assembly of more than 40 small parts of various shapes. Each brassiere goes through roughly 35 processes, which takes a single team of 15 personnel about 20 minutes to complete. Each process calls for meticulous attention to detail. Only technicians with consummate skill are able to sew together parts into an attractive shape without diverging one single millimeter.
A particularly challenging process is creating the roundness of a brassiere. If the number of stitches in a seam is out by even one stitch, the brassiere will be uncomfortable to wear because it will not follow the body's contours. Therefore, Wacoal's sewing site uses "sewing specifications and standards" written on a single sheet of paper as a manual for sewing processes. This stipulates the key sewing requirements in great detail, covering such aspects as thread, needles, seam allowance, overlap thread widths, and stitch size. In addition to sewing specifications and standards that cover every aspect of operations in minute detail, highly skilled technicians who have developed their sewing techniques to the level of craftsmanship use subtle adjustments in pressure in order to sew in conformity with requirements.

The Problem of Needles that Break During the Sewing Process

In rare cases, needles break when technicians do fine sewing work, especially when they sew together different fabrics or when needles come into contact with metal components. When a needle breaks during sewing, all surrounding operations are halted, and personnel carefully search for needle fragments. To ensure that personnel have not overlooked a single millimeter of needle fragment, we use a broken needle restoration tool. This device enables us to assemble the fragments together and completely restore the needle to its original form. Further, to prevent such needle fragments from scattering, we have installed sewing machines with plastic "broken needle anti-scattering covers." Moreover, as the final stage of our thoroughgoing quality control, before shipping products we inspect them using a conveyor type needle detector.

Final Inspections

Wacoal's final inspections of finished products are carried out by setting standards based on the quality items required by customers, then carefully checking each product one by one by human eyes according to a predetermined inspection procedure. Only products that pass these rigorous inspections are deemed to be Wacoal products.

Quality standards that spread around the world

Wacoal's sewing techniques and know-how are being put into practice under the same quality standards not only in Japan but in our overseas production factories as well.
We will continue to conduct manufacturing based on strict quality standards in order to deliver products that customers all around the world can use with peace of mind.