Filter cloth, geotextile, tarpaulin base fabric and industrial felt are bought against a customer's specification sheet. The people who hold the coating recipe and the roll release decision hold the business.
Not sure what you need? Tell us about your business in six short steps and we will come to the first meeting prepared.
Share your requirementsA technical textile maker weaves, knits or bonds cloth for use rather than fashion: filter media, geotextiles, belting fabric, tarpaulins, protective wear and industrial felts. After forming, rolls pass through coating, lamination, stenter heat setting or finishing. The lab then tests tensile strength, mass per square metre and permeability before a roll is released. Orders follow a customer specification and come in smaller, more varied runs than plain cloth. Coating line settings are tuned by process people who learned at the machine, and a young lab technician decides if a roll ships. Industrial buyers trace any complaint to a lot number. See also HR for manufacturing.
These are the places the people side of this kind of business tends to give way. The rest of this page works through them.
HR here has to work for each of these groups, not only the office. The set-up below is written with all of them in mind.
GullyHR runs talent acquisition for permanent roles in technical textile makers. For each role we agree the job description with you, find and screen candidates against it, and support the offer through to joining. Tell us the role and the number of people, and we start there.
We recruit permanent employees. We do not supply contract or temporary staff.
Every business interviews, but few have a written process that works the same way for every role and every interviewer. GullyHR designs yours, from the role brief to the offer, trains your managers to run it, and can run it for you on the roles you hand us.
We agree what the role must deliver, the must-have and nice-to-have skills, and how each will be scored.
Screening call, assessment, interview rounds and decision points, sized to the role and the number of people you hire.
Structured questions for each role family and a rating guide, so two interviewers judge the same answer the same way.
A short briefing for your managers on what to ask, what to avoid and how to give a clear yes or no.
Who approves, how the offer is made, and how candidates are kept informed from first call to joining.
Why a bath temperature or line speed works is rarely written down. When this person is away, every new order slows.
Each change of specification means a new setup and a clean-down. The best operators get pulled to every hard job.
They pass or hold rolls of real value, yet can be young, lightly trained and unsure when to say no to a production manager.
Solvent vapour, hot rollers and drying ovens need proper gear and routines. Habits differ from shift to shift.
A roll is rejected for a reason the next shift cannot explain, because each shift lead reads the customer's sheet differently.
A hand who runs only the coating line cannot step onto lamination. One absence stops a whole stage.
Outside hiring for specialist roles is slow. Units end up training new people for months before they help.
Start with the topics that matter most here: Learning and Development; Organisation Design; HR Operations and Governance. Then work through the rest. Each topic is written for manufacturing, not in general.
Training planned from need rather than from the calendar.
Structure, reporting lines and who is allowed to decide what.
An HR function that runs the same way every month.
How many people, in which roles, by when, and what they will cost.
Requisition to joining, the same way every time.
A first day that is the same for the fifth joiner as the first.
Records, attendance, leave and the day-to-day HR that must simply work.
Salary structure, payroll inputs and a month that closes on time.
Goals, reviews and ratings that hold up in a conversation.
Named backups for the roles that cannot be vacant.
Communication, recognition and the conditions people actually work in.
Two routes, one for complaints, one for conduct, kept separate.
Policies a manager can apply, and obligations with owners and dates.
Induction, records, incident reporting and follow-through.
Who leaves, when, why, and which of them mattered.
Resignation to relieving letter, in a defined order.
Records that survive people, and approvals that do not queue.
A short monthly pack management actually reads.
The pieces a technical textile makers business puts in place, in an order that makes each easier. Open any card for the detail.
Settings, speeds, temperatures and the reason for each are written by the engineer, then tried by a second person on a live run.
Settings, speeds, temperatures and the reason for each are written by the engineer, then tried by a second person on a live run. The role design and job descriptions work helps decide who owns each record.
A plain pass, hold and escalate rule, a shelf of borderline sample rolls to compare against, and a manager who backs the technician's call.
A plain pass, hold and escalate rule, a shelf of borderline sample rolls to compare against, and a manager who backs the technician's call. See learning and development process.
A one-page sheet per customer, read and signed by each shift lead, so day and night shifts read it the same way.
A one-page sheet per customer, read and signed by each shift lead, so day and night shifts read it the same way.
A skills grid by line, with each operator adding one more line a year.
A skills grid by line, with each operator adding one more line a year. See compensation benchmarking for grades and pay.
Gloves, eye and chest cover and a quick check before the solvent and dryer sections run, reviewed by supervisors.
Gloves, eye and chest cover and a quick check before the solvent and dryer sections run, reviewed by supervisors. See health, safety and wellbeing.
Before changing anything, find out what is true today. Work through the checks using a recent operating period. The time needed depends on the records you hold; note missing evidence and use the findings to choose a priority.
Share your requirementsConfirm with a qualified professional. What applies to you depends on your business, your state and your arrangements, and it changes. This page describes practice. It does not state a legal position.
The services below fit this kind of business best. Each starts by recording where you stand, and every later report compares against that. We do not promise outcomes.
Clear ownership for process settings, roll release and shift lead duties.
Training for lab technicians, and cross-training across coating, lamination and finishing.
Grades for specialist operators and testers, set against similar industrial plants.
Gear and routines around coating solvents, hot rollers and dryers.
Start with a free conversation, or see the paid HR Diagnostic.
Understand the business, its workforce, current processes and HR challenges.
Find the missing, weak, inconsistent or person-dependent processes.
Create the structure, processes, policies, SOPs, dashboards and systems needed.
Help HR and department managers actually adopt the new system.
Digitise repetitive and approval-based workflows where it is worth doing.
Track hiring, attendance, employee cost, performance, training and attrition.
Strengthen the people-management system continuously, not once.
From the GullyHR blog: one on HR in manufacturing, and one on each of the topics this page points to.
Why the best operator can struggle as shift supervisor, what it costs the line, and a practical way to choose, prepare and back new supervisors in any kind of plant.
7 min readRead article
A founder's guide to hiring freshers and running a first-year programme: campus or open drives, a screening round, a training plan by quarter, mentors and checkpoints.
6 min readRead article
A founder's guide to building job grades, titles and billing levels for a growing IT services firm, with a step-by-step method and a grade description outline.
6 min readRead article
Every growing company reaches a point where the founder approving everything stops being speed and starts being the bottleneck. Twelve signs it has happened, and what to fix first.
8 min readRead articleMore on the GullyHR blog.
Ask for a written recipe with reasons, have a second person run it on a live order, and reward the engineer for sharing. Begin with your best-selling cloth.
Write a pass, hold and escalate rule, keep sample rolls for borderline cases and make sure managers stand behind the lab's call.
Because it is long or vague. One page per customer, signed by every shift lead, brings the readings together.
Draw a skills grid, cross-train in steps and attach a small pay grade to each extra line mastered.
Look at nearby weaving, coating and finishing units, technical colleges and operators from related industries, and train on a plan. A written role description helps you screen.
We would ask which settings live in one person's head, read the recent held rolls and the rule behind each, and count operators who run more than one line. A practical first project is a recipe record plus a lab release rule. The scope is written down and agreed before any work begins.
All 7 business types in textile and garment manufacturing · Find another business type
Tell us your industry, team size and the issue you want to address. Bring one example of where work gets delayed or ownership is unclear, and the deadline or decision you are working towards.
