Surat and Bhiwandi Powerlooms: How Many Looms Actually Ran This Shift?
"I have 48 looms. How many really ran last night?" As of 17 Oct 2026, no government series answers that for your shed; the Ministry of Textiles told the Lok Sabha on 24 March 2026 it does not track re-operationalised units. Your own arithmetic does: at an assumed 70% loom efficiency, 48 looms weave like 33.6 looms running flat out.
By the Mama Editorial Team. This is an owner's page for weaving units in Surat (Sachin, Pandesara, Palsana, Kadodara) and Bhiwandi, where a weaver minds several looms and the owner is often somewhere else when the shift runs. Last checked: 17 Oct 2026. Every ₹ figure in the worked example is a labelled assumption that you replace with your own numbers.
Key takeaways
- Count loom-equivalents, not looms switched on. Efficiency × installed looms tells you how many looms you effectively ran. At 70% on 48 looms that is 33.6; at 85% it is 40.8. The difference is about seven looms you paid for and did not use.
- In the worked example, 15 points of efficiency is worth about ₹96 per loom-shift and ₹2.4 lakh a month on an assumed ₹3.50 per metre weaving value, before any extra yarn waste or late orders.
- A lost shift is usually many short stops. Warp and weft breaks waiting for a weaver, beam gaiting, power trips and an uncovered loom set after an absent weaver add up to more than any single breakdown.
- The government does not publish loom running data for your cluster. Lok Sabha answers list scheme money for Bhiwandi (6,257 In-situ upgradation units, ₹56.56 crore), not how many looms ran.
- A camera sees "running or stopped, attended or not". It does not see picks per inch, fabric faults or metres on the roll. Those need the loom's pick counter and a fold-room check.
How this differs from our Surat camera guide
Our Surat textile factory camera guide is about hardware: lint, humidity, heat, the grey-godown door and Gujarat's night-shift conditions. This page is about output. It asks one question an owner can put to the shed every morning: how many of my looms actually wove cloth last shift, and what did the rest cost me?
Why nobody gives you this number
The Office of the Textile Commissioner's Statistical Note on Textile & Apparel (data to June 2025) covers yarn, fibre, trade, prices and ASI tables. A table of powerloom running hours or loom efficiency by cluster was not found in it (checked 17 Oct 2026).
Parliament has asked about Bhiwandi directly. In its answer to Lok Sabha Unstarred Question 5110 of 24 March 2026, the Ministry of Textiles said that "information regarding labour migration to other states or re-operationalized units is not maintained by the Ministry".
The same answer gives what the Ministry does track. For the Bhiwandi cluster it lists 6,257 units under the In-situ Upgradation Fund Scheme with ₹56.56 crore of assistance, and 297 units under ATUFS with ₹69.9 crore.
The answer also reports that textile and apparel exports from Thane district, including Bhiwandi, rose from USD 549.3 million in April–January 2024-25 to USD 600.3 million in April–January 2025-26.
In Tamil Nadu, In-situ upgradation covered 1,33,670 looms in 25,472 units, per the Ministry's answer to Lok Sabha Question 535 of 3 February 2026. That is about five looms per unit, our arithmetic.
So the running-loom number for your shed exists in only one place: your shed. If you are not there at 2 a.m., it exists only in what your supervisor tells you.
From picks to metres: the formula an owner needs
A loom's output follows from three numbers you can read off the machine and the fabric spec:
- Speed in picks per minute (rpm), from the loom display or the maker's plate.
- Weft density in picks per inch (PPI), from the quality you are weaving.
- Efficiency: the share of the shift the loom was actually inserting picks.
Metres per hour at 100% = rpm × 60 ÷ PPI × 0.0254. Multiply by shift hours and by efficiency to get metres per loom-shift.
Loom-equivalents running = installed looms × efficiency. Ask for this figure each morning: it turns a percentage into looms you can picture.
If you want the same logic for any machine, the machine utilisation calculator does it in hours and ₹.
Worked example: a 48-loom shed at 70% vs 85%
All inputs below are our assumptions for illustration, not Surat or Bhiwandi benchmarks. Put in your own rpm, PPI, shift length and the value you earn per metre.
Assumptions: 48 looms; 600 picks per minute; 60 PPI; two 12-hour shifts a day; 26 working days a month (52 shifts); weaving value of ₹3.50 per metre (your job-work rate, or your margin over yarn on own-account cloth). No wage figure is used: the example prices only cloth not woven. If your weavers are paid per metre, take their per-metre rate out of the ₹3.50 before you compare.
| Item (assumption-based) | At 70% efficiency | At 85% efficiency | Gap |
|---|---|---|---|
| Metres per hour per loom at 100% (m) | 15.24 | 15.24 | — |
| Metres per loom-shift, 12 h (m) | 128.0 | 155.4 | 27.4 |
| Loom-equivalents running (of 48) | 33.6 | 40.8 | 7.2 |
| Metres per shift, whole shed (m) | 6,145 | 7,462 | 1,317 |
| Metres per month, 52 shifts (m) | 3,19,528 | 3,87,998 | 68,470 |
| Value per loom-shift at ₹3.50/m (₹) | 448 | 544 | 96 |
| Value per month, whole shed (₹) | 11,18,348 | 13,57,994 | 2,39,646 |
In this example the 15-point gap is about ₹96 per loom-shift, ₹2.4 lakh a month and ₹28.8 lakh a year.
The shed, the power connection and the loan on the looms are the same in both columns. Only the metres differ.
If your value per metre is ₹2, the monthly gap is about ₹1.37 lakh. If it is ₹6, it is about ₹4.1 lakh. The metres gap stays the same.
Where 108 minutes of a shift go
Fifteen points of a 12-hour shift is 108 minutes per loom. The split below is an assumed, illustrative pattern for a shed where one weaver minds several looms; your shed's split will differ, and finding out how is the point.
| Cause (illustrative assumption) | Minutes lost per loom per 12-h shift | What it looks like on the floor |
|---|---|---|
| Warp and weft breaks waiting for the weaver | 40 | Loom stopped, weaver busy on another loom in his set |
| Beam gaiting and knotting, averaged over the beam's life | 20 | Loom stopped for hours on one day, then fine for days |
| Power trips and cuts, plus restart | 20 | Whole row or shed stops at once |
| Absent weaver, set left uncovered or shared | 18 | A group of adjacent looms stopped together |
| Shift handover, tea, late start | 10 | Looms stopped at the shift edge |
| Total | 108 | Equal to 15 points of efficiency |
Breaks and the weaver's set
When one weaver runs a set of looms, a loom that stops waits until he reaches it. Two breaks at once means one of them waits longer. A bigger set saves labour and loses loom time; the right set size depends on yarn quality and break rate, so test it rather than copying the next shed.
Beam change
A beam change stops one loom for a long stretch on one day. Spread over the beam's life it looks small; on the day, it is often the biggest single stop in the shed. The cost rises when the next beam is not sized and ready, or the knotter is at another unit.
Power
Power cuts stop a whole row, and restarts take time beyond the cut itself. Maharashtra's Integrated and Sustainable Textile Policy 2023-28 gives other textile units an electricity tariff subsidy of up to ₹2 per unit (₹3 for cooperative spinning), according to the same Lok Sabha answer of 24 March 2026. The subsidy lowers the bill; it does not give you back the metres lost in a trip. To price the stops themselves, use the power cut and DG downtime calculator.
The absent weaver
When a weaver does not come, his set is split among others or left standing. Either way efficiency falls across several looms at once, and the shift register still shows "48 looms".
Why this matters more when you don't live next to the shed
The owner on site sees stopped looms by walking past them. The owner in the city, or running a second business, sees only the shift report: a metres figure and maybe a remark.
That report rarely tells you the three things you would act on: which looms were stopped longest, whether the stops were spread out or bunched, and whether the night shift ran like the day shift. Our night vs day output comparison shows how to test the last one fairly.
A simple morning routine works even from a phone:
- Metres woven per loom, from pick counters or the fold room, for yesterday's two shifts.
- Loom-equivalents running, shed total, day and night separately.
- The five looms with the lowest metres, and one line on why.
- Any loom stopped more than an hour in one go, with the cause.
The phone guide to machine idle hours compares the ways to get the stopped-time part of this without walking the shed.
What cameras can and cannot tell you on a loom shed
A fixed camera over a loom row can show, in aggregate, which looms were running and which were stopped, and for how long. It can show whether a stopped loom had someone at it, whether a whole row went dark at once (power) and whether a block of adjacent looms stood together (an uncovered set).
It cannot read picks per minute, fabric faults, pick density or the metres on the roll. Distinguishing a warp break from a weft break on camera is unreliable. For metres and quality you still need the loom's counter and the fold-room inspection.
Count looms, not people. The useful output is "looms 13–20 stood 40 minutes after 1 a.m.", not a ranking of weavers. Footage of recognisable workers is personal data under s.2(t) of the DPDP Act, 2023; tell workers in writing what is recorded and why (see the worker CCTV notice under DPDP).
Schemes: what is still open
PowerTex India was launched for the decentralised powerloom sector with an outlay of ₹487 crore for 2017-20 and extended up to 2021, per the Ministry's answer to Lok Sabha Question 1439 of 9 December 2025.
The same answer says PowerTex has been subsumed under the Textile Cluster Development Scheme, with support only for committed liabilities of ongoing projects. ATUFS was valid until 31 March 2022, with only committed liabilities now paid.
The 24 March 2026 answer adds that the Union Budget 2026 announced an Integrated Textiles Programme including the Textile Expansion and Employment Scheme (TEEM), to modernise traditional clusters with capital support for machinery and common testing centres.
New looms raise speed. They do not fix 108 lost minutes a shift. In the worked example, a 48-loom shed at 85% weaves about as many metres as a 58-loom shed at 70%: the efficiency gap is worth about ten looms.
Where Mama fits
Mama reads the cameras a weaving unit already has, or a few added over the loom rows, and each morning sends the owner a short plain-language note: which looms stood, for how long, and in which shift, with machines counted rather than people. It does not replace the pick counter or the fold room. If you want to know how many of your looms actually ran last night, leave an email or phone in the form below and Mama will get back to you.
FAQ
What is a good loom efficiency for a powerloom shed? There is no official figure for Surat or Bhiwandi; the Textile Commissioner's Statistical Note has no loom-efficiency table (checked 17 Oct 2026). Use your own best month as the benchmark and track loom-equivalents running each shift. The 70% and 85% in this page are assumptions for illustration.
How do I calculate metres per loom per shift? Metres per hour at full speed = picks per minute × 60 ÷ picks per inch × 0.0254. Multiply by shift hours and by efficiency. At an assumed 600 rpm and 60 PPI, that is 15.24 m per hour, or 128 m in a 12-hour shift at 70%.
How many looms should one weaver run? It depends on yarn quality, loom type and break rate, so there is no single right number. More looms per weaver saves labour but makes each break wait longer. Test two set sizes on similar quality for a week each and compare metres per loom, not just wages saved.
Does the government publish how many powerlooms are running in Bhiwandi or Surat? No running-loom series was found. On 24 March 2026 the Ministry of Textiles told the Lok Sabha it does not maintain information on re-operationalised units; its answers list scheme assistance, such as 6,257 In-situ upgradation units in Bhiwandi.
Can a camera tell me my loom efficiency? It can estimate running versus stopped time per loom from what it sees, which is the largest part of efficiency. It cannot count picks or judge fabric quality, so check its stopped-time figure against pick counters for a week before relying on it.