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Textile manufacturers, garment manufacturing firms or fashion garment retailers could develop a constraint in Operations, Sales, Retail operations or Sampling. Vector’s Textile &amp; Garments consulting practice offers unique solutions to help these organizations to overcome these constraints in in Operations, Sales, or Sampling management. The firm has collaborated with Blackberrys, Westside Retail, Arvind Fashions, and Raymond’s, among others, to enhance their On-Time-In-Full (OTIF) performance, ensure high availability at the retail store level, and reduce overall inventory and working capital deployed in the business. Some of these clients have set new industry benchmarks.

Companies in this domain are export houses which undertake garment manufacturing for large retailers as per fabric or garment designs given to them. They could also be fashion retailers who design, source and sell garments under their own brands in addition to selling other garment company brands. These two types of companies (textile manufacturers or fashion garment retailers) can develop a constraint in Operations, Sales, Retail operations or in Sampling.

Textile and Garments

Traditionally, India’s textile businesses enjoyed lower labor costs and significant government support (capital subsidy, duty drawbacks etc.) However, things have changed in recent years, and the industry is now losing its edge to countries such as Bangladesh and Vietnam! Find out how Indian companies can regain their superiority in the global markets

industries

Textile & Garments

We have partnered with large, fully-integrated textile manufacturers and fashion retailers to create and implement radical solutions which have redefined industry benchmarks. These include:

Clients

Client Speaks

A. The greatest challenge for us is ensuring reliability in supply to our customers, most of whom are brands and retailers based in Europe and US. This has now been compounded with the need for quick response and increased flexibility in product offerings. Unfortunately, Indian textile and garment manufacturing industry has had a legacy of poor reliability of orders.

Q. What are the major challenges in your business ?

A. In addition to garments, we market intermediary products like yarn and fabric. The available manufacturing capacity of the plant was shared between external orders ((yarn/fabric customers in the market) and internal orders(finished garments).In the past, this sharing system, and the inability to synchronize various items of raw material needed for completing orders was creating disruption (erratic cycles of starvation and overloading) in flow of yarn and fabric required for garment orders. So, in spite of high WIP, expensive finite scheduling software, and frequent expediting meetings, the lead-time was high and highly variable; orders were not being dispatched on time.
Like others in the textile and garment business, we tried to solve the problem by under-loading the plant. This dented profitability.

Q. Why was ensuring “reliability”, “flexibility” and “speed to market” a tough challenge operationally?

A. Our due date delivery performance was inconsistent. Airfreight and penalties, lack of affirmative action to grow the business due to inconsistent supply was causing considerable losses. Additionally, customers had been consolidating their supply chains and had been threatening to pull out unless we delivered. To survive and succeed in this very tough business, we knew we had to improve operations in a very short time. With the help of TOC, we aimed to enhance performance (and profitability) by focusing on reliability and on shortening lead-times. At the same time, we wanted to extract , more output from same capacity.

Q. What motivated you to embark on the TOC journey?

A. The most important change is that now our entire supply chain is realigned to ensure reliability of customer orders. Output improvement in the plant became the welcome side effect!
We completely revamped our operations.
First, the focus of the company was changed. Amongst our three lines of business, garment manufacturing and supply became top priority. Fabric sales was discontinued; yarn was made to subordinate to the garmenting requirements. Some capacity was set aside exclusively for strategic yarn customers.
Second, WIP was capped at a reduced level (compared to the level in the months before implementation) to ensure that there were few orders on the shop floor. This forces the departments to complete work on the orders in hand. This enabled planning team to be conservative and spared some capacity buffer, while allowing execution team to aggressively use any unused capacity and maximize output.
Third, to discipline expediting efforts, a clear and visual priority system was put in place for the benefit of shop floor and vendors.
Our core issues arose from the fact that various departments were blind to how local decisions were affecting garment orders. So, these three processes, which define the boundaries within which local considerations (for productivity) can prevail (without delaying orders), ensures that operations always work on correct orders.

Q. What were the paradigm changes implemented?

A. Now, customers receive their orders on time (and in full assortment) with a considerably reduced lead-time. This motivates them to continuously increase our share of business. We’ve halved the lead-time for key customers’ garment orders. We’ve accomplished this reduction in the existing system without hampering other normal lead-time orders.
Further, the shop floor exigencies used to consume a major share of senior management time. Now the system is largely working on “Auto Pilot” with very little intervention needed from senior management. This has released our bandwidth significantly and we are now able to focus on the future. We have now been able to invest and strengthen and reap the benefits of an enhanced Product Design & Development Studio with design support centre in Europe.
India’s edge as a low-cost supplier is blunting. By building agility into our operations, we aim to become a manufacturer of choice for global fashion garments businesses.

Q. What has been your experience after implementing TOC?

Most garment manufacturing firms in India are facing severe pressure to reduce costs and lead time of supply of garment orders. The pressure on costs is emanating from the gradual change in the product mix of garment orders being received. Over time, garmenting orders have shifted from a few garments in large volumes to a large variety of garments in smaller volumes. The pressure of lead times is emanating from retailers who want to reduce the fashion forecast horizon. The twin pressures of an increased variety of garments and low lead times are making it necessary for garment manufacturing units to make fundamental changes in the way they operate. Most garment manufacturing units are not coping well with these demands; they are suffering from a drop in output, poor delivery performance, and month-end skew in the output of garments. These issues are further driving up costs of garmenting and jeopardizing future order bookings.&nbsp; With the help of Vector’s Textile &amp; Garments consulting practice, garment manufacturing plants can ensure ~100% On-Time In-Full deliveries with a significant reduction in lead time. At the same time, they can increase the garment output and significantly reduce working capital deployed in the business. Find out how.

Operations

reduction in overall lead time

Around

increase in output of textile manufacturing

Upto

reduction of WIP

Improvement in working capital cycle of the company

In textile manufacturing or garment manufacturing companies, the sales teams spend a significant amount of time on order management. When every garment order has multiple coordination points for approvals with clients, the sales team bandwidth is mostly occupied with short-term tasks required for the execution of orders in hand. This consumes the capacity that is needed to develop new customers or introduce new garment categories.&nbsp; Vector’s Textile &amp; Garments consulting practice can help textile and garment manufacturing companies increase the bandwidth and effectiveness of their sales teams and simultaneously improve the service levels of orders on the shop floor.

Sales Bandwidth

capacity released of the sales team

More than

Increase in the rate of new customer acquisition

Increase in the sales rate of new garment categories

Fashion houses with their own retail footprint are typically constrained by store shelf space (or working capital) for displaying garments. The slower the inventory ‘rotates’ on available shelf space, the less money that the retail store makes. Fashion retail stores’ inability to fully exploit the limited shelf space in the store arises due to two reasons. Firstly, about 15%-20% of the garments become bestsellers and get stocked out within a few weeks of season onset. Unfortunately, most fashion houses are not able to react to this by restocking (due to the long lead time needed for the development and supply of garments). Secondly, about 30% of the garments turn out to be duds. When this happens, the immediate effect is blocked working capital. This also eventually causes margin erosion due to the inevitable deep discounting necessary to shed these excess garments.&nbsp; Discover how Vector’s Textile &amp; Garments consulting practice can assist fashion retail companies in significantly mitigating the challenges of garment stock-outs and surpluses while simultaneously unlocking working capital to support their expansion initiatives.

Retail Operations

growth in same-store sales

improvement in garment inventory

Increase in gross contribution per unit of shelf space

Improved display and freshness of garments on shelf space

Once the supply chain is aligned for a seamless flow of orders, the next level of constraint for any textile manufacturing or garment manufacturing organization is its ability to offer new garment variety based on the latest fashion trends. To do so, the company has to have an agile garment sampling process. However, the lead time of garment sampling expands either due to queuing delays or priority conflicts with bulk garment production. Moreover, fabric and garment designers are also caught in priority conflicts as they try to fulfil the requirements of multiple sales channels. Consequently, the garment sampling process can be a major bottleneck for bringing in new customers and converting enquiries into orders.&nbsp; Vector’s Textile &amp; Garments consulting practice helps garment manufacturing companies to transform the sampling process to align it with the goal of timely completion of orders. This would also help the companies release substantial capacity to do more (garment sampling) with the same resources.

Sampling

reduction in garment sampling lead time

increased output of resources

Reduced rework

Improved quality of output

Rapid bulk garment production

Reduced stress on people and other resources

Vector Consulting Group provides consulting services to textile firms to drastically reduce lead time in operations and sample making, increase capacity utilization, reduce lead time and improve sales.

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