The extended textile company: How do I manage my textile production?
The fashion industry is undergoing significant transformations. Presently, a valid management model for the textile sector must include, among its strategic objectives, the optimization of the time between model design, production, and commercialization. As a result, textile companies are experiencing an industrial shift, transitioning from owning dedicated production facilities for all their models to establishing a network of external production workshops to which a portion of their textile manufacturing is outsourced. Due to the dispersed locations and diverse management approaches of these workshops, the company must implement specialized control mechanisms to oversee this outsourced production.
The purpose of this article is to outline the key stages encompassing this management model, referred to as the “EXTENDED TEXTILE COMPANY”, along with a set of noteworthy strategic recommendations.
In today’s globalized and increasingly competitive environment, the formulation of distinctive organizational and distribution strategies has become imperative. The proper implementation of an efficient outsourcing model will undoubtedly play a pivotal role in determining the survival of numerous companies within the textile sector.
Within the management of external centers, we discern two primary domains: the design of new models and the manufacturing process itself.
Design management
Here, we engage with the evolution of the garment from its inception to the final prototype. This phase necessitates consideration of several factors, including constituent materials, various manufacturing operations, images depicting the completed garment, accessories, labeling, and other pertinent details. Essentially, this encompasses all essential information required to convey the garment’s specifications and conditions to the manufacturing workshop. This information should be centralized and easily accessible to all parties involved in the process. Maintaining a comprehensive history of the model’s evolution is imperative.
In this segment, the proposal revolves around establishing a tailored design management model for each client, alongside the implementation of a technological platform to support this framework. Ultimately, this approach facilitates the centralization of model-related information, which can then be allocated to different workshops. As a result, real-time model assignments become feasible, eliminating the need for physical information or prototype modification to be dispatched. Any modifications to the garment will reside within the platform, ensuring they can be promptly updated and communicated to relevant personnel both within our company and the collaborating workshop.
Outsourced manufacturing management
The overall strategic vision is based on the following premise: We must establish a centralized manufacturing management model, which will be grounded in the cumulative capabilities of all the external workshops we collaborate with. Consequently, our “plant capacity” becomes the aggregate of the capacities across these external workshops. To achieve a coherent, scalable, and traceable workshop management model, it is imperative to initiate an analysis of our production system’s structure. This analysis serves as the foundation for what can be termed an “extension of our environment”. This approach enables workshops to access the productions they are responsible for and, simultaneously, attribute progress updates for daily production tasks. An essential consideration is to accurately define the optimal and most efficient approach for integrating the information generated by various workshops into our system.
In several real-world instances we have encountered, the adopted solution has entailed creating online applications for the workshops. These applications allow the workshops to efficiently allocate their daily tasks. It is a common practice for each company to possess its own internal management system (ERP), within which manufacturing orders and the other organizational workflows, such as accounting and commercial management, are processed. In this regard, the integration of the workshop control system with the company’s central ERP system holds paramount importance. To ensure the success of this endeavor, it is crucial to meticulously define processes and requirements, subsequently overseeing their management by the company’s personnel. Hence, a pragmatic approach is vital, emphasizing the proposal of sustainable, real-world solutions. Drawing from our extensive experience in external workshop management, we can assert that “no two workshop management models are identical”. While certain commonalities exist within any model, the true measure of success or failure lies within the specific nuances. As is typical of such procedures, the initial step involves crafting a customized model tailored to the client’s unique needs. Subsequently, the required technological environment must be developed to give coverage to the devised model.
Implementation at production sites
The capacity of the subcontracted centers to utilize the described management system is undeniably pivotal. Put differently, regardless of the proficiency of the workshop relationship system, the proper training of the workshop personnel responsible for its operation ensures its effective and efficient utilization. Therefore, the implementation phase of our model within the workshops demands meticulous attention. As authorities on the devised system, we can effectively impart how it should be employed.
The textile control panel
The management needs the capability to oversee the progression of the described process through a control panel. The entirety of the proposed management model will generate a substantial volume of data, which must be transformed into meaningful “information”. Consequently, monitoring indicators need to be established, facilitating decision-making based on the comprehensive data yielded by our model. It is essential to pinpoint key performance indicators to empower the manager or the individual accountable for external workshop management to effectively “monitor” daily operations.
Conclusions
It is crucial to establish a strategic action plan that is both prioritized and bounded by a specific time frame. This plan serves to methodically and quantifiably structure the changes slated for implementation within our company. An imperative aspect to recognize is that the needs of each organization vary, and thus, the management model and improvement plan must align with these unique requirements. Consequently, it is essential to grasp that the process outlined in this article is far from a “one-size-fits-all” solution; effective solutions for other entities may not hold relevance for our specific context.
People hold a pivotal role within organizations, and the impact of introducing a new management model can be profoundly significant to them. As such, the effective management of change becomes a cornerstone. Opting for the finest ERP solution globally does not guarantee success if pre-existing processes remain untouched; their efficiency, or lack thereof, persists post-implementation. Approaches such as these result in minimal influence on our company’s efficacy and efficiency. The reality is that technology currently stands as an ally in any strategy a company intends to deploy, thus any improvement approach entails the incorporation of technological elements to facilitate and optimize our work. In any textile production organizational project, two main components emerge: the definition of the management model and the establishment of the technological environment to support this model. Based on our experience, the definition of the model (encompassing process structure, area requirements, operating environment, etc.) stands as the pivotal determinant for project success.
A comprehensive review of the business structure is imperative, pinpointing strategic, operational, and support processes that ultimately define the scope of our management model. Additionally, the complete technological platform supporting our management model must be meticulously developed. In essence, an indispensable information ecosystem must be created to make the model operational. As a strategic approach, it is wise to identify market-available “components” that may be required, supplemented by tailor-made creations to address functions that are absent but necessary for your company. The implementation within workshops is a crucial task, even though it may not be considered strategic. It is important to remember that a successful implementation serves as the final touch to the entire project, akin to the icing on a cake. This task needs meticulous attention, as it becomes the juncture for knowledge transfer between us and the production center to which we have subcontracted our models.
