Sunday, October 11, 2009

Strategy for implementation of IT/ERP solutions in Apparel Manufacturing and Utilizing DBMS & MIS with the aid of IT in Apparel Manufacturing

Let's look at the factors that have so far influenced such low success rates of IT/ERP solutions in apparel business:

  1. The prime reason is that the number of variables governing the business is just too large and most are not under the control of the manufacturer.
  2. IT/ERP solutions are usually modeled on SOPs, but the irony is that forming SOP in apparel business itself is a tedious task and needs continuous updating because of the prime factor #1. This means that if we model our IT/ERP solutions on SOP then there needs to be frequent change/updates in the developed and implemented solution, and doing so would only leave the solution with lot of bugs and loop holes which surface to the end user and the next thing you'll find is that the end user is cursing the system as it would be making his work all the more difficult while it was supposed to be helpful to him.
  3. If at all the manufacturers synergize to standardize their systems, processes and procedures and then implement the IT/ERP solution, it will drag on just too much and the focus would be lost. In other words it's a never-ending process.
  4. Developing IT/ERP solutions for apparel business often demands large-scale customization.
  5. Too much customization can render the system too flexible, too buggy and with too many loopholes and bypasses to the system.
  6. Too less customization can render the system too rigid and too hard to work with, frustrating the end user and ultimately abandoning the system.
  7. Implementation of IT or ERP solutions in apparel business has often found to be long run, tedious, cumbersome process because of which the enthusiasm, the tempo, the energy levels what we observe at the early stages of development and implementation process kind of dies down during the later stages. Committee members also stop attending meetings or take these meetings for granted.
  8. Once the system is implemented it is usually seen that the data recorded in the system lacks accuracy & integrity, as well the most common problem is severe duplication of data.
  9. Some companies tried to hire some techies and develop solutions on their own but believe me, its almost near to impossible, but not impossible (For which you need an astounding vision and an awesome collaboration between Apparel techies and IT techies, last but not the least never say die spirit).
  10. Lack of knowledge, depth of thought, vision and detailing in understanding and analyzing the systems, processes, procedures governing the apparel business, is another factor affecting the success of implementation of IT solutions.
  11. Lack of competency of people involved in designing and development of the system is another contributing factor to the failure of these solutions.
  12. Sometime it is seen that the detailing is sacrificed in an effort to make the system simpler and easy to use, as a result, information is limited and characterized by casual and haphazard information search and capture.
  13. I've seen some solutions available in the market, they might have covered the following to a good extent:
    1. Enquiry
    2. Marketing
    3. Merchandising
    4. Documentation

 But they would be miserable in terms of (Cause these are the tricky areas and have lot of variables to manage)

  1. Time & Action calendar monitoring (T & A)
  2. Production planning
  3. Production tracking
  4. Production management
  5. Quality Management
  6. MIS
  7. Integration of solution at factory to the corporate setup
  8. Inventory management
  9. Tracking of consumption of raw materials

Unfortunately the areas that the system lacks in are the core areas that decide the profitability of the business. I'll write about the strategy of building IT solution to the above-mentioned areas in forth coming sections.


 

SO… DO WE SHUT THE DOOR ON IT/ERP SOLUTIONS?????!!!!!!!


 

NEVER… because at the end of all that gigantic efforts, if we make it through; by god the results are phenomenally surprising and believe me you would tell yourself it was worth all that effort and your business will never look back from there on.

So if there are so many factors affecting the success rate of implementation of IT/ERP solutions in Apparel business then what should be the strategy adopted in application of IT/ERP solutions???

The best way to do this is by streamlining & standardizing internal systems, processes, procedures and simultaneously developing the IT/ERP solution.

 
 

Strategy for implementation of IT/ERP in Apparel Manufacturing

  1. Department wise phased streamlining & standardizing of the systems, processes, and procedures. During the process of streamlining & standardizing the process of a particular department, discussions held during this streamlining process would become input for designing IT solution for the process carried out in that department. By the time the solution is ready for implementation, the systems, processes & procedures of the department would also be in a healthy and most importantly compatible condition with the designed IT solution. Upon this regular weekly meetings would help in further customizing the system to perfection.
  2. Department wise meeting to be held to discuss implementation on weekly basis.
  3. Two Functional representatives to be selected from every department to give continuous inputs to development team on the requirements of the department and to co-ordinate during future implementation.
  4. Core committee consisting of senior managers & technical experts to be formed. It is important to pick & choose people for this core committee with right attitude, caliber & temperament. They should be open minded visionaries in their own stride.
  5. Departmental functional representatives need to forward their requirements, suggestions, & recommendations to the core committee.
  6. Core committee to decide on the feasibility of adapting the systems, requirements, suggestions & recommendations given by functional representatives for the development of the solution.
  7. Core facilitator for documentation, development & implementation to be appointed who has the technical knowhow of the systems, processes & procedures as well as expertise in IT solution application.
  8. A dedicated Core facilitator to be appointed to manage IT infrastructure setup separately.
  9. Prepare "Process Linkage Document" in advance. Process Linkage document is a document that describes how the processes are linked to each other and at what points are they linked to each other. This gives a detailed view of the processes and the activity linkage. This also helps in fine tuning the business process.
  10. Standardize Formats and reports across the group. Brain storm and standardize the contents of the formats and the reports.
  11. Don't try to make intelligent system; it won't work out, especially in Apparel business.
    1. For Eg: If there is slide in Production of a particular style, then the system should merely alert the planner that due to the style slide, which other orders will get affected, but it should not try to find and slot the production of affecting styles in some other available capacity.
  12. Keep it simple; design it to eliminate/reduce your paper work.
    1. For Eg: To eliminate papers like Multiple BOM copies; Multiple Order Copies; Preparing Production File in Excel sheets, sending inter departmental memos
  13. Always try to record all the information into database and link it to MIS such that you can get statistically analyzed reports of your choice. Use these reports and analysis in decision-making process. System should give you only information, but not the options of decisions that you need to make.
    1. For Eg: If an enquiry comes in from a customer, then the marketing manager should have an MIS in hand which tells him/her: -
      1. Customer wise enquiry report
      2. How many enquiries that specific customer has placed?
      3. What percentage of the enquiries has got converted to order, specific to customer?
      4. Every time an enquiry has not got converted to an order, what is the cause? Is it lacuna at our end or at the customers end??

      All these information would help a marketing manager to decide on the priority list of enquiries.

      If the marketing manager were trying to get some new orders from the existing customer, following MIS would be handy: -

      1. Percentage enquiries of the customers have got converted to orders
      2. Percentage On time delivery specific to the customer
  14. Design the system to reduce lead-time in terms of communication, tracking and follow-ups. Let's take the example of T & A Calendar (Time & Action Calendar Monitoring) and discuss the kind of features to be built into it and also some general features to be designed into the solution: -
    1. When an order entry is made in the system, an auto alert carrying basic details of the order should be sent to Sourcing team, PPC, Production team etc.
    2. T & A needs to be process specific; Hence T & A should have flexibility of creating any number of activities & selecting the activities of choice to be made mandatory for entry. The common activities irrespective of the process such as Fabric In-house dates, Trims In-house dates, planned cut date can be listed by default and made mandatory on the system.
    3. T & A dates has to be finalized with an internal meeting before entering it on the system
    4. The T & A will comprise of activities involved in executing an order with planned dates. The activities & deadlines pending on that date has to pop up on the merchant's screen in certain advance number of days which again will vary depending on the various factors affecting the activity and the response given by the merchant to that reminder should be recorded on the system. The response given by the merchant to the reminder should also be listed on their respective manager's screen.
    5. The T & A consists of activities whose deadlines depend on other departments. For instance let's take an activity of submission of Lab/Yarn dip by the sourcing team to the merchant; a reminder/alert has to go to the sourcing team as well the supplier first time a few days in advance of the planned date and on the planned activity date.
    6. An audit to be conducted on the accuracy & integrity of the data entered in case of order details entry.
    7. An audit to be conducted on the accuracy & integrity of the dates entered on T & A.
    8. If data entry is more, then hire a data entry operator to enter the order details of all the merchants, but merchant should be held responsible for checking the details of the data entry made. Blame should not be allowed to put on the data entry operator. This ensures that merchants are not burdened by data entry workload and can give maximum time & concentration to order handling.
  15. Avoiding data duplication by giving rights only to administrators to enter master data. For Eg: In material description one merchant might write "Btn" while other might write as "Button" in the master table. Material is same but in two different names. If the entry option in master data is restricted to one person, he'll enter it as "Button" and the merchants are given an option to select it from the list.