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As any business, apparel manufacturing industry has its own pitfalls and difficulties. Managing multiple processes and staying creative at the same time seems to be tough. Designers have to deal with a wide range of materials, find new retail markets and wholesale partners, design new products, and stay aware of the new technological trends in order to be in demand. But, as we know, design people rarely become financial gurus and prefer spending hours in a studio designing something new to managing all the business processes in their company.
Luckily, modern technologies allow business owners to breathe a sigh of relief. Multiple software solutions exist to enhance the efficiency of business processes in various industries. Hopefully, apparel manufacturing is not an exception. No matter if your company is an international giant with thousands of employees or a family sewing workshop, there are always enough tasks to optimize.
So, let’s discuss the processes, that should be optimized first and foremost.
Optimization of pre-production activities
Clothing creation is a long process. It takes time and a huge amount of work before the end-client buys that adorable dress somewhere in the shopping mall.
Apparel-manufacturers have a long scope of work during pre-production stage including sampling, selection of raw materials, planning, determining the cost and approval of the final product.
Using a custom ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) or any kind of task management system makes it simple to keep all required information in one place.
For example, while choosing materials for future clothing manufacturers usually collect such information as color, description, fabric, composition, style, reference number, amount, price, etc. Production planners also need to schedule wisely the daily tasks for each department in order to minimize idle time of machinery and fulfill the requirements of different production lines. So why not to optimize all this data and store it in one place so you could find whatever you need in a few clicks? Moreover, if stored in the cloud, all the data will be available from any device anytime you might need it.
Keeping all the data in Excel spreadsheets is insecure as the file can break anytime and you can lose all the information. Or you might make a mistake when using formulas. Or you might lose your mind while searching something within several sheets. Sounds familiar, right?
From planning materials acquisitions and calculating costs and revenues to shipping orders, custom apparel management software can simplify multiple activities and save your time.
Optimization of production processes
Producing apparel might seem an interesting game and a very creative process. But in reality, it’s quite complicated. Any sewing business has its own policies and standards that must be kept on each stage of clothing manufacturing. Whether it refers to cutting norms or patterns, labeling or any other issue, each rule must be described in detail.
Unfortunately, the large set of rules makes it difficult to find the right info when it’s really required. But if your company has a special web service, it’s possible to share the policies across departments, so that every employee can have his own instruction.
Moreover, managers can easily assign tasks and see the whole process on one page, so not a single detail is missed.
Optimizing the post-production stage
Clothing business optimization does not end when the last button is sewed on. Now it’s time for post-production management including quality control, packing, shipment, selling, etc. No matter how good your product is, you should never neglect the final step. Lost items, products of a bad quality or any delivery issues can seriously undermine the credibility of the clothing manufacture and service quality as a whole . You need to control the whole process until an item is sold and your client is fully satisfied.
Final words
Hereby, software management comes in handy on every stage of apparel production. You can use during the preparation stage, the production itself, marketing, document flow, finances and efficiently apply it at any other business processes needed. Optimize your business, forget about management headaches and stay creative no matter what!