Three Key Points In Fashion Industry

In industry, especially in fashion industry, the problem is the diversification of demand. The deep-seated problem is the lack of flexibility in production and supply chain and the rapid response to changing needs. The solution is to improve the supply chain's quick response under the premise of properly controlling product diversification.

Quick response depends on the following three aspects. Accordingly, enterprises should also work together:

First, the basic design of standardization.

Zara although there are tens of thousands of clothing, but its basic design is far from that, differentiation is mainly manifested in color and so on.

Take sweaters as an example: Zara will produce a considerable number of white sweaters (basic design). Once a good color is found, the supplier will soon dye the color. Through the quick replenishment system, it will be released to the global stores in two or three weeks.

This is like in the restaurant industry, some people like to stir fried beans, some people like bacon fried beans, but the basic elements are beans: pre pick, wash, arrange, guests, a few minutes to serve.

From beans to harvested to supermarket, although the whole cycle is three or four months, from spinning to fabric to dyeing cycle is almost the same, but it has no effect on restaurants.

For example, in heavy trucks and large bus industry, the needs of each customer may be different. But in a well run company, the basic vehicle types, especially the chassis base, have standardized design, and control the differentiation to the lowest, so that the delivery cycle can be reduced, and the response speed of the supply chain is raised. These enterprises have more advantages than their competitors.

A lot of clothing enterprises are struggling, one of the fundamental reasons is that there are many styles and lack of common "chassis base". The products differentiated very early in the production process, resulting in the process of differentiated inventory is too high, and the failure activity is the chief culprit of the loss of fast reaction capability of the supply chain.

Second, improve

Transparency.

It depends on the smooth flow of information in the supply chain.

The different departments within the company and the partners in the supply chain are interlinked. Information flow is the glue that links these links together.

The information is not smooth, the pparency of the supply chain will drop, and there will be gaps between the links, which can only be filled by inventory.

Taking sales and operations as an example, information sharing is not enough and pparency is not good enough to increase the uncertainty of supply chain operation, and the natural response of the supply chain is to increase inventory (a major function of inventory is to deal with uncertainty).

Uncertainty will be pmitted along the supply chain, and will be enlarged step by step. The farther away from the source, the greater the change. Correspondingly, every node in the supply chain will generate a pile of stocks.

As the saying goes, information is changed to stock, and pparency is increased by sharing information, so as to reduce inventory on the supply chain, so that once the demand changes, the enterprise can consume inappropriate stocks and establish suitable stocks faster.

In many garment enterprises, the supply chain operation is like a black hole. The product, demand and supply information are seriously isolated, and the information flow is not smooth. It can not play the role of the nervous system of the supply chain, and it is bound to slow the reaction of the supply chain.

The reason is that there is a lack of appropriate IT solutions (technical problems), except for reluctance to share information.

At the top of Zara, h&m, etc.

The supply chain information system has become a competitive weapon. It enhances the pparency of the supply chain, reduces the inventory of the supply chain and increases the responsiveness of the supply chain.