How Can ERP – Help Apparel Manufacturers Save Time and Money?

The textile and apparel industry is one of the most dynamic and crucial industries across the world that was worth approximately $3,000 trillion in the year 2015 – including clothing, footwear, textile, and luxury fashion.

From manufacturing and designing clothes to distribution and use of manufactured textile, every operation here is greatly affected by seasonality, fluctuating global demand, operating costs, changing weather, and climatic conditions.

The journey of your fashion, textile, and apparel business will significantly transition if you implement a powerful ERP system specific to the apparel industry to help increase your work productivity and your bottom line. Many apparel manufacturers don’t rely on ERP and as a result, have pain points in operations and that hurts their growth.

What are the pain points that apparel manufacturers face?

• No integration– Apparel manufacturing is a complex process that needs tight coordination between each department (fabric store, sampling, spreading and cutting, sewing, quality assurance, finishing and packaging, finance, etc.). To serve this type of business, it’s a must to have fully integrated software that can bring different departments together.
• Lack of real-time management– Viewing, editing, and reporting in real-time has become a basic need in this modern world of manufacturing. Businesses need a nimble solution that can make collaboration and communication simple.
• Minimal data security– Purchase orders, sales orders, manufacturing orders, fact sheets, industry-specific brochures, HR files, and employee data sheets are some of the documents that are often overlooked because of the lack of proper management and security channels. An antiquated process of data storage should be swapped with cloud storage that offers anytime, anywhere access.
• Excess or inventory stock-outs– When you can’t fulfill orders or your costs are too high from the carrying costs of too much inventory, it hurts customer satisfaction and you risk losing business.

In this world of thriving technology, ERP is the key to streamlining every function in a textile and apparel manufacturing unit. Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) is an integrated business application that helps you systematically manage operations to increase productivity and save time.

An ERP system helps you automate to lowers costs and improve employee satisfaction with the smooth flow of information between departments. ERP lets you address both tangible and intangible savings by offering state-of-the-art functionality that can be tailored to your specific business needs.

Here is how an ERP solution can help you save time and money –

Operational Costs

• Efficient allocation of work and swift process performance. An intelligent apparel manufacturing ERP software solution can automatically generate orders and it offers rich features to simplify business processes. It allows you to track order status, change BOMs and design, promote an easy transfer of BOMs to work orders, trace the products in their route, handle small-scale batch runs, and perform an array of activities in a streamlined and systematic manner. This promotes time management, better organization, and employee efficiency.
• Material requirement planning The apparel industry has to meet the dynamic and changing demands of their customers which change with time. An ERP system allows manufacturers to have an overview of materials and resources to avoid inventory overflow or stock out. Manufacturers can easily view business data in real-time to make prompt and smart decisions to keep up with change.

Administrative Costs

• An ERP system allows for all customer information to be in one database and streamlines processes to reduce the staff needed to handle transactions.
• ERP helps manufacturers automate and address customer queries and requests and to provide feedback in real-time while reducing manual entries and errors.
• With an ERP system, there is no paperwork regarding employee data, no recording data on sheets, no need for re-entering data for invoicing purposes, no wasting of time, and no losing paper forms.

When everything is in the right place, manual errors are reduced, time is managed better, and employee satisfaction is increased, decreasing your operational and administrative costs up to 15%.

Choosing the right ERP solution for your business can be cumbersome and time-consuming, but this should not deter you from upgrading your current software. From evaluating KPIs to providing a 360-degree view of your manufacturing unit to real-time data, a full-fledged ERP solution provides end-to-end management solutions that can empower your company to outpace the competition and achieve all its long and short-term.

Let’s look at the benefits of implementing an agile ERP solution in a textile and apparel manufacturing industry –

1. Reduce stock-outs or inventory silos:Apparel ERP software lets you understand your bottom-line cost while maintaining the right mix of merchandise across the organization. A nimble and mobile Warehouse Management Solution, that is part of a manufacturing ERP solution is the key to systematic management.
2. Time management:With ERP software you can fulfill purchase orders quickly and assign the best person to do the work. It helps to reduce errors, repetitive data entry, and other mundane activities.
3. Real-time tracking:Eliminate the old and traditional method of manually entering replenishment or transfer orders and upgrade your business software with an ERP system that provides real-time tracking and reporting of resources for the warehouse, shop floor, procurement, and shipping.
4. ERP’s dashboard serves as the hub for multiple functions:One dashboard offers a complete view of every department or operation – Quality Control, Production, Supply Chain Planning, RCCP, Pegging, Warehouse Management, Finance, HR, Sales, Marketing, and the Shop Floor.
5. Accuracy– ERP offers accurate information to authorized users who can work from anywhere in the world. This facilitates prompt decision making, productivity, and improves the connection with vendors, customers, and coworkers.

“If you are looking for Manufacturing ERP reach us for a free demo!”