Founded in 2000, Seoul-headquartered apparel manufacturer,ApparelTech Co. Ltd. is a globally leading producer of expedition insulated and Downjackets, foul-weather clothing and lifestyle garments including vests, swim shorts andtrousers for large retail brands such as: Columbia Sportswear, VF, Timberland, Vans,Champion , Walmart, Lands’ End, Nautica, J.Crew, Costco and others. The company isheadquartered in South Korea and has factories in Vietnam and Indonesia. ApparelTechproduces over 11.5 million pieces a year and boasts an annual turnover of over 158 million USD.
Prior to implementing FastReactPlan, ApparelTech found that the lack of automation andreal-time visibility in the production planning process not only meant there was limitedinformation sharing between different departments, but also that manually producedcapacity plans based on unreliable historical data, were time consuming and cumbersometo produce, scattered across multiple sources, and did not deliver the accuracy required tomake optimum production decisions.
Following the adoption of FastReactPlan, ApparelTech’s planning and scheduling teams havequickly benefited from access to a single, unified source of real-time information, whichprovides all stakeholders with a comprehensive understanding of what production lines areavailable and the capabilities and limitations of each line. The solution has consequentlyenabled ApparelTech to easily compare and contrast different capacity plans and select themost optimal plan based on factors such as cost, efficiency and delivery time.
Since the implementation, ApparelTech has realised an annual productivity improvement of9% and increased its on-time delivery performance by a further 7%. The solution hasenabled the company to connect and consolidate its planning and scheduling informationacross disparate sources into one highly visual unified system, significantly reducing thepeople hours required on time consuming manual tasks so that more time can be spent onenhancing customer service and driving new business growth.
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As our product history and planning data was actioned and stored across many differentdepartmental locations, it was not only difficult to find and collect specific product data, itwas also exceptionally time-consuming to confirm product information, draw up productionschedules and quickly confirm quotes and timings to customers. We also had no clearvisibility to fully understand the production status of our 54 sewing lines, which meant a lotof unnecessary time was also spent trying to identify the status and availability of eachproduction line in turn.”Jay Jung , Factory Managing Director, ApparelTech Co.Ltd.
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FastReactPlan has significantly optimised production efficiencies, supported OTDPimprovements and helped reduce lead times including the order confirmation process. Wehave the comprehensive visibility we need to proactively predict problems and adjustproduct lines accordingly, which means effective line schedules can now be planned based onaccurate order information and delivery expectations. FastReactPlan has surpassed all our expectations by improving our productivity efficiencies by an annual average of 9% andimproving our delivery performance by 7%, which has impacted our profit margins in anextremely positive way. The automation of all our planning processes has also freed uptime for staff to focus on other business-enhancing activities, such as supporting continuousimprovement programmes, which have also helped to accelerate our business growthplans.”J.W.KIM, CEO, ApparelTech Co. Ltd.
FastReactPlan is the market-leading apparel production planning software solution,supporting a faster, more reliable order confirmation process and production plan which isoptimised for delivery, speed and efficiency.
