The apparel industry operates in an environment of rapidly changing consumer trends and competitive margins. The consequences of a poor product selection or late delivery can result in a lackluster selling season—it can even be truly disastrous for a retailer. Competition for product differentiation and increased profit margins mean that delays or missed communication can interrupt production, delay shipments, increase cost, and impact sales, thereby posing serious threats to the viability of the company. The design process is iterative and collaborative, with buyers and vendors working together to get the right product at the right price point, while styles, details, sizing, and palettes create the brand look over the years, as opposed to shared components, ingredients, and subassemblies in the discrete and process manufacturing markets.
Facilitating collaboration between designers, merchants, sourcing professionals, and the factories is the first step for any PLM application. Moving away from phone calls, faxes, and e-mail strings to a centralized collaboration environment can ensure that all parties are in tune with the latest requirements. The dynamics of consumer demand, consumer fickleness, and fashion trends are what make fashion retail so complex. With thousands of stock-keeping units (SKUs) containing color, size, and attribute options undergoing multiple iterations during design and development, as well as numerous quality checks, the apparel retail industry requires a specialized PLM solution. A well-devised planning refinement process should secure the right product margin.
In order to take advantage of the price differentials associated with global outsourcing, retailers need to be extra vigilant about design changes, where the tracking of components, test results, and packaging requirements, as well as quality issues, require a PLM system to promptly alert retailers to key milestone updates and results. Also, the retail environment for PLM requires quality testing to be done throughout the product life cycle, but mostly before production even starts. The system should monitor the product progress and assure quality requirements throughout the entire process. In the retail industry, component materials, works in progress (WIPs), and finished goods can undergo a battery of sampling, rigorous testing, and rework up to the last moment before in-line production starts.
To keep deliveries on schedule, a comprehensive process and alerting system is needed to capture and communicate specification changes, test results, and potential production impacts, as well as to provide the visibility to manage materials and resources effectively. The above information and quality resolution, calendaring and status alerts, and the component library (or a growing database of approved designs and configurations or components) should all keep product development and production on track and moving toward the store floor. For more information, please see Process Manufacturing: Industry Specific Requirements and Intentia: Stepping Out With Fashion and Style.
Typically, retailers try to take advantage of traditional product design management (PDM) solutions, such as Gerber's WebPDM or Freeborder's Product Manager, to organize their production specifications. But these systems were primarily designed to integrate with cutting and piecing machinery, not necessarily to track quality testing, manage sourcing activities, unite the buying process, or maintain the official transaction details. Thus, it has been difficult, if not impossible, for such systems to produce “one version of the truth” for financial reporting and compliance with the US Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) and Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism (C-TPAT).
Nor are PLM packages for discrete and process manufacturers the right fit for retail PLM, as they are not built for the diversity of attributes, rigors of quality testing, or the inherent relationship with global sourcing, order management, and supply chain functions. Some astute apparel PLM systems enable retailers to prequalify suppliers for a particular order based on their previous work and certifications, and they grade these suppliers on the quality of new orders received (see The Next Phase of Supplier Performance Management in the Retail Industry).
While the TradeStone PLM for Retail product was described in The Future for an E-sourcing Solutions Builder, the counterpart Eqos Product Management Suite is comprised of the following four modules that manage supplier-related processes from a product-centric perspective:
1. Eqos New Product Introduction—manages the product from the specification stage through to delivery to the retailer, automating the NPDI processes and data gathering across companies to reduce time-to-market and increase launch success rates.
2. Eqos Product Information Management (PIM)—facilitates the synchronization of information both internally and externally via a centralized repository of product data and graphics information (see The Role of PIM and PLM in the Product Information Supply Chain: Where is Your Link?). This repository is the foundation of information on quality, and provides the reference point for store-specific ranges, campaigns, promotional activities, and product performance management.
3. Eqos Promotional Event Management—automates and manages the initial planning, pre-evaluation, execution, and post-event analysis of promotions, including seasonal events, product introductions, and regular consumer offers.
4. Eqos Product Performance Management—publishes product performance data to suppliers and to internal parties. Data can include sales, stock availability, forecasts, receipts, dispatches, and store range details, and it is reported at store, region, depot, or aggregate corporate levels. This module incorporates alerts, exception, and lost opportunity reporting against any metric, including expected sales, availability, and ranging parameters.
A single view of the truth should eliminate the redundancy introduced by multiple spreadsheets in need of updates, the hunt for e-mail strings, and constant re-keying of information in multiple systems. Companies should be able to harness the Internet to ease sourcing and procurement processes and to tackle the most serious problem of sourcing—the headache caused by separate systems for domestic and international buying, and the inability of smaller companies to leverage global buying platforms.
Facilitating collaboration between designers, merchants, sourcing professionals, and the factories is the first step for any PLM application. Moving away from phone calls, faxes, and e-mail strings to a centralized collaboration environment can ensure that all parties are in tune with the latest requirements. The dynamics of consumer demand, consumer fickleness, and fashion trends are what make fashion retail so complex. With thousands of stock-keeping units (SKUs) containing color, size, and attribute options undergoing multiple iterations during design and development, as well as numerous quality checks, the apparel retail industry requires a specialized PLM solution. A well-devised planning refinement process should secure the right product margin.
In order to take advantage of the price differentials associated with global outsourcing, retailers need to be extra vigilant about design changes, where the tracking of components, test results, and packaging requirements, as well as quality issues, require a PLM system to promptly alert retailers to key milestone updates and results. Also, the retail environment for PLM requires quality testing to be done throughout the product life cycle, but mostly before production even starts. The system should monitor the product progress and assure quality requirements throughout the entire process. In the retail industry, component materials, works in progress (WIPs), and finished goods can undergo a battery of sampling, rigorous testing, and rework up to the last moment before in-line production starts.
To keep deliveries on schedule, a comprehensive process and alerting system is needed to capture and communicate specification changes, test results, and potential production impacts, as well as to provide the visibility to manage materials and resources effectively. The above information and quality resolution, calendaring and status alerts, and the component library (or a growing database of approved designs and configurations or components) should all keep product development and production on track and moving toward the store floor. For more information, please see Process Manufacturing: Industry Specific Requirements and Intentia: Stepping Out With Fashion and Style.
Typically, retailers try to take advantage of traditional product design management (PDM) solutions, such as Gerber's WebPDM or Freeborder's Product Manager, to organize their production specifications. But these systems were primarily designed to integrate with cutting and piecing machinery, not necessarily to track quality testing, manage sourcing activities, unite the buying process, or maintain the official transaction details. Thus, it has been difficult, if not impossible, for such systems to produce “one version of the truth” for financial reporting and compliance with the US Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) and Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism (C-TPAT).
Nor are PLM packages for discrete and process manufacturers the right fit for retail PLM, as they are not built for the diversity of attributes, rigors of quality testing, or the inherent relationship with global sourcing, order management, and supply chain functions. Some astute apparel PLM systems enable retailers to prequalify suppliers for a particular order based on their previous work and certifications, and they grade these suppliers on the quality of new orders received (see The Next Phase of Supplier Performance Management in the Retail Industry).
While the TradeStone PLM for Retail product was described in The Future for an E-sourcing Solutions Builder, the counterpart Eqos Product Management Suite is comprised of the following four modules that manage supplier-related processes from a product-centric perspective:
1. Eqos New Product Introduction—manages the product from the specification stage through to delivery to the retailer, automating the NPDI processes and data gathering across companies to reduce time-to-market and increase launch success rates.
2. Eqos Product Information Management (PIM)—facilitates the synchronization of information both internally and externally via a centralized repository of product data and graphics information (see The Role of PIM and PLM in the Product Information Supply Chain: Where is Your Link?). This repository is the foundation of information on quality, and provides the reference point for store-specific ranges, campaigns, promotional activities, and product performance management.
3. Eqos Promotional Event Management—automates and manages the initial planning, pre-evaluation, execution, and post-event analysis of promotions, including seasonal events, product introductions, and regular consumer offers.
4. Eqos Product Performance Management—publishes product performance data to suppliers and to internal parties. Data can include sales, stock availability, forecasts, receipts, dispatches, and store range details, and it is reported at store, region, depot, or aggregate corporate levels. This module incorporates alerts, exception, and lost opportunity reporting against any metric, including expected sales, availability, and ranging parameters.
A single view of the truth should eliminate the redundancy introduced by multiple spreadsheets in need of updates, the hunt for e-mail strings, and constant re-keying of information in multiple systems. Companies should be able to harness the Internet to ease sourcing and procurement processes and to tackle the most serious problem of sourcing—the headache caused by separate systems for domestic and international buying, and the inability of smaller companies to leverage global buying platforms.
No comments:
Post a Comment