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For running a successful business in an industry where market trends change
almost every few months, the key words are agility and tight operations control.
And nowhere is this more relevant than in the global fashion
industrycharacterized by fads and changing customer preferences, manufacturers
need to literally be on their toes in fulfilling changing demands, while keeping
a tight control on inventory.
Gurgaon-based Maestro Engineering is an upcoming fashion garment exporter,
operating in the small and medium business category for over a decade. Maestro
exports high-fashion garments to Europe, United States of America and Japan.
Being a medium garment exporter, the company was using rudimentary
applications for production planning, forecasting and merchandising to start
with. Whats more, spreadsheets were being used for inventory management.
Considering that the company was catering to a wide variety of styles along with
changes in user preferences, it was a mammoth task for the company to obtain
real-time information for making informed and accurate decisions. In short,
production planning was based more on guess estimates rather than real-time
data. More time was spent on collating information and planning rather than
actual production says Paul Deuman, Business Analyst.
But before one could deploy any systems in the company, it was imperative
that one understood the basic operation of garment exporter. The garment
business is characterized by Cuts, Make and Trims (CMT)its a process wherein
the customer supplies certain components of materials such as cuts (cuts of
fabric to be stitched along with the garment) and trims such as buttons, hooks,
zips, etc. With the existing system then, the Bill of Materials (BoM) could not
be drilled down to the level of the material required for manufacturing a
certain quantity. And this led to higher inventory levels.
Choosing the Right Vendor
While selecting the vendor, the company followed a bottoms upapproach. In
the first phase, an in-house study of various processes was done and these
processes were carefully identified and pain points documented. Once this was
completed, the management started with the evaluation of solutions that fitted
the bill.
During a six-month long evaluation process, Maestro evaluated vendors
including Ramco, SSA Global, Paridhan, WFX (World Fashion Exchange), GEAC,
Stylman and ProLogic.
Maestro eventually zeroed in on SAP primarily because SAP ERP was best for a
SME like them as it was comprehensive, with modules for sales and distribution,
order processing, manufacturing, material management and production planning
etc, which suited their needs. Another important criterion for selecting SAP is
that it allowed them to leverage existing systems, where required, adds Deuman.
As a first step in the ERP implementation, the company formed an internal
team with members drawn from the steering committee, power users and end users.
The team was also given training simultaneously with the implementation process.
The implementation was completed successfully within five months and Maestro
took the big bang route and decided on four months of implementation, and one
month of handholding and used Accelerated SAP (ASAP) to speed up the process.
They chose six key modulesSales & Distribution, Variant Configuration (VC),
Materials Management, Production Planning, Finance & Costing. The system went
live with SAP ERP in May 2005.
Benefits
Post the implementation of ERP, the companys bottom line improved. But the
most significant benefit is increase in the production window and reduction in
production wastage. Maestro successfully streamlined sales and manufacturing
process, and reduced labor costs considerably.
Stuti Das
stutid@cybermedia.co.in Page(s) 1
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