As well as slashing monthly capacity planning time from 3 days to 1, FastReactPlan has helped Cerie International introduce best practice processes as part of its expansion into Vietnam
Coats Digital is delighted to announce that following the implementation of Coats Digital’s FastReactPlan solution, leading Chinese Original Design garment manufacturer, Cerie International, has realised a 10% improvement in OTDP; reduced its monthly capacity planning time by 67%; eliminated unnecessary staff overtime costs and significantly improved production efficiencies, as a result of its planning team’s full visibility into possible challenges early on. The company initially chose FastReactPlan to enable it to implement best practice processes and significantly increase capacity at a new production facility in Cambodia, as part of its international expansion programme.
With 29 years of experience in the garment industry, Cerie International Limited is recognised as a leading OEM & ODM garment manufacturing specialist in underwear, activewear and loungewear, and offers services from design and product development to sampling and manufacturing. Headquartered in Hong Kong, Cerie International owns three production sites in China, Vietnam and Cambodia and serves leading brands in the USA and Europe.
Prior to implementing FastReactPlan, Cerie International relied on manual processes via Excel, email and telephone calls to co-ordinate and manage its capacity planning programme. With important information siloed in multiple sources, planning proved time-consuming, inaccurate and inefficient. As a result, capacity management and line planning teams lacked the pinpoint accuracy required to respond to a customer change request quickly.
With a lack of full visibility of production lines, as well as insufficient data to make business-critical decisions, management and planning teams consequently found that capacity was often over-booked or under-booked, causing late deliveries and unnecessary staff overtime costs.
Mr Paul Lau, Production Director, Cerie International said: “Having all the key information in one system instead of many Excel files greatly reduces the workload for our planning teams. It also means that plans are more accurate and that our planners can spend more time optimising production schedules. This has given us greater control over our ex-factory dates and significantly reduced the amount of firefighting we consistently had to undertake. In a nutshell, FastReactPlan supports our business improvement process by providing visibility and coordination that minimises errors and highlights potential problems quickly, so that challenges can be immediately rectified before they become an issue.”
FastReactPlan, standardised PO, colour and delivery level visibility is now available across all departments, establishing one version of the truth throughout the business and a single source of all information for better-informed decision making.
Mr Paul Lau, Production Director, Cerie International added: “Despite the ever-increasing pressure for shorter lead times, style complexity and smaller order sizes, FastReactPlan has enabled us to run optimum levels of operational efficiencies and improved our ‘on time delivery’ (OTDP) times by 10% to date.”
All departments are now using FastReactPlan to create accurate, real-time reports and daily activity priorities, including KPIs, all of which are readily available for all departments to see. As a result, Cerie International has slashed its monthly capacity planning and reporting time down from three days to one – a 67% time-saving in updating and adjusting its capacity planning time.
Mr GuoFang Shen, Planning Manager, Cerie International said: “I was involved throughout the whole process of this project from the kick-off until Go-Live. We were greatly impressed at how professional the Coats Digital team were and its international expertise with regards project management and best practice planning processes were second to none. They also provided the ideal combination of excellent guidance and superlative training in Chinese and English.
“With FastReactPlan, we can plan around problems effortlessly and ensure we create the most effective schedule with just a few drags and drops. FastReactPlan has given us full integration with our ERP system to coordinate plans with the real-time status of available fabrics and materials. This has helped us to identify any potential problems and react quickly. We are also now able to quickly generate reports on any order status and analyse KPI performance on items such as the generation of production planning summaries which can be created within 10 minutes.”
As well as being certified to produce Global Recycle Standard (GRS), Recycled Claim Standard (RCS) and Organic Content Standard (OCS) certified materials, Cerie International’s Cambodia production facility has also been awarded gold label certification from the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), as part of its ’s Low Carbon Manufacturing Programme, for its efforts in reducing Green House Gas Emissions across its operations.
Michael Li, Project Manager, Coats Digital, said: “We are delighted that Cerie International has realised significant benefits as a result of adopting FastReactPlan, and that we have been able to help establish robust best practice planning processes across its new facility in Cambodia. The solution has provided greater visibility and one version of the truth for core sewing planning, so that all relevant departments can communicate easily to eradicate problems quickly, and we look forward to working with Cerie to help it achieve its global expansion goals with the support of a resilient digitisation programme.”
About Cerie International
With 29 years of experience in the garment industry, Cerie International Limited is recognised as the leading OEM & ODM garment manufacturer specialising in underwear, activewear and loungewear. We pride ourselves on the ability to deliver a wide array of quality products. Headquartered in Hong Kong, the group owns three production sites.
Our team of dedicated professionals work closely together to offer services from design and product development, sampling to manufacturing. This one-stop-shop service would enable speed to market products, providing important leverage for our competitive customers.
About Coats Digital
Coats Digital is the leading digital transformation partner for the fashion supply chain, powering sustainable processes and high value insights through connected technologies. We leverage deep industry and technology expertise to help brands and manufacturers optimise, connect and accelerate business critical processes from design and development to method-time-cost optimisation, production planning and control, fabric optimisation and shop floor execution. Used in over 3,000 factories globally, our unmatched end-to-end apparel, footwear and textile software and SaaS solutions improve agility, speed to market, efficiency, transparency and sustainability. Coats Digital – transform with intelligence. coatsdigital.com. Coats Digital is the software business of Coats Group, the world’s leading industrial thread company and a trusted industry player.
About FastReactPlan
FastReactPlan is developed exclusively for the fashion, textile and apparel industry and can be configured in multiple ways to reflect industry best practice and specific business requirements.
FastReactPlan is the market-leading apparel production planning software solution, supporting a faster, more reliable order confirmation process and production plan which is optimised for delivery, speed and efficiency.
The highly visual, flexible ‘drag and drop’ approach to planning allows effective master planning across multiple factories, as well as fast, detailed and accurate scheduling of manufacturing lines/machines. Critical pre-production activities and material requirements are dynamically driven by the latest plan on a LEAN ‘just in time’ basis, supporting the reduction of inventory and lead times.
