After years of squeezing the fat out of the supply chain, it’s difficult to believe that there is any left to be trimmed.  However, according to Tim Chiu, Senior Vice President at CBX Software, there’s a lot of room to make the process even leaner.

 

“It’s all about speed, scale and simplicity.  Apparel production has a long lifecycle and we’re trying to accelerate it,” said Mr. Chiu.

 

“It costs a lot to finance this lifecycle. We’re trying to shorten the cycle by removing some of the spreadsheets that many companies are still using. 

 

“Pre-production processes are the biggest opportunity to save time – and costs.  You can save about 20-40 percent end-to-end by accelerating the pre-production process.  Once you place the order and it has been shipped, you can’t make any significant gains on speed,” he said.

 

CBX Software puts a ‘control tower’ in the middle of the pre-production process to build collaboration and boost speed.

 

“We’re doing time compression, which adds speed. We’re also trying to simplify the process and to scale it.  Buyers want to do more styles and more orders, with fewer people.  CBX helps to reduce the effort needed to do this through a system that provides greater control and visibility,” said Mr. Chiu.

 

Standardization Boosts Speed

“Most companies lack standardization at the front end of the order system.  When it comes to development and specification, as well as the assortment review and selection processes, they are all very manual and non-standardized.  Quality Assurance team needs to be involved but they are using a different process.  Then there’s sourcing, order confirmation and follow up activities – the key is to improve the collaboration amongst these areas,” said Mr. Chiu.

 

One of the biggest hindrances to speed is that most companies are still relying on spreadsheets to manage these processes.  The solution is to standardize these spreadsheets, and to automate them.

 

One of the first things you see when you login to the CBX system is a ‘critical path’.  This gives everyone a view of where there might be a problem in the process. 

 

“Our system gives everyone ‘red light’ or ‘green light’ visibility said Mr. Chiu.

 

Users have a wall of messages that alert them to where there might be a problem.  It notifies them if there is something they need to act on. 

“Each person gets custom messages and it tells them what they need to do.  It let’s them drill down on what they need to work on,” said Mr. Chiu.

 

CBX uses a calendar system that provides plan dates and actual dates.  The system is planning based on a seasonal calendar and will plan out all the dates and estimate when you need to do each activity.  For each style, you can see where you are in the production process.

 

You can define how fast you want to go through the process and the calendar will calculate all the plan dates for you.  The system does this automatically.  Most companies are still using spreadsheets to manage this.

 

“CBX is like an Excel sheet on steroids, because a lot of the information that people normally have to type in is automatically filled in by CBX’s system.  The system already has the standard information for various styles or products so there’s no need for a person to have to re-enter it over and over again.   For example, if the product is a coat, CBX will automatically fill in all the standard details for coats,” said Mr. Chiu.

 

Collaboration is another key area where time can be compressed.  Since multiple departments are working on each style, CBX reduces lead times by enabling them to work in ‘parallel’.

 

Compliance Made Easier

When you enter a new style in the CBX system, the software can determine what risk level it is.  “Risk can be impacted by many things  - style, classification, the market to which it is being shipped – the CBX system will automatically figure out the critical path based on this risk.   In the case of products with special requirements, we can drop the standard into the product description section,” said Mr. Chiu.  

 

The system will know at the very beginning stage of the process what the requirements are for the product.  It will generate a checklist that will be shared with the supplier and will be tracked by the system.

 

Getting Up and Running

It takes about a year for a brand to get all of its styles for every category onto the CBX system.  However, most companies do this migration in stages.

 

“They do it in ‘chunks’ and each chunk takes about 3-4 months get on to the system,” said Mr. Chiu. 

The time and effort invested in implementing the software is more than rewarded when employees are no longer spending time entering information that now is being done automatically by the system.

 

With a much faster and more responsive system controlling the product lifecycle process, brands and retailers are able to realize cost savings that could significantly boost their margins. 

 

Now that speed-to-market is becoming the key area where ‘best in class’ companies look to improve their operations, systems like CBX are becoming the backbone of supply chain management.