Coming to the manufacturing Revolution: rebuilding a Suit

In Qingdao, Shandong province, more than 40 kilometers north of Jimo, there is a name of the company named Red Collar Street. Red Collar Group on this street, with an area of 400 acres of industrial park, the park entrance to a recruitment board, which says "Do not work overtime, 8 hours working system, Sunday rest, monthly wages higher than peer 300~500 yuan."

Open the red collar room another door, you can directly into the red collar manufacturing workshop. Because of all the visitors, their focus is on the production line of the red-collar legendary mass customization suit.

This year, red collar staff every day in the reception from all walks of life, there have been hundreds of business leaders came here to visit the Red collar production plant. Among them are Youngor, Shanshan and other domestic first-line suit enterprises, including Haier and other large manufacturing enterprises. Haier Group president ruimin that all groups must be a group of high-level visits to the red collar to study, and plans within 5 years will be Haier's production system into a "red collar" mode. CCTV "news broadcast" in May and August two broadcast on the red collar mode of coverage, now in the market even appeared to red collar tour for the name of the profit organization.

Over the past more than 10 years, the red collar has accumulated more than 2 million customized version of the data, including version, style, process and design data, suit data modeling process involves a lot of details, a change in the data will drive 9,666 simultaneous changes in data.

Therefore, in the red collar factory finished clothes hanger, although each suit are different fabrics, different styles and design, different models, but the red collar version of the design can be very accurate to modify the body curve, balance the body's own defects, personal fitness. In the red collar of the experimental factory, the production process is highly standardized, each worker in the computer terminal before the online work, with the process of industrialized production tools for customized services. Red Collar now has a jacket, shirt, trousers three customized production plant, a total of 2,800 workers, a day to complete the production of 2000~2700 pieces of custom-made suits.

CIC Securities Research reported that the first half of 2014 33 apparel industry listed companies overall operating income growth rate of 2.6%, net profit growth rate of 3.6%, the entire industry has not been out of the downturn. By contrast, the red collar Group 2014 1 ~ September production, sales, profits have increased more than 150% year-on-year.

In the past two years the clothing industry circulated a judgment that now the Chinese clothing market for a year of conservative estimates will have a scale of 400 billion yuan, and now all the inventory of enterprises to add up enough in the market for 3 years, but the red collar has achieved zero inventory. In the red collar of the production workshop hangs of every suit, are already sold out of the product, that is, you can think of every piece of clothes hanging on the hanger, can be calculated profits.

Red Collar Chairman Zhang Agent in the past 10 years to do this thing, he took the red collar from the traditional mode of production stripping out, developed directly from the customer to the production side of the C2M (customer to Manufactory) production process. "In this model, consumers express their demands directly on the platform, and manufacturers directly receive orders and meet demand, across all intermediate links," Zhang told the business value Reporter: "and this may lead to a new round of manufacturing methodology changes."

A living Factory

October 16, 2014, U.S. guests David Chon through the United States dealers booked a suit dress, the same day, British guests Rory McGouran also in the UK dealer's store ordered a set of formal attire. This is David's first custom suit, so he booked the volume of the day at noon, the entire volume of the process took 5 minutes, respectively, collected the total shoulder width, middle waist position, upper arm circumference of 19 parts of the data. And the platform's data system shows that this is the second time in the red collar system Rory custom suit, red collar data system has been saved a set of Rory data files, all about his body size without the need for mass link automatic generation.

Two guests need to the fabric pattern, color, shoulder-type, barge-type, chest bags, such as more than 10 styles to make a choice, and book their favorite lining, embroidery and fabric design details can be completed after the order, their custom data and detail requirements on the next single that moment into the red collar of the order platform. Because of the time difference, the data of the two guests on the red collar on the platform is the early hours of October 17, the Red collar factory workers are not working hours, but the red collar of the data system will automatically make automatic list of 19 data.

The Red collar production plant is more like a computer-driven organism, with a computer-identified terminal in front of each worker's station. Before the red collar workers work October 17, David and Rory's data were also completed automatically by the Red Collar Factory's automatic plate-making system.

Wang Juan is responsible for the first process of the factory production process, she needs to observe the change of orders in real time, check the more than 50 customization details of each order, and then send each guest, David and Rory, to an electronic label, respectively, for fabric, embroidery, number of buttons, button and buttonhole color, line number, etc. According to the Executive Reception center manager Zhao Jing, this electronic tag is the use of RFID RF technology, all the order data are recorded on the magnetic card, each electronic magnetic card behind are a unique customer requirements.

Red collar of the data system after the completion of version matching, will automatically transfer information to the cloth department, according to the fabric of the length and width of the ratio, calculate the most economical fabric tailoring method. Zhang June according to the terminal display of the fabric of each garment needs, just want to put their intended fabrics on the cutting bed, click to confirm, machine cutting the bed on the laser positioning method will complete automatic cutting. After the cut, Zhang June will cut the size of the fabric and the lining in the top of the hanging on the shop, the customer information attached to the electronic tags and these fabrics hang together.

David's choice of fabrics is the blue velvet face of the British fabric Scabal ' s, the lining is the blue background cartoon pattern, while Rory uses the dark gray Italian fabric Loro Piana, the lining is the orthodox gray, two person's material also began to circulate automatically between the 400 size different processes.

Each worker before receiving the clothes, all need to scan their own electronic tags, and according to the terminal display pocket, sleeve, embroidery and other process standards and data do different processing, but each terminal only their responsibilities within the required data, irrelevant data are automatically shielded by the system. Zhongyunfang's job is to sew the cuff, David's clothes flow to her when the card shows, he booked purple buttonhole line, 6 hidden blue cuff buckle, Rory is required black buttonhole line, four black cuff buckle. At the top of the Zhongyunfang, there are 7 rows of 15 different colors of thread, each of which needs to be changed according to the guest's predetermined color.

Zhou Ying is also the most interesting part of the factory, red collar custom suit in the suit lining chest position, cuffs, collars and other fixed positions can be embroidered, usually guests will choose to the left side of the chest position to retain the fabric of the brand, and the right side of the tattoo of their own words or patterns.

On the Zhou Ying Terminal, David wanted to stab "David&tina 09-05-11" in the right chest position, Rory to be stabbed "in God We Trust." Each day has a different personality of the work in the hands of Zhou Ying, she once hand a dress, book lined with "want to be a dinner with Buffett." The red collar's huge data system has all but ended up with a combination of 1 and 0. Red Collar Group Vice President Xu Fangxiao, "at present the red collar has been able to meet more than hundreds of billion models and design combinations."

So even if David and Rory and other guests do not want to spend too much time on the choice, the red collar system can also do the integration of material data management, to the material, sutures, cuffs and other complete automatic collocation. The entire custom production process consists of more than 20 subsystems similar to the Seihan system, all with data to drive the operation. In the end, all the finished suits will undergo 25 aspects of quality inspection, Wang Yuting will be based on the terminal on each customer's predetermined data, one by one to check whether the production meets the customer's detailed requirements, size and data is correct. In the red collar factory on both sides of the aisle, has been made to complete the suit hanging on the hundred meters long hanger, they are different, and some outside is a black fabric, lining is tender pink or beautiful patterns, and even the cuffs on the 8 buttons each are different colors.

Zhao Jing said, "Every suit is a story, every dress behind are very personalized guests, from their clothes can guess what kind of people behind it, or even what kind of mood to wear." "Throughout the factory, you can clearly feel the flow of information in various production links, the entire plant as if it is a living, thinking organism."

Now the red collar of the workshop has been installed in the monitoring process of high-definition cameras, customer's electronic tag every process will be clocked. Xu Fangxiao said that

"In the future, as long as the red collar to open access, the guests can be directly opened their own web page or mobile app, see their clothes progress to which process, and even know that their clothes each process is which workers in operation." ”

In the end, David and Rory's suits will be delivered to them by UPS air shipping and delivered 7 days after the order is October 24. Xu Fangxiao said, "Foreign suit customization generally takes 3-6 months."

To complete this set of procedures, Zhang agent in 10 years time. He solved not only to master the size of the guests such as height and weight data, he even mastered the preferences, personality, body changes and other customer passwords, Zhang said: "Red collar is not in fact to do a guest of a clothing, but the guests life-long clothing." ”

Ten-year methodology

Zhang Agent began to study this set of process customization methodology in 2003 years. The 1990s, the clothing industry entered the early enclosure era. The red collar, which moved to Jimo in 1995, became the first private enterprise to develop in the savage forces.

At that time, the red collar made the garment business, Xu Fangxiao is also responsible for marketing director, he remembers in 2000 years or so, as long as in a city to rent 200 square meters ~300 square meters of shops, it will be profitable, each store annual sales of 5 million ~600 million is very ordinary things. That era, people are not accustomed to using bank remittance, red Collar franchisee often carry two hundred thousand or three hundred thousand cash sitting in the red collar warehouse door, waiting for delivery, "Who can bring back the goods, who can make money." "But no one thought, Zhang Agent is in that market crazy growth era began to study customization transformation."

In the beginning of the transformation customization, the agent wants to guide the custom order Therefore, from 2004 onwards, Zhang Agent in all clothing stores to open 50 square meters of custom regions, to guide customers to experience the custom service red collar, Xu Fangxiao said, "At that time the sales effect of clothing is customized 10 times times, but Zhang agent or adhere to promote." ”

Zhang agent also tried in Qingdao Fuzhou Road and Jinan daming main door opened two custom stores, Zhao Jing said, "Every time the Chinese New year, guests are lining up to make clothes, two shops a day can produce up to 80 sets of custom-made orders." Zhang Agent has therefore a more strong confidence in the custom market.

But in the original mode is still in the stage of rising, the transition to the new model will be very difficult and painful, Zhang agent of the transformation in the beginning of the attempt to meet a lot of people around the obstacles.

At that time, red collar in the country has more than 300 sales outlets, for Xu Fangxiao, regardless of the next quarter of sales, he needs to produce hundreds of thousands of sets of ready-made garments in the warehouse, and find ways to do the shop performance. But in 2004, Zhang Agent often find Xu Fangxiao talk, ask him to control and in a certain proportion to reduce the production of clothing, gradual transformation of customization, this and Xu Fangxiao the original direction of work is inconsistent.

Red collar workers are familiar with the work of garment production, and each piece of clothing is the same craft and style. When you are proficient, you can work without thinking. So when workers are asked to take a piece of clothing each time they need to look at the details and the data, and even if each one needs to be changed, the workers are unable to accept that "they will feel the work is too complicated".

Xu Fangxiao and Zhao Jing have experienced Zhang agent led the transformation of the whole process, Zhao Jing said, "At the beginning of the transformation, almost everyone inside the enterprise do not understand, many people feel that the old man a bit of a problem, even his daughter advised him not to study this again." ”

So Zhang agent in the company in-house to do all the concept of training, but Xu Fangxiao recalls, "at that time, Zhang General meeting to decorate the task, many people surface agreed, but Zhang always left after the beginning to say this matter is not reliable, began to delay and refused to implement." But Zhang agent if found a thing, will be a very stubborn person, he is again and again to do all the mobilization, insist the whole company to carry on.

At the source of customization needs to solve the problem is the volume, Agent Zhang Please come to a more than 40 years experience of the old master to come to training. But two months have passed, but no one has learned. The old master said to Zhang, the volume is mainly by words and deeds, can not be accelerated. However, if the volume method can not be simple and accurate, customization can not be mass-produced. Zhang agent reluctantly began their own research. He drew a human figure on the paper with his pen and found the shoulder end in person, shoulder neck point, seventh cervical point, and in the middle waist to draw a horizontal line, it formed a 3.1 lines of "coordinate volume method", only need a tape and a professional shoulder inclinometer can complete 19 parts of the measurement, 5 minutes to complete.

After finding this method, Zhang agent for 6 days in succession to the company personnel training. Zhao Jing said, a period of time before Zhang agent for the company has a round of full body training, Zhang agent want to let red collar everyone learned, even drivers, canteen chefs, door security to learn. But then because the information transmission is not smooth, custom promotion is also difficult. Guests in the store orders, staff to see backstage data show that the fabric is enough, but because other stores at the same time, often to the backstage, fabric is not enough, must cancel part of the order. But some guests for a formal occasion to set clothes, if the temporary change of fabrics must be too late, that period of time red collar received a lot of customer complaints.

Zhang agent said, "At that time to do customization, there is no information system support there is no way to do, so also be forced helpless, began to study information." ”

2003, ERP system began to promote in the enterprise, but red collar want to do the model, domestic enterprises to provide ERP can not be used directly by the red collar, so Zhang agent had to set up their own organization within the Department of Information, from the beginning more than 10 people slowly to dozens of people, has been doing hundreds of people, Gradually according to the red collar business process and demand a little bit of development.

In the information system is still groping stage, Zhang agents want to implement the production line of custom, he put the details of each order to write on paper, each worker in the work before the need to find data on paper, then because the paper is very easy to break, Zhang agent replaced by a long cloth. At that time, one hundred or two hundred data and details were written in code, but because the code is handwritten, such as the number 6 and the letter B, the number 9 and the letter Q and other codes are very easy to confuse, so often a process problems, the whole custom suit needs to rework. Xu Fangxiao said that

At that time, the regular information department had just been working overtime for half a year, but the end result had to be completely abolished, and all the information departments were very tired.

The agent then tries to purchase the specialized platform and equipment of the pipelined customization system, even try to find a German manufacturer to buy hanging system, or even to find foreign specialized logistics system, but there is no mature system can be used directly, Zhang agent on their own investment, a collection of dozens of people began to do hanging system, Build customized platform.

Xu Fangxiao recalls, that period of time, Zhang agent in the factory has fixed work station, every day stay in the factory do research, do not participate in all external activities, even once Jimo mayor came to red collar, please he did not come forward. He often took a notebook, in the workshop to assemble a bunch of people to meet, decorate a certain line needs to adjust, often from 9 o'clock in the morning until the evening 11 o'clock. Zhang agent called the Red Collar Factory "experimental factory", there is a large to data processing, custom process logic, small to how to hang the line and not easy to fall, and even store materials, trademarks of the rotatable lockers, all of which are Zhang agent of their own experiments and produced.

From the initial dozens of-person test group to an assembly line, and then extended to the entire factory operation, Xu Fang Xiao impressive structural adjustment has been at least five or six times. From 2003 until the end of 2013, the Red Collar factory has been fully formed. Over the years, Zhang has invested 260 million yuan in his own funds. Zhang agent in 10 years time to complete is not only the production system changes, but from the front-end sales operations, corporate governance, the company's organizational structure, as well as the production system and other aspects of the overall transformation.

Mr Zhang said, "in the past 10 years, the red collar retained clothing sales in order to support the construction of the custom system, and now the mission has been completed", until now, red collar only more than 100 clothing sales outlets, and Zhang Agent plan within 24 months, the entire transformation of the enterprise customization. "

After experiencing the 10-year process, Zhao Jing said,

"To do something, you have to have a personality paranoid, and it's not surprising that Zhang can make it happen." Now no one in the enterprise against Zhang Agent's decision, he joked, "I spent 10 years to move their sons and daughters, they are now the most supportive of my people." ”

The direction of China's manufacturing industry

Zhang agent in business for decades has been doing homeopathic things. The 1980s is the first wave of social and economic development at the beginning of reform and opening-up. Clothing business is hot, and Qingdao Jimo clothing wholesale market became the largest clothing market in northern China at that time. Early "through the East", in the northeast dozen furniture Zhang Agent also in this wave of return to the waves, began from Guangxi Shishi and Zhejiang Wenzhou to sell clothing to Shandong, and later to save the cost of starting their own production.

1987, Zhang Agent to Guangzhou Purchase, contact with the forefront of China's market economy, he saw the streets everywhere "XX Joint venture Limited" logo, began to inquire about the "joint venture" in the local benefits. 1989, Zhang Agent and Taiwan in the Lacey joint venture set up Qingdao Sista Garments Co., Ltd., and as the general manager, the company is also the predecessor of the red Collar. Zhang Agent also made full use of the Government for joint venture policy, tax exemption, rent subsidies and other preferential conditions, 1989, Lacey 60% of township Enterprises tax revenue from Zhang Agent "Sista", and that year, Zhang agent already has tens of millions of assets.

1989, as the first group of newly rich private entrepreneur representatives, Zhang Agent followed a delegation to Europe to visit the study for 27 days. In the BMW Custom workshop, Zhang Agent saw the production line of the car is different. After the painting process, some of the body is black, some blue, the Germans told him, paint production line can be replaced by orders to different colors. This is a great inspiration to Zhang agent, but Zhang Agent thinks, "BMW workshop production methods and procedures have problems, relying on people to move, people carry, people do, not likely to big."

Then Zhang Agent visited a garment customization enterprise in Japan, in that era, has been using laser cutting bed, the use of computer automatic design and playing board, which also let Zhang Agent initiation of industrial means to do custom clothing ideas. Zhang agent often said that they believe is "read million books, travel thousands of miles," but Xu Fangxiao that the more important is actually savvy, the visitors to the study of the peer, only Zhang agent of a person on the custom has feelings.

Zhang Agent final transformation of the determination also originates from "forced helpless", since entering the garment production field, Zhang Agent and brother Zhang Daixin together Operation Enterprise, Zhang agent responsible for production, Zhang Daixin responsible for marketing. June 2000, Zhang Agent complied with the tide of shareholding system transformation, completed the shareholding system transformation, Zhang Daixin left the red collar, fought to the fiery ground industry. Younger brother career change, Zhang agent needs to deal with the market sales process. At that time, if you want your brand in the market to get a good position, you have to deal with the relationship through the various channels, Xu Fangxiao said, "At that time, the annual process of dealing with the channel cost of two hundred thousand or three hundred thousand".

But Zhang Agent's character is just hope everything does not ask, with the production and market contradictions continue to intensify, Zhang Agent can only open up a road to themselves, began to consider from the garment to custom mode of transformation. In fact, the red collar began the rapid development of the era, there are a large number of production of suit manufacturers appear, 1978 ~2005 years, the Chinese apparel industry appeared three men's clothing gangs, known as Shandong Help, Zhejiang and Guangdong Help.

Shandong help many originated in the Jimo wholesale market to Red collar, a Connaught, good things for the three giants, and Zhejiang to help appear the first echelon of China's brand Youngor, shirts and so on, Guangdong Help for the Hundred Shield, Rui Bao Li and other brands. But after more than 10 years of crowded competition, many suit brands are beginning to become unknown, and even immersed in the apparel industry generally encountered inventory problems, but the red collar with this 10 ahead of the completion of the future production mode of exploration and transformation.

During the 2008 economic crisis, the clothing industry also spent the most difficult year, in order to rob limited foreign trade orders, mutual price, but the red collar in 2008, but raised 30%, became the biggest price increase in the year, Xu Fangxiao said, "in all the production of garments are forced to transform customization, Red collar becomes the only enterprise that can do mass customization. ”

Zhang agent has always believed that low-cost, low price is not the direction of manufacturing, only profits, will have the impetus and resources for innovation, will bring about sustainable development, "I not only to earn money, but also to my upstream and downstream are earning money, so that is sustainable business." "The Red Collar in New York's first partner, now every year's profits are tens of millions of dollars, this is to let Zhang agent very happy things." In his view, including making employees work overtime is not sustainable, now within the red Collar group, in addition to the executive and it, the electricity Business Department staff, production departments are standard 8-hour work system, to the end of the time to power off.

Before 2013, custom clothing already occupied 60% of the red collar capacity, most orders from the red collar overseas agents, of which the United States accounted for 60%, Europe accounted for 30%, domestic only 10%, of which New York is the first red collar market. But Xu Fangxiao said that the Chong's domestic orders have grown rapidly this year, with domestic orders expected to be almost tied to foreign markets by the end of 2014.

Until now, the red collar orders are still mainly from the foreign agents to do OEM services, rely on Europe, the United States and other agents to take orders, and then in the red collar factory production, but red collar is to achieve a direct and effective c2m platform, which is red Collar group Operations Manager Lihai is now doing. Lihai introduced the way, "such as red collar of the C2M platform after the line guests can directly through the agent orders, can also be completed online directly, online volume, or even directly through the network and red collar staff interaction. ”

But now, Zhang agent for his once difficult reform is always a stroke, he wants to build even not only for all the custom clothing system. He has a grander plan, "These 10 years, the red collar is in an industrialized way to create a mature model, the entire manufacturing system methodology and hardware and software have formed a system, and this methodology can be copied to all walks of life, to transform the entire manufacturing industry."

He hopes to use the methodology of personalized production, as well as values to transform other manufacturing enterprises, subversion of all the information asymmetry of the business model, and Zhang agent and red Collar as a solution to provide a platform. 1776, Watt invented the steam engine, the human into the steam age, 1896, Ford produced the first four-wheeled car, the original inefficient, fragmented production process into a pipeline. Zhang deputy said, "and now 100 years later, the new industrial Revolution is the use of industrial manufacturing efficiency to produce personalized products." ”

"I don't have anything to do with money," said Zhang. He has been on the Forbes list in 2008, and he wants to go a step further and change the rules of the manufacturing game. "Take your destiny in your own hands" is an agent's understanding of the Internet industry, and change becomes less distant when the possibilities for future manufacturing change come out of a doer's mouth.

What supports the "Red collar mode"?

"Clothing Version" is the traditional clothing customization process, the most test of the tailor's skill steps. The costume design drawing out the pattern, then according to the version of the picture cut cloth, and then further sewing, the success of a garment more in detail depending on the tailor's version of experience. For example, different fabrics have different scalability, in the waist line on the request that the tailor can make accurate judgments. Another example of sewing process and the way different, the version is naturally different.

Red Collar Group in the workshop has no tailor and play version of the master, and no one on the sewing technology for real-time guidance, but the assembly line of each worker are sewing different clothes, styles vary, but orderly. And from the next single to production, each dress only need 7 days practice, within 2 weeks can be sent to the hands of the next single. Behind this set of systems is the red collar IT department of its own research and development of intelligent Production Management System (hereinafter referred to as "intelligent system").

Red Collar IT department has 30 people, is divided into electric business, software development, transportation and maintenance of hardware four groups. Which, electric business group of 10 employees to develop and operate the red collar of their own electric business platform, red collar advocates to c2m business model custom clothing, that is, the customer to Manufactory, that is, the factory under the customer's personalized orders for production, the electric business platform is the red collar contact with the most front-end customers. The Software development team is responsible for the intelligent production management system, according to the previous site, the red collar production automation ratio to the optimal.

When customers fill out or select their own volume information on the Electronic Business website, curvier information and style technology information and other data, the Electronic Business platform backstage Intelligent system will be submitted according to customer data, automated comparison of CAD specifications table, clothing and other data, the output of customer size, specification number, clothing film, nesting map, Production process Guidance book and order BOM and other standardized information, the personalized information into standardized data. At the same time, the Web page will be displayed to customers a 3D model, through the model customers can be three-dimensional, meticulous observation of style color, detail design, fabric material and so on.

After that, the intelligent production management software splits the suit at every point in the design process, and distributes it to every worker, such as sewing sleeves and collar workers, who can receive different design requirements and different process instructions for their sleeves and collars, independently. Finally, a number of workers are made of the garment after stitching, through express delivery within 7 days to the hands of the global customers.

This system by the Red Collar Chairman Zhang Agent design, IT department of their own research and development, not only can replace a large number of artificial, but also can intelligently assign tasks to workers, so that the production line to maintain efficient use.

Intelligent Deployment Line

The intelligent system can push the appropriate orders to the workers according to the skill level and workmanship of each worker. For example, some workers are suitable for sleeves, but are not good at collar, the system will sew the sleeve to the former, such as a button needs to sew 200 stitches of the complex process, you can push to the experienced veteran staff. The faster the production turnover of clothing, the higher the production efficiency, the lower the cost of the workshop. The different production content is distributed to the worker rationally, the worker's working hours accumulate more earn more, the reworks of the workshop is also low.

The Industrial Engineering Department of the workshop has made a lot of adjustment to the production line, and the traditional workshop must produce a fashionable garment at the same time, and the old style of the line will be cleared before the new production can be carried out. In the red Collar Workshop, every garment on the production line is different, the intelligent system will provide the Industrial Engineering department with the whole workshop production line flow information, Industrial Engineering department According to these data, see the imbalance of the production line, determine which workers idle, which workers the highest efficiency, balance the whole line, Arrange every worker in every production line.

Clothing orders to the factory should match these arrangements so that all workers have to work and avoid waste. Production line balance requires a clear understanding of the worker's ability to produce, intelligent system in order, the Industrial Engineering department will put each worker's skill level and hours into the system ahead of time, the specific situation of the worker has been evaluated during the probation period, such as how long it takes to make a garment to nail a sleeve. This information co-ordination will generate a scheduling report, industrial engineering departments at any time to monitor this report temporarily adjusted, if a worker can go to the toilet 2 minutes, industrial engineering will directly transfer production to other workers to complete.

The production line and the efficiency of the workers were mobilized at high speed, and the cost of mass customization clothing is only 1.1:1, that is, a common version of the clothing cost of 100 yuan, the red collar production of a fully conform to a body-style characteristics and style of clothing only need 110 yuan, and the entire factory has no inventory, Cost is greatly reduced. The intelligent system adjusts the production line so that the worker does not waste 1 minutes in 8 hours working time, the red collar workers not only never work overtime, but also pay 20% higher than the similar enterprise staff.

In addition to intelligence and automation, this system also has self-renewal learning ability. As more and more orders gradually enter the system database, the data is increasing, the system learning value and experience accumulated more and more, the intelligent system becomes smarter.

Traditional clothing customization After the publication, Craft sewing and every point should pay attention to something, actually need to play a version of the teacher told workers. But now the teacher does not, this process requires the system to intelligently tell the workers, the system to learn more order data will become smarter, especially in some customization of special cases. What does a hunchback do with a costume customization? The first time the system receives processing information, and the second time it encounters a similar order, it evolves its process based on the feedback from the last customer. The intelligent system captures these laws and data and forms a system to help the customized system refine every tiny process.

Loading data into the system

For customers to order, intelligent systems, pipeline production of these three steps, data plays an important role.

2003, the red Collar began to accept custom-made clothing orders, the 2008 5 years accumulated a lot of data, accumulated more than 1 million custom order data, Red Collar Chairman Zhang Agent felt that the accumulation of data standardization is a direction. In the 5 years 2008 years ago, the custom production model has never been able to break through the old model of "customer description-word Transfer-tailor-make-production". Traditional production mode in the process of customization of the shortcomings is easy to make mistakes, the text described to the workshop, the workers often understand the wrong clothes do not fully made customers want to look.

Red Collar The original information system has only one ERP management software, financial software is very simple. The only few employees in the IT department are hardware maintenance, server maintenance, and system maintenance, not the IT systems they have developed.

The 2008 red collar began to really use technology to achieve the idea of data standardization of Zhang Agent. In the face of millions of orders, the IT team first sorted out all the data, including technology, materials, production, etc. In the process, by a group of skilled old Masters to explore business rules, such as, different fabrics cut how many to the workshop is the most suitable, different fabrics fine cutting differences, some specific sewing technology such as "tilt shoulders" to how to do it.

But how do you describe the text of these personalized requirements? First of all, customers want custom styles are different, special pockets, suits lining, or even a buttonhole; second, the size is also disorderly, each person's length and sleeve length and bust pocket different. Not to mention the different manufacturing processes and techniques.

As a result, IT departments and business departments have been looking for experts who specialize in data research, for the intelligent System data modeling, a suit in the style of the description point about more than 300, red collar set out by "English + Letter + number" composed of 16-bit coding, in this process of the unimportant data screening, Important data filtered out. So, by string, you can understand the composition of this garment, different expressions naturally translated into a standardized language, the factory's material storehouse and the CAD cutting place are clear, the quality Inspection department sees this code to know the meaning, the suit quality inspection department probably has 10 person, each person can inspect at least 120 pieces each day. The most important thing is to send accurate information to workers, workers do not have to consider a piece of clothing overall production, as long as the information on the intelligent system to complete the work on hand.

Each bundle on the piece of RFID chips, workers get these are about to sew the film, first scan the computer terminal, see the display code to know how to deal with these raw materials. This string of code is the process guide. Red collar more than 3,000 employees, everyone has a small computer, probably spent more than 2 years to universal computer. The ordinary production execution system is not unusual in the domestic market, but because the red collar is in the assembly line makes the custom clothing, the ordinary system can carry the information to be limited, cannot the customization need realistic style, the material and the size and so on the detail unfolds. Unlike a simple production execution system, the red collar is not for piecework, but for balancing production lines and telling workers about the process. Customization of the design of personalized things more, so the process guidance is very important. (The full text will be published in the "Business Value" magazine December the cover of the new issue, reporter Liu Meiqi, the network first Titanium media, there are cuts)

(Responsible editor: Mengyishan)