Garment enterprises face three major bottlenecks in informatization

As one of the world's most competitive industries in China, the apparel industry's leading position has largely benefited from the extremely low labor cost advantage in China. However, as domestic prices continue to rise in recent years, when the advantage of labor costs is gradually lost, how to innovate in management models and information applications has become a problem facing us. However, as domestic garment enterprises still have bottlenecks in their understanding of information application, as well as in terms of talents and technology, the penetration rate of Information Application of apparel enterprises in China is still very low, according to the relevant survey, in terms of software application, clothing enterprises in China are still relying on the financial system, invoicing system, or wage accounting system, and the enterprise ERP system has achieved less than 10%.

Identify bottlenecks

The characteristics of the apparel industry determine that the informatization of garment enterprises is not simply about the application of software. It also involves the adjustment of enterprise management architecture and the reorganization of business processes. The advanced information management system provides an overall enterprise operation module, which contains advanced management concepts, scientific management processes, and agile IT technologies, it will guide enterprises into a standardized management operation mode. Therefore, to effectively implement informatization, enterprises should first begin with the management structure of the target enterprise as a supplier to understand how the management level is set and what functional departments are available, how many subsidiaries or franchisees are there, and then you need to understand the logistics structure of the enterprise, such as checking the rationality of each link and the required information flow. Information can be implemented smoothly and effectively only when these fundamental management architectures change their irrationality.

But in fact, the majority of clothing enterprise CEOs do not have a deep understanding of informatization, or even simply think that informatization is just a kind of behavior to buy software, rather than taking business awareness and enterprise strategy into consideration. Therefore, when selecting an information system, clothing enterprises usually focus on the price, functionality, and other factors, without considering the key aspects, for example, how to combine the enterprise's information system with its own business, and whether the information system meets the enterprise's future development strategy.

In the industry, ERP projects are often compared to "top-notch" projects. That is to say, informatization must solve not only an IT problem, but also a high level of strategic decision-making. Therefore, for garment enterprises that are about to carry out informatization construction, they must make strategic plans for their own enterprises. Only by clarifying their own development strategies, in order to know what kind of information solution is more in line with your own development needs. If an enterprise only needs Informatization for the purpose of informatization, it is undoubtedly a terrible short-sightedness. It will be strange if its informatization project fails or has no practical effect.

Talent bottleneck

In the process of enterprise informatization, compound talents are often required. They require both information technology proficiency and enterprise business process and management knowledge. However, at present, many people in the IT department of clothing enterprises are either proficient in information technology or understand business processes, this leads to a conflict between the business needs of garment enterprises and the difficulty of effectively connecting the information system. Once the information system is launched, various problems will come one after another, and the enterprise IT department staff are exhausted and hard to solve practical problems. In the long run, the business staff have insufficient confidence in the information system, this will eventually cause system implementation failure.

The main reason is that many garment enterprises do not pay attention to the training and reserve of IT department talents when they do not carry out information projects. The roles of IT department employees are equivalent to those of network administrators; after carrying out information projects, the IT department is often regarded as a technical logistics department and not fully incorporated into the entire business process design of the enterprise. Business process design is out of touch with the information system, so it is naturally difficult for information projects to realize their value.

Technical bottleneck

For many garment management software enterprises, production process management has always been a restricted area. The reason is that the style and process of the garment factory are complicated and varied, and the two-dimensional information such as color and size are involved, which makes management difficult. In this case, if real-time production data cannot be collected, the information management of the production workshop cannot be discussed.

For example, in terms of workers' wages, the vast majority of garment enterprises are still using the "flying child" invented decades ago to manage production progress and piece-rate wages; management software combined with the traditional "Flying" method only mechanically converts manual copying data into computer input, without substantial progress. There are no doubt many problems with this traditional "Flying doll" counting method. The production progress cannot be quickly and accurately reported, and it takes time to calculate workers' wages. It was not until the emergence of RFID technology that the accuracy and speed of data collection were greatly improved, and it was also possible for garment factories to collect production data in real time, in this way, the traditional "Flying" management method is completely eliminated.
 

-- Author: Liu Ronghua (Baisheng software), source: China clothing Network