High Fashion Shortens Order Time by 50% with FastReactPlan

The Challenge – Manual planning processes proved exceptionally time-consuming and a lack of overall plan visibility meant it was difficult to accommodate change requests related to quantity, colour, style variations or new delivery date expectations on the production floor.

Prior to implementing FastReactPlan, High Fashion faced significant challenges due to a rapidly changing global industry landscape and more demanding customer expectations.

With all its vital capacity planning and production information siloed across different departments, the company lacked the accurate visibility into capacity availability it needed to respond quickly and effectively to new demands for smaller, more complex order or higher efficiency expectations regarding productivity outputs and production costs.

Jinlan Ding, Master Planner, High Fashion/Dali China Limited, explained:  “A few years ago, we collected capacity and configuration data in Excel spreadsheets from each business unit to generate our Cost-to-Make (CM) quotes for each product. We also relied on this data to plan and schedule our production lines.  Not only was this process exceptionally time-consuming for our capacity planners, but we also found it difficult to accommodate change requests related to quantity, colour, style variations or new delivery date expectations on the production floor.”

The Solution: Optimised planning efficiencies and single-source visualisation of the whole production line meant that each department could work in synergy to achieve the seamless management of the entire production process.

Following the implementation of FastReactPlan, High Fashion quickly benefited from access to business-critical real-time planning and production information from the same, single, digitised source.  The enhanced data visibility consequently fostered closer alignment and seamless collaboration across all levels of the organisation, enabling planners to create accurate Cost-to-Make (CM) quotes based on actual capacity availability, and greater flexibility to manage more diverse orders and style change requests quickly.

 Kathy Zheng, General Manager, High Fashion, said “Due to rapid changes across the whole fashion industry, we needed a strong technical partner that could help us digitally transform our entire business. Changes to order requests have significantly increased over the past few years – demanding prompt adjustments in capacity and production line planning and a total alignment between merchandising, purchasing and production departments. FastReactPlan has helped us achieve this by not only optimising our planning efficiencies, but also by providing single-source visualisation of the whole production line so that each department can work in synergy to achieve the seamless and precise management of the entire production process.”                      

The Challenge – Under- or over-utilisation of machines and production lines resulted in lost business, costly overtime hours and unnecessary firefighting on the factory floor.

Due to a lack of real time capacity and planning data to work from and incorrect assumptions regarding machine availability, inventory and production time requirements, the planning teams at High Fashion found that there were often significant errors in the production plan which resulted in lost orders, poor delivery performance and unnecessary overtime or outsourcing costs.

The Solution – FastReactPlan provides the overarching visibility needed to foresee potential problems way in advance.

FastReactPlan has consolidated the organisation’s capacity and scheduling plans into one easily accessible and highly visual platform which has enabled all relevant teams to see the production qualities and capacity availability of each factory more intuitively. Having access to real-time planning data across the business has revolutionised its operations, empowering faster decision-making and enhancing customer satisfaction. Since its adoption of FastReactPlan, High Fashion has drastically shortens the time it takes to confirm customer orders by 50 percent; improved overall capacity planning efficiencies by 10 percent and boosted its production line efficiencies by 5-10 percent.

Miaofeng Que, IT Director, High Fashion/Dali China Limited, observed: “Because of under- or over-utilisation of machines and production lines, we sometimes didn’t have the capacity visibility or flexibility we needed to confidently meet peak season order demands, resulting in lost business, costly overtime hours and unnecessary firefighting on the factory floor.”

Boris Lu, Customer Success Manager, Coats Digital, stated “We are thrilled that Coats Digital has successfully played such an important role in the digital transformation of High Fashion’s business processes.  High Fashion is one of the premier fashion companies in Hong Kong, and we are delighted that it is continuing to enjoy such fantastic results since its adoption of FastReactPlan. The solution has positively impacted all areas of the business and we very much look forward to supporting High Fashion to continue to drive efficiencies, profitability and best-practices as it pushes the boundaries of innovation on their journey towards manufacturing excellence.” 

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.