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Sabina improves capacity planning and pre-production control using FastReactPlan

The well-known Thai lingerie brand and manufacturer increases productivity across all departments to support growth and a sustainable future

Established for 50 years, Sabina Fareast Co., Ltd is currently one of the top 3 largest lingerie manufacturers in Thailand. Sabina produces premium products for internationally famous brands such as Bravissimo, Debenhams, Panache, and La Senza.

Then in 1970, the team launched their own underwear brand ‘Sabina’ which since 2003 has grown and continues to grow rapidly. Recently, Sabina’s own brand has expanded its market share and is now distributed throughout the ASEAN region.Sabina and its subsidiaries now employs more than 4,000 people and produces 10 million pieces per year.

  • Blue icon of a sewing machine Production capacity – 10 million pieces per year
  • Blue globe icon Thailand
  • icon label

The challenge

The ever changing needs of the fashion industry, the competitive market and the goal to improve service and delivery, were all key reasons why Sabina needed a solution. In 2008, they bought Coats Digital’s FastReactPlan to help develop their processes, helping the company to focus on enhancing their planning system and that brought overall better processes from upstream (raw material), through middle stream (production) to downstream (shipment delivery).

However, by 2012 Sabina faced two new challenges; first, minimum wages across Thailand increased by 40%, and then by another 30% in the upcountry provinces the following year pushing up production costs. Secondly, the increasing proportion of their own brand sales meant an increase in workload for material sourcing and product development teams.

The solution

Sabina asked Coats Digital’s FastReactPlan Thailand team to review their process and offer suggestions on how FastReactPlan could help with the latest challenges that they faced. A continuous improvement project was launched to provide Sabina with the latest FastReactPlan Critical Path tools, full interfaces with their in-house ERP system and a report designer to speed up communication reducing the reliance on email, telephone and spreadsheets.

Khun Vachirawan Yamsri, Production Director at Sabina commented FastReactPlan enables our planners to highlight overloads and balance group capacity so we can offer realistic shipment dates to the merchandising team and clients when they first place their order. This has helped us to reduce fire-fighting, late hours and any weekend work. We have been able to reduce overtime costs by 30% .”

“The biggest benefit for us is that Critical Path or T&A (e.g. lab dip and bulk approvals) plus pre-sewing operations (e.g. material issuing, cut, print, embellishing and mould) are all link to sewing plan. This means that FastReactPlan is the only source of data that allows us to see the whole story for all orders across our 5 factories.”

Khun Vachirawan Yamsri,
Production Director, Sabina

Khun Vachirawan Yamsri added: “The software solution has also helped us to foresee any potential problems in the forward plan, allowing us to solve any issues by adjusting the plan in advance to minimise fire-fighting, i.e. if there is a possible issue from a knock-on effect like material delay or lab dip approval, FastReactPlan’s transparency allows management to clearly see the issue, analyse it and make a final decision quickly. It has also helped us to reduce frequency of production meetings from every week to 1 every 3 weeks.”

Miss Haruethai Phalaseem, Business Development Manager at FastReactPlan concludes “Sabina’s strong project team have worked alongside our own team to integrate the FastReactPlan system into their whole business process. The merchandising and purchasing teams update the important Critical Path activities within their in-house ERP system, which in turn imports daily to FastReactPlan. The remote factories also update the latest production status into the FastReactPlan system. The planners are now able to see the whole story, and in turn make a better and more accurate plan. As part of the project, we have also worked on KPI measurements through a monthly review to help Sabina’s continuous improvement program. Their performance to plan is more accurate, now averaging 85-90%. This means they are far fewer last minutes surprises and the whole team more confident with the plan and report they receive.”

 

“All updates are now made in FastReactPlan or in our ERP, and both systems are interfaced so that they work together to share updates. Planners are also now able to focus on following up other departments. By using FastReactPlan we have been able to eliminate a lot of excel spreadsheets.”

Khun Suwanna Rattanachankul,
Planning Manager, Sabina

Khun Tayakorn Singtong, Planner at Sabina also reported that “Now all the key information is in FastReactPlan, it’s very easy to generate reports and this has saved me a lot of time; production meeting reports now take 1 hour a week rather than from 4 hours a week.”

“Linking FastReactPlan to our ERP system has also helped us improved the usage of our in-house ERP system. FastReactPlan gets more people looking at and using the data. As a result, the system has improved data visibility and integrity, and we have also developed several enhancements in our ERP.”

Khun Suphonchai Phoonsawat,
System Analyst, Sabina

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