As the industry emerges from the Covid-19 pandemic, Thailand’s leading garment manufacturer, Hi-Tech Apparel ensures business stability and boosts profitability by digitizing its production planning and control processes with FastReactPlan from Coats Digital. FastReactPlan, Coats Digital’s market-leading solution, will support Hi-Tech with effective master planning across multiple factories, as well as detailed and accurate scheduling of manufacturing lines, providing a firm foundation for a faster, more efficient and agile production and delivery process.
Established in 1991, Hi-Tech Apparel Co Ltd is one of the leading garment manufacturers of Thailand, with production facilities in 10 different locations including cities in Thailand, as well as in Cambodia, Vietnam, and Laos. They manufacture a wide range of sportswear and formal wear and caters to leading brands, including Nike, Target, Warrix Sports and Joe Boxer.
The Hi-Tech team was faced with numerous challenges in their planning process which was having a huge impact on the profitability of their business. There was a lack of a centralized planning mechanism, which meant it was difficult for the team to monitor planning across multiple factories at the same time. Unanticipated issues related to critical path and material availability meant that the team had to spend a lot of time and effort firefighting, which affected the on-time start of production, delivery performance and increased air freight costs.
Hi-Tech recognised that the digital transformation of its business was essential to respond to these challenges and gain a competitive advantage in a market that is rapidly changing. In December 2020, Hi-Tech selected Coats Digital’s FastReactPlan solution to enhance control and visibility in its planning process to optimise efficiency, lead time and delivery performance.
“The Covid-19 crisis has brought unprecedented changes in the industry which affected our business as well. There is increased uncertainty and a high level of competition in the industry. So it was important for us to carefully prioritise business initiatives that provide firm foundations for a faster, more efficient and agile production and delivery process.
FastReactPlan was the answer to all our critical business needs. We wanted to quickly adapt to the best-practice planning process and improve communication and coordination across departments without wasting any time. We’re confident that FastReactPlan will enable us with sustainable improvements in our performance which is really essential, particularly in the current situation.” said Wason Vitanakorn, CEO of Hi-Tech Apparel.
The project at Hi-Tech Apparel will include detailed planning of the sewing factories using FastReactPlan’s highly visual planning board, scheduling and visualisation of load on secondary processes such as cutting and printing, dynamic planning of material requirements (MRP) as well as third party integration to a wide range of in-house business systems.
Kholchapol Chuensawang, Director (IT), Hi-Tech further commented, “Considering the rapidly changing consumer demands and increasing competition in the industry, we realised it was important to take a step forward to streamline and digitize planning, communication and coordination in and across our factories. We found that Coats Digital was the perfect partner to enable us best practice processes and digitization of production planning and control (PPC) through their solution FastReactPlan.
Earlier it was difficult for us to have visibility of planning boards of multiple factories in one place. We’re confident that FastReactPlan will enable fast, detailed and accurate planning and order confirmation process, with informed order allocation and management across our multiple factories. FastReactPlan’s master planner will allow us to manage total demand and capacity and have a consolidated picture of materials and pre-production activities across the business.”
Before FastReactPlan, the Hi-Tech team had to spend a huge amount of time and effort to solve unforeseen problems either related to material availability or pre-production critical path activities. This directly impacted the on-time start of production and the delivery performance.
FastReactPlan will help Hi-Tech to ensure that all departments have shared priorities and clear visibility of key tasks that they need to complete to achieve an on-time start of production. Alerts highlighting late events will help them take proactive actions and reduce firefighting and ultimately achieve the date of delivery as committed to the customers.
