Over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, many industries and the businesses within them have seen fast, fundamental changes to the way they work. This accelerated shift toward digital technologies that enable remote working has inspired business leaders to re-think how to operate efficiently, effectively and profitably.
What are the key problems in garment production?
50% – 60% of your time in pre-production
30% of your operating expenses in pre-production
Centric Software Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) can save 33% of your operating expenses which is 9.9% of your entire operation cost
Where to save 33% of operation expenses??
What Is Centric PLM’s Standing in the Industry?
Centric Software has won widespread industry recognition, along with many international industry awards, including being named one of the top 100 global companies in 2013, 2015 and 2016 by Red Herring magazine, a world-renowned technology innovation periodical known as the Bible of Silicon Valley. Centric also received various excellence awards from the world’s top consulting company Frost & Sullivan in 2012, 2016 and 2018.
Centric Software has also won many awards in China from the Chinese Fashion Industry CIO Alliance, including the “2017 Trustworthy Product Award for Informatization in the Chinese Fashion Industry”, “2019 Best PLM Solution Provider” and more.
Any Centric office in Bangladesh and how can I contact them?
Centric’s expansion into Bangladesh builds on the company’s rapid growth in Asia, with the opening of offices in Shanghai in 2014, Tokyo in 2016, Hong Kong in 2017 and Seoul in 2019. Centric Software has 80+ customers in the Asia-Pacific region, including major manufacturers such as MAS Holdings, Brandix, Hirdaramani, GAP Inc., Uniqlo, Calvin Klein, Tommy Hilfiger, PVH, Louis Vuitton, Under Armour, Regina Miracle and VT Garment.
Rifath Noweid, Sales Director in Centric Software is sailing the ship of Centric Software in Bangladesh. He comes to Centric Software with tons of experience under his belt with more than 9 years experiences in the garment technology industry, with BA Hons (UK), PGD, MBA (UK) and implemented production systems over 30 manufacturers in Sir Lanka, India & Bangladesh. A keen business management professional, startup enthusiast, with vast business analytics experience in UK, Malaysia, Bangladesh. Leading change management in Large Business Groups. Current leading tech evangelism, empowering manufacturers in SL, India & BD, towards sustainable growth. His local industry knowledge and experience gives him the advantage and makes him the best fit. He with Centric Software has massive plans to help and grow the companies in Bangladesh.
Rifath Noweid takes the time to explain how Centric Software PLM will help our Fashion & Apparel Industry in Bangladesh
- questions to answer how to save 33% of operation expenses by using Centric PLM?
Q 1. What is Centric Manufacturing PLM?
PLM stands for Product Lifecycle Management. Manufacturing PLM links everyone involved in getting a product from concept to completion on a single digital platform for improved communication, collaboration, and speed.
PLM integrates the entire business process from ideation to retail. It closely links the company’s internal and external teams, allowing all personnel across planning, design, R&D, procurement, sampling and sales to obtain accurate product data in real-time. This improves the efficiency of internal and external collaboration and accelerates the speed of product launch while effectively reducing costs.
Mobile and cloud-based PLM helps manufacturers work more efficiently without being chained to desks working on email, spreadsheets, and PDFs. Centric Software’s Silicon Valley-based teams develop and implement innovative solutions that empower OEM/ODM manufacturing companies to serve increasingly complex customer orders, reduce production time, increase productivity, improve collaboration and reduce costs to realize digital strategies. Centric’s out-of-the-box, configurable solutions are up and running in weeks, not years. Easy to use, with little IT expertise for happy, productive users.
Q 2. Where Did PLM Come From?
The concept of PLM has been in use for many years. It was first used to help manufacture physically large products, such as cars, aeroplanes and trains, which involve a large number of technical parameters, parts, details and changes to all of these. With advances in science and technology, PLM has acquired more and more functions and applies to an increasing number of scenarios.
Unlike traditional PLM solutions, Centric Software® PLM is cloud-based, with flexible configuration options and an easy-to-use interface, and launched the market’s first PLM-based mobile apps. In 2017, Centric launched a visual innovation platform for touchscreens. Centric PLM can be easily integrated with Adobe® Illustrator and numerous 3D software solutions on the market, serving industries from footwear and clothing, to cosmetics, to jewelry, to household items, and has worked with more than 1,350 brands worldwide.
Q 3. Why Is a Special PLM Solution Necessary for the Manufacturing, Fashion and Retail Industries?
The fashion and retail industries are unique in that they must quickly master emerging fashion trends and respond to market demands. However, during the process of product development, various complex SKUs (portfolio by size/color), cumbersome purchasing strategies and overlapping development calendars are often major pain points. Systems such as Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and traditional Product Data Management (PDM) cannot effectively help enterprises optimize this product development process.
To stay ahead amidst fierce competition, enterprises need powerful and easy-to-use digital technologies. Therefore, PLM solutions for the fashion and retail industry must be agile, flexible and easy to use, featuring telecommuting, rapid deployment and continuous innovation. Meanwhile, PLM service providers need to have deep insights and rich practical experience in their industry, remain constantly market-oriented and be able to provide continuous support and advice.
Today, more and more enterprises promote PLM-based digital transformation, and PLM implementations have evolved from IT projects into a major and comprehensive driver of business transformation. Whether in the field of fashion and footwear, textile manufacturing, sports and outdoor goods, home furniture, retail or other fast-moving consumer goods industries, industry-specific PLM solutions can bring comprehensive advantages.
Q 4. What Is the Difference Between PLM and ERP?
ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) manages many of the ‘back office’ aspects of business transactions such as issuing purchase orders, maintaining supplier databases and tracking inventory. PLM (Product Lifecycle Management) includes all of the iterative and creative processes that make up the elements of a product’s lifecycle and delivers a competitive advantage that ERP cannot. ERP is limited without PLM, but they work well in tandem. Which should be implemented first? Many say PLM as products begin in PLM and clean PLM data flows into ERP, thus ensuring one version of the truth.
For the fast-growing brands, retailers and manufacturers in the fashion and consumer goods industries, the two key technologies of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) have become foundational systems that provide their businesses with unique value.
The Purpose of ERP: To Manage Data After Sales Activities Have Occurred
ERP can handle a variety of information about enterprise operations, including data related to finance, accounting, distribution, human resources, customer service and manufacturing. ERP is a transactional system that can capture and report relevant data for a specified event or a certain time point. What sales channels are there? What is the current inventory in the warehouse? How many orders were processed yesterday? What was the financial situation at the end of last month? How much were the travel expenses for the last quarter?
Although most ERP systems can support a large variety of businesses, due to their transactional data structure they are unable to adapt to iterative and collaborative types of information flow, or to the product development business processes that are of the greatest importance for brands or retailers. In addition, in ERP systems, external partners are not able to directly participate in the product development process.
The Purpose of PLM: To Manage the Entire Process From Ideation to Retail
PLM focuses on the iterative, collaborative and creative processes that occur before, during and after sales: planning product series, creating and updating models, determining product costs, auditing suppliers and reviewing retail conditions.
Today, issues of brand differentiation and competitive advantage lie at the core of the product development process. How can enterprises come up with new products and inspire their design teams? How can companies increase gross profit margin by optimizing design and product development processes, or by improving procurement methods? These are precisely where the advantages of PLM lie.
Q 5. What Benefits Can Centric PLM Bring to Enterprises?
- Shorter time to market: Centric PLM shortens time to market by 15% to 50%
With simplified business processes, improved supply chain collaboration and decision-making capabilities for business teams, along with innovative applications such as 3D proofing and review processes, enterprises can bring products to market faster.
- Higher sales revenue: increases product revenue by 5% to 10%
Design, product development, purchasing and buyer teams can assess key performance indicators in real time by using visual sales planning views, including product series portfolios, supplier performance, target sales and actual sales. This allows them to make timely adjustments to their plans, improve the success rate of product launches and continue to improve sales performance.
- Higher profit margins: reduces cost of selling by 5% to 15%
Centric PLM can quickly and accurately calculate relationships between cost, profit and price changes according to set sales goals. Suppliers can be added to the supply chain collaboration process in advance, allowing global procurement to be managed in a unified manner to determine the best procurement plan and thus improving product profitability.
- Higher development efficiency: Centric PLM increases management and development efficiency by 10% to 50%
Centric PLM reduces the number of e-mails, meetings and phone calls required by an enterprise, as well as time spent searching for or updating information. Maintaining a single source of real-time factual data can increase working efficiency, allowing business teams to focus on value-added activities and core business decisions.
Q 6. What Are the Business Modules of Centric PLM?
The Centric PLM platform covers the management of the entire product lifecycle from planning to sales. Its eight business modules enable information sharing, collaborative operations and process optimization, meeting the core management needs of precision and speed that define the fashion and retail industries.
- PLM Suite
Centric PLM’s interconnected suite of modules are the digital foundation that drive efficiency and manage complexity to reduce lead times, cut costs and streamline communications so you can stay competitive and grow.
- Product Specification:
Easily import customer tech pack data and begin costing, BOMs, pattern files, marker files and input technical information including construction, packaging and labelling details.
- Materials Management:
Centralize materials libraries and track materials usage across product lines, collections and seasons. Easily update BOMs to assure quality, delivery and margins.
- Calendar Management:
Define and track tasks through forward or backward-planning calendars of your pre-production process. Managers have visibility to ensure awareness of deadlines, resolve bottlenecks, track task execution and meet all production deadlines.
- Quality Management:
Establish consistent test standards to streamline
quality control and enable safety and compliance tracking.
- Materials Sourcing:
Streamline complicated sourcing by enabling team members to compare suppliers, handle thousands of supplier proposals and track performance, status and problems.
- Merchandise Planning:
Align product plans with reality using financial planning tools to estimate and “sandbox” target margins and actual margins in response to decisions made. Gain visibility into high-level capacity planning based on Standard Minute Value (SMV)/Standard Hour Value (SMH) in order to plan production resources.
- Process Management:
Manage workload and improve productivity, responsiveness and transparency by defining a process, assigning that process to an object with Centric PLM and users or the system automatically notify the appropriate team members to move through various development steps.
- Collection Management:
Enable dynamically updated, tailor-made
collection books and catalogues that showcase products available for production.
- Final Inspection:
Maintain product quality by meeting acceptable quality levels and evaluation points for customers on a per-product basis as quality evaluation criteria are linked to original product specifications.
Q 7. What Innovative Features Does Centric PLM especially for Manufacturer?
- Tech Pack Connect
Seamlessly integrate with tech pack (need more information)
Directly connecting trusted trading partners is much faster and less error-prone than either a traditional email or spreadsheet-based approach or even relying on a supplier portal to exchange data.
The centralized tech pack information within Centric PLM enables manufacturers to receive data in a standardized, consistent format with the systematic placement of specifications and units of measure from multiple brands and retailers. Centralized, harmonized information improves workflow, increases efficiency to ensure manufacturers can rapidly adjust to changes, maintain quality and make sure no time is lost for them to deliver products on-time and to specification.
- Mobile Apps
Centric’s wide range of 15 mobile apps allows PLM to be used outside the office, helping users to capture information outside the scope of traditional systems and enabling users to work conveniently on the move. Centric’s apps include Capture It (for collecting image inspiration), Product Notes, Sample Review, 3D Sample Review, Collection Book, Fit Review, Retail Review and more.
- Adobe® Connect
Helps designers and product developers to use Adobe® Illustrator for design work within the Centric PLM environment.
- 3D Connect
This system interfaces Centric PLM with popular 3D design software (such as Browzwear, EFI Optitex and CLO) to enable rapid sample prototyping and digital fit reviews.
- AI Image Search
Centric PLM’s AI Image Search enables the high-speed visually search material, trim, colour and style libraries. searching for fabric and cutting databases, saving many hours of labour and facilitating better design and development decisions.
Creative teams in fashion and retail collect enormous amounts – sometimes millions of dollars’ worth – of digital and physical samples of materials, trims, colors and styles that serve both as inspiration for the future and as a record of the past.
Q 8. What Do Centric PLM’s Users Have to Say?
MAS Holdings, Brandix, Hirdaramani, PVH, GAP, Under Armour, Tommy Hilfiger, Calvin Klein.
- Louis Vuitton
“We chose to work with Centric Software because we share the same vision. We both have a passion for innovation.
- Fast Retailing Group
“Centric is the base of everything we do at our product innovation and design centre.”
- VT Garment
“With Centric PLMTM, we’ve reduced lead time by 7% by saving time that used to be spent organizing data. Overall, we have increased productivity by 30% because we freed up resources for action and gained visibility into timelines and activities across the whole organization”
- Brandix
“We decided to invest in a PLM solution to capture data at the source. We knew the right PLM could provide a collaborative platform for product development teams.”
- Under Armour
“Under Armour selected Centric for its team expertise and revolutionary product roadmap including the development of mobile applications.”
Want to see Centric PLM in action? Schedule a demo and see for yourself how you could make your brand more successful!
Contact us for 1:1 live demo:
Rifath Noweid | Sales Director
Email: noweidhussain@centricsoftware.com
Mobile/ WhatsApp: +880 1784-653687
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