How to optimize a clothing manufacturing business

Like any business, the garment industry has its pitfalls and challenges. Managing multiple processes and staying creative at the same time seems like a difficult task. Designers must deal with a wide range of materials, find new retail markets and wholesale partners, develop new products and always stay on top of new technological trends to stay in demand. But, as you know, designers rarely become financial gurus and prefer to spend hours in the studio developing something new to manage all business processes in their company.

Fortunately, modern technology allows business owners to breathe a sigh of relief. There are many software solutions for improving the efficiency of business processes in various industries. Whether your company is an international giant with a thousand employees or a sewing workshop, there are always enough tasks to optimize.

So, let's discuss the processes that should be optimized first.

1. Optimization of preparatory activities

Creating clothes is a long process. It takes time and a huge amount of work before the end customer buys a magical dress somewhere in the mall.
Apparel manufacturers have a large amount of work to do in the pre-production phase, including sampling, raw material selection, planning, costing, and final product approval.

Using an ERP or any other customizable task management system makes it easy to keep all the information you need in one place.
For example, when choosing materials for clothing, manufacturers usually collect information such as color, description, fabric, composition, style, quantity, price, etc.

Production planners must also intelligently plan daily tasks for each department to minimize equipment downtime and meet the demands of different production lines.

So why not optimize all this data and store it in one place so you can find everything you need in just a few clicks? Moreover, if they are stored in the cloud, all the data will be available from any device at any time when it may be needed.

Storing all data in Excel spreadsheets is dangerous because the file can get corrupted at any time and you can lose all the information. Or you might make a mistake while using the formulas. Or you can waste time looking for something on several sheets. Sounds familiar, right?

Custom clothing management software can simplify many operations and save you time - from planning the purchase of materials and calculating costs and revenues to shipping orders.

2. Optimization of production processes

Making clothes can seem like an interesting job and a very creative process. But in reality, everything is complicated. Any sewing business has its own rules and standards that must be followed at every stage of clothing production. Whether it concerns cutting rules or schemes, marking or any other matter, each rule must be described in detail.

Unfortunately, a large set of rules makes it difficult to find the right information when you really need it. But if your company has a special service, you can exchange policies between departments so that each employee has his own manual.
What's more, managers can easily assign tasks and see the entire process on one page so they don't miss a single detail.

3. Optimization of the final stage of production

Optimization of the clothing business does not end after the start of all production. Now it's time for production management, including quality control, packaging, shipping, sales, etc. No matter how good your product is, you should never neglect the last step. Lost items, poor quality products or any delivery problems can seriously undermine the confidence in the production of the clothes and the quality of service in general. You must control the entire process until the product is sold and your customer is completely satisfied.