Made in USA Software Providers Predict a Bright Future
While you won’t hear much about it from today’s politically-charged mass media, look closely and you will discover something of a renaissance taking place in apparel and sewn products manufacturing. A growing number of wholesale brands and retailers are leveraging the patriotic symbolism of their decision to re-shore some or all their production back to the USA. But many other measurable financial and operational benefits are also fueling the growing trend of producing products closer to market.
Drivers for Made in the Americas
Fashion and other consumer goods industries have undergone tremendous disruption in recent years. The days of mass production and limited SKU’s (small numbers of large production orders) have given way to a fast and complex marketplace where consumers expect to shop a wider and more innovative selection of products, in-store or online, and take delivery nearly instantly - all on their terms. With the internet changing virtually everything, even more stable business-to-business sewn product manufacturers are challenged in many of the same ways.
Not only are today’s consumers in charge, but they are also more interested and knowledgeable about where and how products are made. They are more sensitive to manufacturers legal and social compliance, working conditions and pay practices, and the sustainability of resources and processes.
Suddenly, the importance of managing smaller (even single unit) orders, efficient replenishment, streamlined deliveries, and other growing mandates has companies rethinking the role of manufacturing closer to their home markets. Even as production costs remain central to success, a growing number of companies are recognizing the many benefits and competitiveness of manufacturing in the USA and the Western Hemisphere.
What’s Needed to Bring Manufacturing Back?
Apparel was among the first industries to be lost to offshore manufacturing in a massive shift to low-wage countries that began forty or more years ago. Today, only about 3% of consumption is domestically sourced but the industry is starting to recover.
While nobody expects a return to historic levels, the domestic industry is showing small but measurable signs of recovery. Data compiled in 2017 by Reshoring Initiative showed apparel ranking sixth among industries that have re-shored manufacturing jobs, with 17,166 jobs by 287 companies since 2010. In a recent survey conducted by McKinsey and Company, even companies with very low levels of nearshoring today anticipate increasing that to more than 10 percent nearshore sourcing volume by 2025.
The report also concludes that “apparel companies can no longer conduct business as usual and expect to thrive”. Tomorrow’s successful apparel companies will be those that take the lead to enhance the apparel value chain on two fronts: nearshoring and automation. The message is clear: automation will not only make nearshoring more attractive for apparel brands and retailers, but it will also make onshoring to the US economically viable.
Technology Innovation Reignited
During the downturn, much of the industry’s engineering, technical, and production sewing talent left the industry. Similarly impacted were the machinery and technology providers that serviced the industry. While idled sewing machines and other hardware remained available, most suppliers of information technology (IT) and software solutions stopped developing or dropped manufacturing capabilities altogether.
One distinct exception to this trend was BYTE Software Services (BYTE). Since it was founding in 1976, the South Carolina-based company has continued to focus 100% of its development efforts on apparel and sewn products manufacturing. BYTE’s first product was an incentive payroll software that collected data on worker time and attendance, productivity, and other activities to calculate daily earnings in a piecework payroll environment.
As its number of clients increased and became more diverse, the BYTE software footprint was continuously expanded and refined into what became a complete, fully-integrated manufacturing solution that has had over 100,000 users across 17 countries. Both small cut-and-sew operations and large manufacturing enterprises leverage their order entry, raw materials, production, payroll, inventory, fulfillment, and other management tools to make more-timely and better-informed decisions across their entire operations.
“Over the years we worked collaboratively with our clients to build a fully-integrated solution to manage the complete order-to-cash process”, explained BYTE founder and industry pioneer, Ben Gause. “Our passion for the industry kept us going even when the industry was in decline.”
Gause, who also owned the Sir Shirtmakers manufacturing business in the early 1990’s, briefly tried retirement in his 70’s. But his passion for the industry was reignited as talk of the reshoring trend began to gain traction. Equipped with fresh ideas, he came out of retirement to lead the development of a new range of real-time production solutions. Along with his experienced development team (each with an average of 10+ years of industry experience), they quickly created the new BYTETIME™ Real-time Shop Floor Control (SFC) and BYTEDASH™ Personalized Analytics Dashboard solutions that are now in use at various client sites.
“From the shop floor to the top floor, real-time data collection and analysis is one of the most powerful drivers for manufacturing improvement and growth. By enabling more-timely and better-informed decision making across the operation, real-time solutions are helping speed production, reduce costs, and improve quality.
Following are 7 of the most common ways real-time shop floor visibility and control can help solve today’s toughest sewn products manufacturing challenges:
Gain visibility into order/inventory status, process/component traceability, and compliance.
Accelerate time to market, improve order completion rates, improve customer satisfaction.
Boost productivity and employee engagement with performance feedback and pacing tools.
Cut excess labor costs - time clocks, manual activity recording, wait time, and downtime.
Reduce payroll errors, time shrinkage, manual administration, equipment and supplies costs.
Improve line balancing by predicting and avoiding escalation of production bottlenecks.
Enhance quality through early identification, accountability, and rapid resolution of issues.
Collaboration Brings Broader Solutions
Recognizing the need for a fresh commercial approach to the business, Gause smartly formed an alliance with sewn products automation and marketing experts TexTempo. As the exclusive North America sales agent for BYTE solutions, the self-proclaimed “factory fanatics” are also bringing a fresh vision for future BYTE products and the vertical markets (such as bedding) they can serve.
“We are laser-focused on the factory”, asserted TexTempo SVP Gene Denny-Lybbert. “We jumped at the opportunity to work with a partner that not only shares this commitment but has already proven its value in the market by fielding the strongest solution set available for sewn products manufacturers. As most other tech providers shifted away from manufacturing when it was not popular here, we are uniquely positioned to build for the future based on our deep production expertise.”
TexTempo has also established alliances that further support today’s industry demand for digital supply chains. It’s most recent with FreePoint™ Technologies expands their scope of solutions with new Internet of Things (IoT) capabilities for brand-agnostic machine monitoring, downtime, and operating efficiency tracking.
According to TexTempo SVP Greg Hathcox, “We are about helping our clients benefit from the actionable information that comes from a total, real-time view of their entire factory floor. We believe that real-time sharing information through simplified systems integration is key to the future of manufacturing. By enabling continuous monitoring of both machine and labor efficiency, clients can achieve the digital transformation and world-class efficiency needed to compete in global markets today.”
Charting a Course for a Bright Future
So, are we experiencing a true renaissance or just some wishful thinking? The BYTE/TexTempo team believes that this is only the beginning of what will prove to be a transformation, not only in manufacturing but to a demand-focused business model where speed beats marginal cost advantage and compliance is upgraded to an integrated sustainability strategy.
As labor cost differences come closer together, the traditional slow and far-flung supply chain setup is being challenged. Brands and retailers are starting to rethink sourcing and production models. While difficult challenges lie ahead, sewn products companies that embrace automation technologies to become faster and more sustainable are likely be tomorrow’s winners.