Low entry barriers have created fierce competition in the textile and apparel industry. Designing fancy and high-quality clothing is already not enough. Consumers’ demands are harder to meet, as digitalization sped up all business processes. Besides, with the emergence of omnichannel commerce, the majority of textile companies can’t keep up with the competitors’ pace and lose their positions.



Let’s consider predominant challenges for textile production companies and identify potential solutions to adapt to the rapid changes in the business environment.

Inefficient production planning and warehouse management

Very often, production companies can't build efficient planning due to a lack of automation. Manual planning in Excel is hard and incurs mistakes due to a high workload. Also, this traditional approach does not allow companies to efficiently manage their stock.

1C:Drive allows textile production companies to analyze their workloads and subcontractor units to plan effectively. Also, the Warehouse management solution allows businesses ​to check out their warehouses with barcodes, including their warehouses in different locations, and see the instant stock status of their products on their shelves.

Absence of consistent monitoring at the factories

Managers usually forecast production output by relying on previous experience and performance. Lack of production data and analytics often leads to incorrect assumptions about textile output. This, in turn, results in either surplus stock or underproduction. Both come at a certain price and force managers to make rash decisions.

That’s why control and analysis of employees’ work are crucial in textile factories. The proper software solution allows monitoring work performance to oversee employees’ workload and supply them with raw materials on time.

Also, in order to have their products checked in different locations, the companies tried to have their personnel connect to the company servers with remote RDP programs and make data entries to their programs from there. Thanks to the 1C:Mobile application, they can now enter data into their programs very quickly with one touch, either on a phone or tablet.

Time-consuming manual reports

Along with the lack of monitoring, manual reports are troublesome as well. Reports lost in thousands of emails or delivered hard copies create chaos and complicate the overall process. Parties in the supply chain may even face the so-called «bullwhip effect»: distorted information on supply and demand, which often stems from poor communication. It can lead to immense losses, from excessive inventory investment, ineffective transportation to poor customer service.

1Ci ERP solution for the textile industry addresses and eliminates all the mentioned issues. With the software, you’ll be able to oversee the performance and get reports not only from the main factory but also from the remaining places and subcontractors: distributed factories, departments, warehouses and shops.

Also, textile companies often sell their goods through e-commerce websites. Analyzing reports from these marketplaces is usually a very hard and time-consuming task. When done manually, lots of mistakes arise, and it is hard to track the sales performance and control ROI. Thanks to the 1C:Drive E-commerce website integrations, textile companies can perform instant stock and sales management for third-party platforms.

Employees feel replaceable and unaccountable

The number of employees in the factory can reach several hundred. Most of them are usually working hard and concentrating on a certain task. Whether they’re sewing or inspecting ready-made clothing, they often keep minimum interaction and don’t give feedback. This, in turn, makes employees unmotivated and weakens efficiency.

To avoid inefficiencies, you can unify all manufacturing stages within a single information system: sewing, washing, ironing, quality control and others. Overseeing performance in numbers and getting reports and feedback will raise the level of responsibility among employees. Setting KPIs for every section will have the same effect. Besides, you can create an award system and stimulate them to get “The best employee of the month” title and fair compensation.

Production defects

No wonder that unsatisfied employees, obsolete reporting and inconsistent data increase the rate of production defects. The inability to meet excessive demand, for example, will require a significant performance boost, which will definitely result in a higher number of garment flaws.

The outcome can be devastating: it affects not only the profit but also the reputation of a brand.

Final thoughts

Sometimes it’s hard to maintain flawless stages of the supply chain cycle, stay ahead of the competition and retain customers at the same time. Therefore, you can provide the company with up-to-date solutions with an integrated approach designed for the textile industry.