Crystal Martin of Sri Lanka, a part of Hong Kong-based Crystal Group that manufactures mainly lingerie and sleepwear for sole buyer Marks & Spencer, has in its first quarter of 2009 seen a 3% improvement in factory efficiencies, besides improvement in business and reducing their UK warehouse stock by about 15%.
“There was a regular demand from customers to reduce lead times, improve flexibility and maximize sales opportunities on fast selling products. And all this has been made possible by us using the new FastReact planning solutions,” admited Carl Morley, Supply Chain Director of Crystal Martin.
Carl accepts that these solutions have given them full integration of both planning and pre-production activities, leading to removing unnecessary line idling, providing proactive warnings in advance of a problem, and thus managing the whole process more effectively leading to the improvement in factory efficiency. “By using the ‘Flow Planning Module’ of FastReact last year, we had been able to reduce airfreight costs by 38%,” he concluded.
Crystal Martin is today exporting 3 million garments per month from Sri Lanka and plans to even subcontract suppliers in detail by effectively using FastReact and plan a total of around 200 sewing lines.
