By streamlining critical planning information in a single platform, FastReactPlan has greatly improved machine utilisation to unlock additional capacity and optimised data visibility across relevant teams – enhancing communications across all departments and facilitating new business growth.
Coats Digital’s FastReactPlan
PUGODA, SRI LANKA and LONDON, UK – 19th June 2024 – Coats Digital is delighted to announce that after completing the implementation of Coats Digital’s FastReactPlan, South Asia Textiles Ltd, the leading textile manufacturer has drastically reduced its average machine idle time from 380 hours to just 100 hours (74% reduction); improved its OTDP by 15% and reduced capacity planning time from eight hours to two (75% reduction), since its adoption of FastReactPlan in 2023.
Streamlining Operations with FastReactPlan
FastReactPlan has helped the company to optimise inventory management and has enabled South Asia Textiles to unlock untapped, additional capacity to drive significant, new business growth. The solution has also enabled the company to make robust business decisions thanks to accurate capacity data, enabling them to benefit from greater flexibility to improve delivery dates and respond quickly to customer change requests.
About South Asia Textiles
South Asia Textiles, headquartered in Pugoda, Sri Lanka, a subsidiary of Hayleys Fabric PLC, is a leading manufacturer and exporter of textiles. The company specializes in producing and delivering a complete range of quality Knitting, Dyeing, Finishing, Printing, Brushing, Sueding and Preshrunk fabric services for well-known global brands such as Next, Victoria’s Secret, Marks & Spencer, Calvin Klein, Tesco, Levi’s, Decathlon, Adidas and Hugo Boss. The company can produce 800,000 kg of quality textiles monthly and employs over 1,400 staff.
Challenges Before Implementation
South Asia Textiles faced serious production under-utilization and delivery issues Before implementing FastReactPlan. With vital capacity planning and production information siloed in multiple sources across different departments, the company lacked accurate visibility into capacity availability. This led to incorrect assumptions regarding machine availability, inventory and production time requirements, resulting in costly mistakes that negatively impacted its on-time delivery performance.
Senior Manager Planning’s Insights
Senior Manager Planning at South Asia Textiles Ltd, Sameera Jayasinghe said: “We were challenged by a serious lack of visibility of capacity plans beyond a three-day window. Our manual planning processes proved exceptionally time-consuming, which not only led to slower decision making across all departments but also meant a lack of order tracking, missed orders and resulted in regular on-time delivery failures.”
The absence of a coordinated overview of multiple planning processes and pre-production priorities across departments resulted in communication lapses and a litany of human errors in pre-production priorities which impacted the successful achievement of orders and sometimes resulted in unnecessary cost consequences.
Post-Implementation Benefits
After the implementation of FastReactPlan, South Asia Textiles quickly benefited from access to business-critical planning and production information from the same, single, digitised source. The enhanced data visibility consequently fostered closer alignment and seamless collaboration across all levels of the company, enabling planners to create accurate Cost-to-Make (CM) quotes based on real-time capacity availability, and greater flexibility to manage more diverse orders and style change requests swiftly.
Managing Director’s Comments
Managing Director of South Asia Textiles Ltd, Rohan Goonathilake comments: “FastReactPlan has made a huge difference to our business. We can now make timely updates to plans, enabling all teams to adjust their production schedules accordingly – ensuring a smooth workflow at all times. FastReactPlan allows us to confidently take on increased business to fill capacity for all machine types on a long-term basis, and thanks to the data accuracy, we always deliver on time. We have also benefited from the much-improved utilisation of yarn demand and optimised our visibility on buffer stock maintenance, which has resulted in reduced inventory holding costs and greatly improved our cash flow.”
Key Achievements
South Asia Textiles’ average machine idle time has drastically reduced due to FastReactPlan, from 380 hours to just 100; it improved its OTDP by 15% and helped the company improve its Dye On-time Delivery in Full (OTIF) to consistently above 90%. The solution has also improved production plan finalisation lead times from eight hours to two, enabling planners to focus on optimising customer service and other value-added services.
About FastReactPlan
Part of Coats Digital’s core Manufacturing Solution Suite, FastReactPlan is a dynamic, visual production planning and control tool that optimises delivery, efficiency and lead times. Designed and developed specifically for footwear and garment manufacturers, it helps companies integrate capacity, critical path and materials into an integrated planning system.
Customer Success Manager’s Insights
Customer Success Manager at Coats Digital, Rukshan Periyapperuma, said: “We are delighted that South Asia Textiles has realised such significant, tangible benefits within a year of implementing FastReactPlan. The positive impact of this solution has been felt across all facets of the business, underscoring the critical role that accurate, highly visual capacity plans play in the future growth of textile and fashion garment manufacturers. We very much look forward to continuing our close partnership with South Asia Textiles and supporting its ongoing digitization objectives in the years ahead.”
