How Software can Help

With ethical sourcing concerns now prominent enough to threaten even Primark's staggering success, retailers are more aware than ever how vital it is to adequately manage social and environmental factors in their supply chains. "A greater number of companies today are endeavouring to minimise the exploitation of labour and natural resources in their supply chain," says Robin Vryenhoef, Sales Manager of Syscom. "Enterprise Resource Planning ERP and Product Development Management PDM systems are often key in enabling these companies to secure the visibility and control they need throughout their production and sourcing to achieve their responsible sourcing objectives."

"ERP systems are designed to help manage key aspects of a business, from financials, production and customer relations through to procurement, stock control and distribution," explains Robin, "while a PDM application will assist with design management and pre-production, through things like work flow tools, costing templates and trim libraries. Using PDM alongside your ERP system will integrate your production from conception through to finished product."

With over 30 years experience in the clothing, footwear and textile market place, award winning software provider Syscom PLC has developed ERP and PDM solutions specially designed to meet the unique requirements of these industries and help companies who wish to ensure their products are responsibly sourced.

"Being able to track items and components back to a source, for example, is crucial in allowing retailers to offer their customers products that are of indisputable origin," says Robin, "so this has, consequently, become an important aspect of supply chain management strategy for the increasing number of companies committed to ensuring their suppliers adhere to ethical trading standards. Having software in place that provides this traceability is crucial. Choose a system that offers multi-dimensional item coding, such as SyscomERP or Microsoft Dynamics AX Apparel & Textile, which allows goods and materials to be traced through variable sourcing, manufacturing and finishing processes, creating transparency across the supply chain."

Using a PDM product alongside your ERP system can give you even greater control and help you select suitable suppliers and their products during the design stage. "SyscomPDM, for example, will allow you to rate suppliers according to how well they meet Ethical Trading Initiative ETI criteria and group companies into preferred supplier lists," says Robin, "enabling you to make more informed decisions about which of your suppliers to select for a particular product or component. User configurable fields allow you to input information regarding aspects such as a supplier's child labour avoidance, management accountability, wages and working hours. From this data SyscomPDM calculates a colour-coded ethical trading rating for each supplier, as well as an overall rating for each product. So, for example, if each component of a garment is sourced from suppliers with good ethical trading ratings the garment is given a 'green' overall ethical trading rating. The 'what if' analysis function can be used to immediately see what impact a change of supplier will have on this rating. If, say, the buttons and trim are sourced from a supplier with a lower ethical trading rating the garment rating may drop to 'yellow'."

"What's more, SyscomPDM can help control costs at the same time," continues Robin. "The 'what if' analysis function will also calculate how choice of materials and supplier will affect the cost of producing an item and 'where used' reports show the impact a discontinued or late supply of a material will have on production by identifying where specific fabrics or components are being utilised."

The Right Thing

Whether it's fundamental to the way they do business, seen a sign of quality that provides a competitive advantage or simply another factor to be balanced alongside the plethora to be considered in supply chain management, ethical sourcing is now on the agenda for an ever increasing number of brands and retailers. Many are realising that paying workers a fair wage and sourcing materials that aren't damaging to the environment doesn't mean their clothes have to be more expensive if costs can be re-cooped in other ways. Having the appropriate technology and software in place to help control these can aid in supplier selection, provide essential insight and ensure business operations are as efficient as possible.