Located in Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam, top apparel manufacturer Viet Vuong Trading Co. Ltd. is a privately-owned Vietnamese company with three factories and 50 production lines. Viet Vuong has enjoyed steady growth since its inception in 1999, employing over 3,700 people, and produces over three million jackets and trousers every year.

Viet Vuong is committed to delivering sustainable manufacturing processes wherever possible and reducing its fabric wastage to zero is a top priority. The company has secured recognition for being a green-friendly factory from: WRAP - a charity, working with governments, businesses and citizens around the globe to create a world in which resources are used sustainably; Better Work - which improves global garment industry conditions - and the sustainable building programme, LEED, the companies said in a joint statement.

Prior to implementing IntelloCut, Viet Vuong used Excel spreadsheets to assess and monitor its fabric costing and utilisation processes. This manually executed operation resulted in limited visibility into accurate fabric consumption calculations and unnecessary wastage due to a lack of available data regarding material usage on the production floor.

CEO of Viet Vuong Trading Co. Ltd. said: “Before IntelloCut, all the cutting data was spread between disconnected spreadsheets and emails, so it was difficult to compile the data to analyse key trends related to fabric consumption and wastage. With IntelloCut, we have gained visibility over the entire cutting floor and through the intuitive real-time reports on fabric performance, we now have the ability to make data-backed decisions to optimise fabric utilisation, reduce wastage and ultimately support the sustainable growth of our business.”

With no robust method in place to provide an accurate breakdown of fabric wastage, the management team at Viet Vuong found it difficult to make informed business decisions about how much fabric to buy to fulfil orders. If the company purchased more fabric than it needed, it would lose profit from dead stock; and if it bought less than was actually required, it would lose profit by having to buy in more material at its own expense, as these additional costs had not been factored into initial customer quotes.

“IntelloCut helped us to establish an efficient fabric planning and cutting process by providing fast and accurate cutting execution plans as well as effective fabric tracking and real-time reporting of the cutting floor. This has allowed us to eliminate error-prone manual processes, saving us a huge amount of time and effort," added the CEO.

Following the implementation of IntelloCut, Viet Vuong was afforded the full visibility and tracking of fabric consumption and wastage it needed to make factual data-based decisions about the fabric it purchased and how it was utilised. By digitising these costing and cutting processes, Viet Vuong significantly optimised its fabric utilisation rate to over 98 per cent, reducing its fabric wastage to under 2 per cent.

The solution increased production efficiencies which meant shorter lead times for customers, but also greatly reduced the time and effort planning teams required to create capacity forecasts, freeing up more time to enhance customer satisfaction objectives overall.

Fundamentally, the implementation had a direct positive impact on the company’s bottom line within months of implementation, with Viet Vuong reporting fabric savings of nearly 3 per cent and Bill of Materials (BOM) savings of 1.13 per cent.

“IntelloCut has allowed us to gain full control over fabric usage in our cutting department and with the ability to plan and re-plan the fabric based on real time cutting floor feedback, we have successfully reduced our fabric wastage to under 2 per cent which is a great achievement for us and propels us towards our sustainability goals,” the CEO further said.

Coats Digital’s IntelloCut is designed to give full control over fabric usage in the cutting room by optimising key processes, including: the generation of cut plans, lay plans and allocation, end bit usage, capacity planning/tracking and reporting. The solution’s automated, closed-loop approach to fabric planning reduces the amount of time and effort spent on planning and re-planning and maximises fabric utilisation on the production floor.

Tan Demir, associate manager, Coats Digital, said: “It is great news that Viet Vuong has achieved such significant results since the implementation of IntelloCut. The solution has not only increased Viet Vuong’s profitability, but also helped it realise a few of its ambitious sustainability targets, by reducing fabric waste and operational costs, which are all factors increasingly become uppermost in the minds of more discerning consumers.”

Fibre2Fashion News Desk (KD)