California Apparel News

Putting far-flung designers and manufacturers on the same schedule is one of the biggest headaches for apparel companies in a globalized economy.

But keeping a disciplined schedule can save companies time and money. It may not be an impossible goal to keep a production team on the same page, according to executives of Miami-based software developer New Generation Computing. With the July 31 release of the latest version of its e-SPS program, or its integrated Product Lifecycle Management and Sourcing System, designers in Los Angeles and manufacturers in Asia can work off of the same calendar, according to Mark Burstein, NGC’s president of sales and marketing.

“The goal here is speed-to-market,” Burstein noted, adding that his program’s efficiencies can chop out 20 percent to 40 percent of the time it takes from submitting an order for merchandise to delivering it to the warehouse.

One of e-SPS’ main features, its workflow and event-management calendars, puts the schedule of every member of a team on the same page, which mixes the functions of a spreadsheet and a Facebook-like page.

Like a spreadsheet, this calendar charts schedules of every production deadline. Like a Facebook page, everyone concerned with the production can view progress of other team members toward their deadlines on workflow calendars. They also can post updates on where they are with their schedules.

Progress on workflow calendars is color-coded. On this timeline, green means job done, red means somebody is late with the job and blue means there is a chance to get started early with a task. The system also will send e-mail notifications to people late with tasks, Burstein said. There’s no going AWOL with this program. With the system’s exceptions-management feature, different workers are alerted by e-mail if they are late on a deadline.

Don’t expect constant alerts on Blackberries and iPhones if there’s a good reason to be out of the office. One of the program’s new features is notifying everybody in the system when someone has a day off and when holidays such as Chinese New Year are being observed.

In addition to charting product development, NGC tracks the products’ progress through the supply chain through its production-tracking module. The program collects and notifies the milestones of any journey through the supply chain—such as cost approvals, materials approvals and capacity planning approvals.

Another new e-SPS feature is its vendor payment automation module. This module links all costs associated with a product, and if they all are approved, the vendor payment automation module can issue an invoice online.

The release of the e-SPS program caps off a good year of growth for NGC. In the past 12 months, it added Spanx, Billabong, Jerry Leigh, Cacheacute; and Stony Apparel to its client roster of apparel companies. NGC is scheduled to hire more than 10 people in divisions such as sales.—Andrew Asch