Understand the Key Benefits
Supply Chain Visibility
Fashion supply chains are complicated. You may be sourcing raw materials from Asia, working with cut-and-sew facilities in Central America, and shipping finished goods into U.S. distribution centers.
Faster Time-to-Market
Speed is everything in fashion. A hot trend on TikTok can create demand overnight, but if your processes are manual or fragmented, you’ll miss the opportunity window.
Fine-tune Product Management
For fashion brands, product management is one of the hardest jobs in the business. Every season brings hundreds of new styles, each with multiple colors and size runs.
Omnichannel Inventory Management
Fashion brands to manage inventory across every channel. You’ll know exactly how much product you can promise to e-commerce customers without shorting a wholesale order.
Why Your Fashion Brand
Needs an ERP System
Fashion moves fast. Trends shift overnight, supply chains stretch across continents, and customers expect new products in stores and online yesterday. For fashion IT and business leaders, this pace creates pressure: Keeping operations running smoothly across design, sourcing, production, and sales can be a never-ending headache.
The right ERP system for your fashion and apparel brand brings your data, processes, and teams together in a way that supports growth, efficiency, and customer delight. But not just any ERP system will do:
Niche industry solutions and spreadsheets are often fine for startups, but to truly scale a global brand, you need a bigger platform. Let’s break down the reasons why.
Terminology
Before deeper dive into the differences between discrete and process manufacturing, let's first define some important terms:
Work Center
A work center, a term predominantly used in the discrete manufacturing industry, is a specific location or station within the manufacturing environment where a set of related tasks or operations are performed. This can range from a single machine, a group of machines, or even a whole production line, depending on the complexity and scale of the operations. In the discrete manufacturing context, each work center is typically specialized for a specific type of task.
For example, in a bicycle manufacturing plant, one work center might be dedicated to creating the frames, another to painting the bicycle frames, another to assembling the parts together, and so on. This allocation of specific tasks to dedicated work centers enables efficient workflow, precise scheduling, improved quality control, and effective resource utilization within the manufacturing process.
Routing
A routing is a term used in the discrete manufacturing industry. It refers to the sequence of operations or steps that are needed to complete the production of a specific product. It defines the flow of materials and work through the production process, from start to finish. In the context of the discrete manufacturing industry, each step in the routing process represents a specific operation in the production cycle, such as machining, welding, assembling, painting, or inspection.
At each of these stages, the product will undergo a specific transformation or process as it moves towards becoming a finished good. By establishing and following a routing sequence, companies can standardize and streamline their production activities, facilitating improved efficiency, quality control, and cost management.
Resources
A resource, a term predominantly used in the process manufacturing industry, is analogous to a work center in the discrete manufacturing industry. It describes a specific location or station within the production process where a set of related tasks or operations are performed. In the context of process manufacturing, a resource could be a certain machine, a group of machines, or a particular area within the plant that performs a specific function or set of functions.
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In a chemical plant, one resource could be a reactor where raw materials undergo chemical transformation, another could be a distillation column for separating mixtures, and so on. Just like a work center, a resource is integral to production process planning, scheduling, and resource management, providing a means to structure, standardize, and optimize the flow of work in a process manufacturing environment.
Bill of Material (BOM)
A Bill of Material (BOM) is a comprehensive list of parts, components, assemblies, and other materials required to produce a product. It is essentially a recipe or blueprint for production. A BOM includes the quantity of each item, specifications, and sometimes even the sequence of assembly. It is an essential tool for production planning, inventory management, cost estimation, and ensuring that all necessary materials are available for production.
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For example, in a bicycle manufacturing process, a BOM might list items such as the frame, handlebars, wheels, gears, screws, and paint, along with the quantity required for each to produce a single bicycle.
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For example, in a paint production process, a BOM might list items such as basic paint, solvent, pigment, stabilitzers, and additives along with the quantity required to manufacture a certain amount of paint. Usually, the quantities refer to a standard production quantity, for example 1000 kg which you usually produce.