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Shrikanth G
The textile industry occupies a unique place in the Indian economy by contributing to nearly a third of the country's export earnings. Right from sourcing the raw material to making the fabric, IT plays a crucial role. Like every other vertical, textile also has core processes that differentiate it from others and make it unique in many ways. Computerizing these unique processes is one of the biggest challenges faced by CIOs as well as IT vendors.
Fortunately, textile unlike logistics does not suffer from the problem of not having an ERP or an enterprise-wide solution. In case of textiles, ERP vendors are attacking the market aggressively, knowing that most of the textile companies, except the big ones, operate with disparate IT systems. Most of the companies have built disparate IT architectures making integration a far cry.
Ground IT Realities
According to IT vendors, the organizations in the textile and the garments segments are treading slow in IT investments. Says Chetan Pathak, general manager, Sales and Marketing, Ramco Systems, “Textile organizations typically have home-grown applications for some key functions like production, sales, etc. These are non-integrated systems that do not give a clear picture of the entire supply chain. The established and the growing players, however, have either implemented or are in the process of implementing an integrated application.” The high levels of heterogeneity and lack of a standardized IT backbone are driving the textile companies towards adoption of new technologies like ERP.
When one looks at the inherent dynamics of the textile vertical, CIOs need to counter a string of challenges to create a robust integrated IT architecture. Quips Guruprasad S Rao, head, Textile, Apparels, and Retail Vertical, Infinite Computer Solutions, “Merchandising peculiarities, market planning and forecasting, product planning and seasonal variations are some of the key IT challenges the industry faces, particularly in India. These affect the manufacturing cycle.”
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| The portal, YarnsandFibers.com, covers the entire range of the textile value chain-from fiber intermediates to fabrics. It has over 95 member countries and all the leading players in the business |
Since the beginning of this decade, the managements of the textile companies have started focusing closely on IT. Large textile groups started facing the heat of competition from global brands and started looking at improving productivity across the organization. As a result, some of the large domestic textile companies have adopted integrated IT systems like ERP, SCM and CRM. Still, there are lots of mid-sized and small textile companies that have home-grown non-integrated applications. The companies that have adopted ERP have primarily automated financials, sales and distribution, materials management and plant maintenance processes. On the other hand, the companies with home-grown solutions have essentially automated financial accounting and sales invoicing systems.
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