YOUNGOR: Making Production Decisions More Intelligent

In 2009, the spread of the international financial crisis to the real economy, the external market demand environment, the exchange rate trend, and many factors of the international trade environment seriously affected the development of China's textile and garment industry with seasonal and low profit margins.

Facing the more severe external demand environment in the textile and garment industry, the strategy of YOUNGOR group of China's garment industry has also been adjusted accordingly, and the board of directors has gradually shifted its foreign trade priority to the domestic market.

IT has also been mentioned in a higher position.

Building YOUNGOR clothing empire with information technology

"We are determined to do better in the Chinese market, that is, to reverse the previous order: domestic sales are the first, second is group buying, and the third is foreign trade.

At the same time, chairman Li Rucheng has repeatedly asked IT technology to keep abreast of the development and change of the business, and take informatization as the means to reduce costs, enhance the core competitiveness of the company and control the upstream and downstream industries, and build YOUNGOR's clothing empire with the power of information technology.

Gu Yuejun, deputy general manager and chief technology officer of YOUNGOR group, told reporters.

The YOUNGOR group was founded in 1979. In the past 30 years, the development of brand clothing, real estate development, equity investment and other industries has been gradually established.

Among them, brand clothing is the basic industry of YOUNGOR group. From the beginning of single production and processing, it has formed a vertical industrial chain of textile and apparel, which is dominated by brand clothing.

At present, YOUNGOR clothing company has more than 100 branches in China, more than 400 self operated franchised stores, and more than 2000 commercial outlets, ranking 134th in China's top 500 manufacturing enterprises in 2008.

The achievements of YOUNGOR and its powerful channel resources are all shaped by the turning point of the garment industry in 2000.

Since the 90s of last century, with the improvement of people's living standards, the demand for clothing has been unprecedentedly high. China's apparel industry has entered the golden age of development and bred many famous brands today. YOUNGOR is one of the best.

But before and after 2001, the clothing market began to pform from a seller's market to a buyer's market. Not only did the profits become thin, but also the consumers' eyes became more and more critical.

The original mode of production scheduling according to order can not meet the market demand in time, resulting in overcapacity of garment factories, inventory backlog and so on. Inventory and logistics cost pressures are highlighted. Lack of insight and rapid response to market demand has become a major challenge for China's apparel industry.

YOUNGOR also encountered the same problem. In 2001, YOUNGOR had a large backlog of funds for only one shirt.

YOUNGOR people who have an excellent vision are well aware of the need to understand the needs of the world, and resolutely decided to extend the feelers of market demand to all parts of the country with the help of IT.

As a result, YOUNGOR invested hundreds of millions of yuan to gradually establish its own supply chain and logistics management system, realizing the informationization of production links, sales terminals and the entire supply chain, and filled the gap between production and sales with the power of information.

The perfect supply chain system makes the production, inventory and sales links completely pparent. Let YOUNGOR headquarters know the sales situation of each sales outlets, the sales situation of different garments, the sales characteristics of different regions, and grasp the needs of consumers, so as to scientifically formulate production plans.

Gu Yuejun said: "from the beginning of twenty-first Century to the beginning of the past few years, almost all the leader brands of clothing category are doing one thing, that is, integrating the industrial chain.

It is a great progress of China's garment industry to integrate the resources of the upper, middle and lower reaches of clothing, so that the garment enterprises can respond more quickly, operate more efficiently, have stronger core competitiveness and control the core of the value chain.

In this period, YOUNGOR gradually established its own supply chain management system by means of information technology.

Assistant decision making: the core component of supply chain system

In YOUNGOR's supply chain system, IBM Cognos is the core component of decision support.

As the leading business intelligence tool in the world, Cognos is seamlessly embedded in YOUNGOR's information system with its openness. It extracts and analyzes the important data in the entire supply chain system, and displays it through two-dimensional reports and multi-dimensional data cube, so that decision makers can define and analyze the conditions on demand, and find the key to the problem.

According to the analysis of events, Cognos Reporting will be presented to YOUNGOR's decision-making level through rich two-dimensional report forms. If we want to explore the reasons behind the results, Cognos OLAP Server and Cognos Analysis will show their talents.

In online paction analysis, Cognos OLAP Server can create the most critical data into a multi-dimensional data cube called PowerCubes.

Based on this cube, YOUNGOR's decision making layer can identify trends, track business operations, and create efficient statistical summary reports. On this basis, with the help of Cognos Analysis tools, YOUNGOR can also carry out MLOP (multidimensional online analytical processing) and ROLAP (relational online analysis processing), so as to help policymakers to conduct macro to micro analysis according to their own ideas, quickly identify problems, identify trends, find out the causes of problems, and gain competitive advantages.

Speaking of the application of Cognos, Gu Yuejun used "simple" two words to evaluate.

"No matter which tool is used, Cognos provides a Web based approach," he said.

Through simple mouse drag and drop, various forms and data analysis can be carried out smoothly and quickly. At the same time, due to the adoption of an open strategy, Cognos can be well compatible with various databases and data warehouses, and it also saves a lot of manpower and time costs for the deployment of the system.

Chen Xiaochun, assistant general manager of YOUNGOR, is the head of the logistics department. He is responsible for the two parts of the marketing and operation of YOUNGOR logistics, including logistics distribution, product order, warehousing, post sale promotion, follow-up and post account keeping, etc.

"Before, we were dizzy when we did data, because a lot of data were guided by EXCLE, and many data existed in different tables, and integrated into the same need to correspond one by one. This work is very complicated.

After the use of Cognos, the situation has been greatly improved. Now that any product is pferred, the relevant information will be clearly listed immediately. From birth time, the factory price, the retail price, including the final real price, and all the related specifications, it can be one-to-one correspondence, which is very convenient for the logistics department.

Chen Xiaochun said.

At present, YOUNGOR will produce more than 2000 commodity numbers every year. The logistics department should follow up every item and accumulate it into the database bit by bit.

According to the introduction, YOUNGOR's stores have been integrated from more than 3000 in 2000 to more than 1500 now, but sales have increased three times.

Through the application of the system and the efforts of various departments, the inventory turnover rate has nearly doubled, and the shortage area has also decreased significantly.

With the help of Cognos, YOUNGOR's ability to respond to orders and production cycle has been reduced by 50%.

Inventory turnover increased by more than 1 times, saved 250 million yuan in inventory costs, less than 30% out of stock, and the factory's punctual delivery rate was more than 99%.

Chen Xiaochun, assistant general manager of YOUNGOR and head of the logistics department, abstracted the application of business intelligence in the logistics department to six aspects:

First, the analysis of sales revenue, the analysis of gross and sales structure.

At present, YOUNGOR attaches great importance to branding operation. From the big category, series, style, production date, color system to the number of products, we must focus on the top 4 brands.

Through the analysis of sales channels and customers from different angles, the total amount and change can be calculated, which can predict the trend of the next stage to a certain extent, and provide a scientific and effective basis for the company leaders to formulate marketing strategies.

Second, the analysis of marketing management.

It includes pricing, market demand, promotional activities, marketing channels and so on.

YOUNGOR from the more than 3000 outlets in 1999 to the current one thousand and five hundred outlets, sales have doubled three times, that is, the previously scattered and scattered outlets become strong and concentrated, which not only can save resource input, but also has a great help in effectively controlling the inventory of goods, and can also make consumers brand impression of YOUNGOR stronger and clearer.

Third, product procurement and inventory control.

Every year's procurement work, we should predict all the goods and sales next year, and predict the distribution of the whole production capacity. These are all linked together.

In recent years, YOUNGOR has made significant progress in measuring inventory turnover as an important measure.

Fourth, store replenishment, return analysis.

By collecting data from the store computer, we can observe the change of the entire company's data, especially the analysis of the regional data.

Through systematic analysis, replenishment and return can be done in time.

Fifth, the management of a single commodity.

A single commodity can combine all the key factors through the system.

Which commodity will be able to know its context and life cycle?

Sixth, data mining.

The so-called "data mining" is that many data do not see the relationship on the surface, and through two or three levels of mining, we can see that there is a logical relationship. This requires closer cooperation between IT and business departments, and further mining more information behind the data.