Red Collar: From Mass Production To Personalized Customization

"When you visit the red collar, you see the personal orders from New York. You can quickly complete the shipment in the information process.

This is precisely what the traditional enterprises must go across in the Internet Age: from mass manufacturing to mass customization to meet the best personalized experience of users, the red collar has achieved its goal.

In December 2013, Zhang Ruimin, President of Haier group, went to red collar research.

After the investigation, he left such a feeling.

Zhang Ruimin's "heart to heart" can be described as the most accurate description of the pformation process of Zhang Ling, chairman of the red collar group.

Since the establishment of the red collar group by two acting brothers in 1995, the garment enterprise has made profits in a few years, and the scale has reached three thousand people.

By 2002, Zhang, who looked forward to greater development, suggested that two brothers could make clothes for one person and one into the real estate industry.

After they discussed, they decided to stay in red collar.

"Originally I was in charge of production and technology, and my younger brother was in charge of sales and supply. After the younger brother made the real estate, the whole sales and production tasks were concentrated on me."

In mid April 2015, Zhang recalled in a speech that he would not sell at that time, and he would go around the market everywhere.

"There is a feeling after the end of the tour," said Zhang. "There's no way out. What can I do? Thousands of people in the factory, you have to support it."

Zhang has visited overseas several times.

In Germany, when he visited BMW and Benz Corp, he found that the cars produced on the assembly line were not the same.

After painting, some of the Carbodies are black and some are blue.

The German told him that it was sprayed on the basis of customers' needs. The paint spray production line can be replaced by orders at any time.

"I was very impressed when I saw people making customization, and I was very impressed by it, so I began to study customization."

Zhang said in his speech, "this is also an overwhelming force."

In 2003, Zhang was determined to make customization. "I think that personalized demand will be overwhelming in the Internet age. If we achieve mass customization, we will win the future. It will subvert the entire manufacturing industry.

This road is very difficult, but the prospect is very good. "

At that time, in the clothing industry market is still a good environment, the other members of the red collar group, and even high-level, no one knows what Zhang is talking about.

"At that time, as long as clothes were made out of money, all the colleagues were thinking about how to expand production capacity, produce more clothes and make more money, but the chairman was obsessed with mass customization. At that time, no one really understood."

Li Jinzhu said, "a deputy general even said he was neurotic and he didn't understand business management at all."

"In such an internal environment, what can I do? Hard push!" Zhang said in an interview with the media. He once pushed himself for seven or eight years, not only responsible for the overall design, but also involved in specific details. Others were only responsible for the implementation.

Most of the employees of the red collar group came from the countryside. At that time, computers could not be used, and the company began to teach from switch machines and typing.

Zhang is also constantly doing ideological work for all staff, convening internal conferences, publishing articles in internal journals, and even recording videos to play every day in the company, so as to let every employee understand why they need to change.

In fact, the difficulties before Zhang are not only the disunity of pformation thought.

"In 2003, we received only ten odd orders per day."

Mi Qingyang told reporters.

Compared with peers, the number of orders is weak. Indeed, employees feel the gloomy prospect in this period.

In addition, the red collar initially combines custom garments and assembly lines with no existing information equipment.

Each process can only be written on paper. Every worker needs to find data on paper before operation.

As the paper breaks down easily, later it changes the long strips, and the one hundred or two hundred processes are compiled into code.

Standing back and looking at this process is no more than "slash and burn".

Because it is handwritten, some process codes and numbers are easily confused, for example, letters Q and number 9, Letters B and number 6 sometimes can not be identified.

This also leads to problems in a process, and the whole tailored suit may be reworked.

From 2003 to 2008, with the development of Internet market in China, red collar group established official website and opened B2B e-commerce platform.

In the process of moving sales channels onto the Internet, big data, Internet of things and other theories and practices have gradually entered the vision of Chinese people.

Zhang also saw the possibility of using Internet technology to solve the pformation problem.

Customer customized network platform, increase data, intelligent terminals, and layout of a more reasonable production process, let Zhang agent think of the mass customization mode.

The task of technological breakthrough naturally falls on the head of information center.

But for the information center of the red collar group at that time, it was a big challenge.

"In 2002, the red collar had the information department, and the main task at that time was to maintain the company's computer equipment."

In 2008, Mi Qingyang joined the red collar and went to the software development post after graduation. "At that time, the entire information department also had 7 people, and only two of us did software development."

Mi Qingyang said.

That time is catching up with Zhang agent to set up a customized platform.

The project team integrates the production line, process and other production personnel to explore the system construction.

Mi Qingyang, who has just graduated, has also become a key participant.

"The first exploration in 2008 ended in failure."

Mi Qingyang recalled to reporters that the main task of the exploration was to conduct research on various production links, trying to find out the relationship between the version data.

But in the process, the project team found that the matching process of the data was too complex, and the data could be arranged too simply, so that nothing could be found in building the model.

In 2009, the project group began its second exploration.

"After the first version was overturned, the project team realized that it was necessary to organize data in a large scale."

Mi Qingyang said that the process of exploration is extremely complicated. "There are only thousands of sets in the workshop."

Nevertheless, the second exploration has not been successful.

"No management improvement, only to comb the data to build models, so that data and production can not get through, the problem can not be solved."

Mi Qingyang said, "though it still failed, it has gained a lot of experience and found the problem."

Trial and error operations continued in 2011.

"It took more than a year, even though it was still stuck on the design software, but the overall system was finally ready."

Mi Qingyang said that the RCMTM platform system was completed in 2012, and it continued to improve in 2013.

At present, the red collar system has more than 20 subsystems, all driven by data.

"How?

It's the most complicated, because every garment we make is different, but we have to realize assembly line production.

In the red collar, the whole dismantling process is automatically formed through the computer system, which is the core and the most difficult.

Mi Qingyang said that they did it because the red collar focused on customization for over ten years, and accumulated huge amounts of data. At the same time, in the system, the rules of dismantling data were slowly studied according to data, and various rules of operation were constantly attempted.

At the same time, the system construction also promoted.

The pformation of management mode.

The red collar has established the management mode of the customer service center as the nerve center. All the needs of the customers are gathered to the customer service center, and the customer service center points to the point directly to issue instructions to mobilize all the resources of the company to satisfy.

Each node of the customer service center represents the red collar group externally, and the internal customer demand.

Li Haibin, director of customer service center of red collar group, said, "we can direct any demand to any department in any department."

"Seeking truth from facts, this enterprise has entered a virtuous circle and has entered a high profit track.

Moreover, it is not a traditional enterprise, it has changed from the outside to the Internet enterprise, technology enterprise, high value-added enterprise direction.

Zhang agent said.