Production processes for NOMO Jeans

At the moment, NOMO Jeans has two production facilities, one in China and one in Estonia. Materials are sourced from China, Europe and Turkey. This chapter introduces NOMO Jeans’ production processes from the order to the delivery. Detailed production processes from sewing to finishing are described and presented in Chapter 6.2.

5.4.1 Creating an order

In NOMO stores, the customer information and orders are entered into Sales Force, which is a web based cloud service application for customer relationship management (CRM). The 3D models and measurements are taken with a body scanner in the shops, and checked and refined by clerks. The scans are saved into cloud based shared storage system. Cloud services are ideal for information transfer as all authorized users can access the updated data anywhere with Internet connection. If the customer has ordered jeans before and has been scanned in the shop, it is possible to order new pair of jeans also from the web shop, from which the order data transfers automatically into Sales Force. The needed information for order batches are extracted weekly for further processing with NOMO Jeans Corporation’s automated order processing system NOMORD, which combines customers’ order data with 3D body scanner measurements.

With this information, NOMORD outputs four kinds of document objects for manufacturing:

• ORD-files (abbreviation of ‘a customer order”) to be put into Gerber system to create patterns for each customer order

• A production order sheet for the batch with all required information for manufacturing

• Product cards for each pair of jeans

• Quality Assurance checklist with final measurements

ORD-files contain information from customer's selected choices (what kind of model, color, waistline, etc. has been selected), as well as customer's measurements (the length and circumference measurements of customer's body in centimeters). The ORD-files are inserted into the Gerber Made-to-Measure computer program to create the patterns.

After the patterns and all required information and instructions for manufacturing are created, the order batches are then sent out to the factories via NOMO's FTP site. FTP protocol is an easy and fast data transfer protocol for the Internet.!An e-mail alert of a new order batch is also sent to the factory's contact person. After an acknowledgment mail is received back from the factory, the statuses of all orders in the batch are changed from "Purchased" to "Manufacturing" by running a certain Java or Windows application, or an SF macro (TBA). The order creation process is presented in figure 15.

(Rautio & Mononen, Interview October 2011)

Figure 15. NOMO Jeans order creation process. (Rautio, Interview October 2011) Orders are planned and divided to factories according to washes, so that certain washes are done in China and others in Estonia. This simplifies the wash process, as well as enhances efficiency and lead-time. Now at the beginning, an optimal batch size is 100-200 jeans per week for one factory, so the total capacity is 400 jeans per week. Batch sizes will increase in the near future when more shops are opened. There is possibility to expand production capabilities in the both factories. Although, increasing amount of product and order data may be challenging to handle. Good tools, and time is required to get all order statuses updated.

5.4.2 Sourcing

Jeans are produced in subcontractor factories in China and Estonia. In China, jeans are sewed in a sample room of the factory. Sample room sewers are more skilled because one person knows how to sew whole jeans, instead of being specialized in certain part of the jeans as in the normal production line. In China, NOMO Jeans’ sourcing strategy is cutting and manufacturing (CM), which means that NOMO Jeans gives product specifications and source all materials including trimmings. Otherwise, it would be

TC2

difficult to monitor and ensure the quality of used fabrics and accessories such as yarns, zippers, buttons, studs and labels. In Estonia, the strategy is more towards CMT, which includes cutting, manufacturing and trimmings. This means that product specifications and main materials are provided, but the producer sources some of the used trimmings, for example yarns and zippers according to NOMO Jeans’ specifications.

In China, fabrics and accessories are sourced nearby the factory. This is reasonable, since there is wide range of denim fabrics available, and transportation is fast and inexpensive because of close distance. In China, larger amounts of materials need to be purchased at once compared to sourcing from Europe. Re-orders have to be made early in advance since it can take longer time to produce the fabric if the supplier does not have the needed fabric in storage. At the moment, some of the fabrics are transported from China to the factory in Estonia, but in the future, the plan is to divide sourcing so that only nearby sourced materials are used in Estonia as well as in China. One challenge is monitoring the consumption of materials, and inventory and consumption estimation tools are continuously developed.

5.4.3 Problems and challenges in production at the beginning

Starting the production in a new country is always challenging, and requires time and perseverance. Especially this was challenging for NOMO Jeans, since the concept and procedures differ a lot from normal production. Initial conditions in negotiations in the spring 2011 were that it is estimated that there will be about 50-100 jeans to be manufactured in weekly batches and preferred lead-time would be two weeks. The sizes of weekly batches are estimated to increase up to 200-400 pairs in the following year.

The sizes of batches were only estimations and there was no certainty of the sizes, because the shop was not yet open. Finally a potential factory was found near Guangzhou with help of existing contacts in China, and test production could begin.

NOMO Jeans had gathered a test-group in spring 2011 to develop the processes between 3D body scanner and pattern creation, and to develop and refine the models and fit. Sample jeans were also produced in the headquarters in Helsinki. There were problems with the quality in the first test batches from the factory, so feedback and more instructions were given. In the summer 2011, the pilot sales started, and sales started well as there were over 100 orders during summer. However, the first received batch for pilot sale customers did not exceed the quality requirements, and the jeans could not be delivered to customers. Sewing quality was poor, and washes and effects did not match the desired images. The situation was communicated to customers through phone calls and informed on the NOMO Jeans Facebook pages. The customers of the pilot sale were compensated for the delay, and only few customers cancelled their order. This was the situation in the end of August 2011, when this master’s thesis work was started with a visit to factory in Guangzhou.

This visit pointed out necessities that were lacking to achieve better quality.

Development of individual product cards for every pair of jeans as well as quality check system and instructions were started immediately Sewing instructions were clarified with a folder of sewed sample pieces of the available detail options such as pockets, front fastenings and waistbands. Sample jeans were produced with one sewer, followed by sample room master, NOMO Jeans contact person of the factory, and initial contact person from China, who also helped as interpreter. Also the washes and desired colors were looked up more closely. More wash samples and shrinkage tests were ordered, and effect samples decided. At the beginning, production should have been monitored more closely than estimated, and someone from the company should have stayed to give instructions and assure quality.

This was confirmed when the next test batch arrived after visit, and had again many flaws in details and sewing quality. When the re-production of pilot sales jeans started, it was decided that close monitoring of the production is needed, and this required visit to the factory. The wash and effect samples were developed further, and bad quality samples were rejected. Main tasks were to assure the quality of the first batch for customers, implement quality assurance, inform NOMO Jeans factory contact person about requirements and train NOMO Jeans contact person to do quality checks and follow production according to instructions. The results of this visit were much better since after it, NOMO Jeans had a third-party person who visits the factory every week to do inspections and assure that quality is at required level before the jeans are sent to Finland.