Automatic identification technology accelerates smart upgrade of apparel industry

HC things News in 2016, Chinese apparel industry still faces the pressure prevailing traditional manufacturing, the entire industry into a deep adjustment period. On the whole, China's garment industry investment has declined, exports have continued to grow negatively, domestic market growth has slowed, and production has declined slightly. At present, China's garment manufacturing industry is affected by problems such as rising labor costs and difficulties in recruiting workers. The industry is slowly moving forward under cost pressures.

Looking forward to 2017, the international economy is expected to recover moderately, and the domestic macro economy is stable and positive. Under the support of domestic and foreign markets, facing the opportunities and challenges, China's garment industry is focusing on promoting supply-side structural reforms to accelerate the transition from traditional manufacturing to innovation-driven technology industries. Faced with the new situation of scientific and technological progress, the pace of technological change is accelerating, and the garment industry urgently needs to upgrade the manufacturing production system intelligently, using automation technology to achieve cost reduction and efficiency improvement, and achieve breakthrough through differentiation. By adopting automatic identification technology to realize the whole process digital production mode, the clothing can not only solve the problem of rising labor costs such as “recruitment shortage” and “work hardship”, but also reduce the breakthrough of enterprises in the traditional manufacturing to smart manufacturing. The risk cost in China can better break the hard constraints of energy, resources and environment faced by many enterprises, accelerate the improvement of the ability and efficiency of China's manufacturing transformation and upgrading, and thus improve the speed of Chinese manufacturing from low-end manufacturing to medium-to-high-end manufacturing.

The garment industry is one of the earliest areas in China to adopt automatic identification technology. The basic characteristics of clothing are complex, involving styles, fabrics, colors, models, origins, brands, etc., and also features many varieties, small batch sizes, fast updates, and tend to be personalized. In order to fully understand the application of automatic identification technology in the garment industry, standardize the management of standardized bar code, and promote the solution of problems in the field of apparel industry, China Garment Association and China Article Coding Center jointly carried out research on the application of automatic identification technology in the apparel industry. jobs.

Applying automatic identification technology is promising

Automate supply process management

Automated management of raw materials encodes purchased materials and affixes electronic labels as unique identifiers to realize automated management of raw materials purchase and storage, picking and unloading, returning warehouse shipments, returning materials, etc. Data files can effectively control material quality and price.

The material that quickly matches the order order uses the commodity barcode as the unique identifier, which can ensure that the order matches the goods arriving to avoid confusion, which is beneficial to query the arrival status of each order and investigate the supplier product quality problem at any time.

Tracking goods in transit using bar code technology as a unique identifier can accurately track goods in transit, strictly guarantee arrival time and arrival quantity.

Control production costs and improve production quality

Control the cost of materials to establish a unique commodity bar code for all used production materials. Through each type of product material list, the product production plan is decomposed into a material plan, the cutting allowance is calculated reasonably, and the material usage and quantity of each batch of products are controlled. Standard cost deviation.

Automated production statistics and piece counting statistics Through RFID radio frequency identification technology, it can automatically complete product output statistics and waste product statistics, and then conveniently count the output of each worker and investigate the responsible personnel of defective products.

The entrusted processing control is distributed to the OEM OEMs through pre-defined commodity barcodes, which facilitates the quality problems found during the acceptance and sale of goods, and the original manufacturer's responsibility is investigated.

Implement automated warehouse management process

Rapid product distribution By using RFID radio frequency identification technology, the information of the order product can be written in the electronic tag, and the accurate distribution of the product can be realized quickly and effectively.

Multi-library collaborative operation realizes warehouse management automation through automatic identification technology. It can check the goods information and the information already entered in the computer within a few minutes to realize the “visualization” of the goods in stock, so that the inventory of each library can be viewed at any time, so that Track the logistics process of the product in time.

Improve sorting efficiency In traditional garment enterprises, garment sorting is an important part of the logistics distribution system. The human resources directly related to it account for more than 50% of the logistics distribution system, and the picking time accounts for 30%-40% of the entire delivery operation time. The cost of picking operations accounts for 15% to 20% of the total cost of distribution. Reasonable use of automatic identification technology can greatly reduce the sorting operation time and reduce the cost of the enterprise.

Improve the efficiency of the sales terminal and effective anti-theft

Improve inventory efficiency RFID RFID technology can accurately read all the data of the whole box at one time. The clerk does not need to check the goods one by one, and can read 5-7 pieces of goods information at a time through the handheld reader, greatly shortening Check the time.

The anti-theft RFID reader has the characteristics of being able to quickly read in a non-light source environment, and can effectively recognize moving objects as well as non-contact non-visual objects.

The potential for applying automatic identification technology is huge

In order to fully understand the current situation of the use of automatic identification technology in the apparel industry, questionnaire surveys were conducted on hundreds of apparel companies, most of which were large and medium-sized enterprises, and a few small enterprises. Among the companies surveyed, most of them are self-owned brands. Nearly half of the enterprises have more than 8,000 SKUs in clothing products, and the clothing products produced and operated cover all clothing categories.

According to the survey results, the commodity barcode plays a role in the raw material procurement, storage management, sorting management, product production and processing, packaging, cargo transportation, inventory management, retail settlement, store receipt, store inventory, data exchange, etc. effect. Large clothing companies use more than small and medium-sized enterprises. Among them, large, medium and small-sized garment enterprises have a higher proportion of commodity barcodes in the three stages of sorting management, inventory management and retail settlement. The largest inventory management links of large enterprises account for 94.4%, and SMEs are 66.7%. In addition, there is still a gap between SMEs in the management of inbound and outbound warehouses and in the receipt of goods in stores (see Figure 1).

â–² Figure 1 cross-analysis of commodity barcodes in the application of large, medium and small enterprises

The application of commodity barcodes and RFID technology in apparel enterprises is shown in Figure 2. It can be seen that the application level of RFID in apparel enterprises is still at a relatively low level compared with mature commodity barcode systems. Some garment enterprises have applied RFID technology to all aspects of the supply chain except for raw material procurement, of which the highest level of application for storage and storage is 16.22%; the second is inventory management, which is 13.51%; in addition to raw material procurement, production and processing of products account for The ratio is at least 2.7%.

â–² Figure 2 commodity barcode, RFID application environment in apparel enterprises

According to feedback from apparel companies, RFID can achieve fast reading and writing speed, high efficiency, good anti-pollution and durability, large amount of information storage, and easy management of all links in the supply chain. However, at present, in China's garment manufacturing environment, some enterprises still have limitations in the application of RFID systems, mainly due to the high cost of RFID tags at present and the cost pressure of system transformation. In addition, clothing companies report that there is not much understanding of RFID systems and lack of professional guidance, which is one of the reasons why they are not put into use. Some enterprises also believe that the current bar code identification and material system can meet the needs of enterprises such as production, logistics and retail. Introduced an RFID system.

â–² Figure 3 RFID application in various clothing categories

The RFID application situation of each clothing product category is shown in Figure 3. Overall, men's wear brands accounted for 20.8% of the total number of valid questionnaires, and women's wear accounted for 16.7% of the total. From the perspective of various apparel product categories, thanks to the higher added profit, professional wear and sportswear use more RFID tags, respectively 29.4% and 34.5%; and because metal parts will interfere with RFID tags, etc., underwear and Clothing accessories use fewer RFID tags, only 12.5% ​​and 13.3%.

In addition, most enterprises have compiled internal code according to the characteristics of the company's own production and operation in addition to standardized commodity barcodes. The two sets of coding systems need to be separately maintained. The standardized product barcode entry system cannot be connected with the enterprise ERP production management system. Workload and operating costs. The results of the questionnaire survey show that even 8% of garment enterprises have not used any automatic identification technology, and lack of automation and standardized production awareness. These factors have caused the development of clothing enterprises to become more and more serious.

The characteristics of clothing goods determine the production and management methods of small-volume and multi-variety in the garment industry. In order to make the whole process of garment production and circulation more scientific and reasonable, to ensure product quality and achieve the best economic benefits, enterprises will formulate detailed plans before production begins. Product planning, product planning has made clear requirements for the type, color, number, production quantity, etc. of the garments. Because of the large number of product attributes and the different management rules of each enterprise, in order to accurately define the attributes of each product, the subsequent Each management provides the necessary means, the company will code each garment that is planned to be produced, so that each pre-production garment has a unique identity, and then use a special barcode printer to batch print the barcode and other related information into Production of labels for use in production.

Apply automatic identification technology to win in the future

RFID radio frequency identification technology will become a powerful driving force for intelligent manufacturing. In the garment production process, the RFID chip is implanted into the production label, which will provide more information support for the production process, and can fully automate the acquisition of the production process data, greatly reduce the workload of manual scanning, and automatically complete the work calculation and production line. Locked in and able to remotely monitor production conditions, making production management, process scheduling and payroll settlement more scientific and reasonable.

QR code will open up wider application space in more fields. With the continuous change of business model, the development process of online and offline integration is getting faster and faster. Online purchase and automatic payment of mobile phones have become mainstream. QR code has become the main way for enterprises to conduct business and enhance market interaction. The two-dimensional code can record a large amount of information, a wide range, free writing, convenient generation, and is not restricted by the scanning device, and will replace the one-dimensional code in many links and generate a new role. Consumers can directly interface with corporate information through QR codes, and will play an important role in product anti-counterfeiting and information collection and sharing.

Automatic identification technology will help to regulate the quality of clothing goods and trace the quality of goods. With the continuous development of the national economy, the quality and safety of goods and the demand for traceability have become stronger. The past manual methods have become less and less suitable for the requirements of modern management under the new situation. With the development of information technology, the improvement of application level and the gradual expansion of scope, computer technology, automatic identification technology and product digital technology have gradually introduced into the field of production product traceability system, which has become an inevitable trend. The traceability of commodity quality not only protects consumers' rights and interests, but also protects the interests of production enterprises while maintaining the survival of counterfeit and shoddy goods, and maintains the basic order and good market environment of the entire industry.

The foundation for the upstream and downstream of the industry chain is information transmission, and automatic identification technology is a powerful tool for information transmission. In the future, automatic identification technology including commodity barcode, QR code, RFID radio frequency identification, etc., will gradually become a complete tool for the complete chain of the clothing industry, and an indispensable tool for realizing information connection and real-time interaction in all aspects of the supply chain. . It is hoped that the automatic identification technology can help China's garment enterprises to reduce costs and improve efficiency, achieve efficient, scientific and sustainable development, and build a standard bridge for logistics and information flow between upstream and downstream enterprises in the apparel industry.

Responsible Editor: Wake up