Content - Intelligent Sourcing
INTELLIGENT SOURCING
A unique package of services to reduce fabric-related quality costs in the supply chain.
The globalized textile supply chain faces numerous challenges:
- Quality variations at different process stages, leading to inconsistent quality in the final product.
- Producers do not receive enough information to understand quality specifications.
- Different ‘languages’ used to describe textile quality and performance from one step in the value chain to another.
- Insufficient understanding of the need to balance cost, quality and lead-time requirements.
- Impact of upstream events (e.g. raw material prices) across the entire value chain.
Several fabric-related quality issues have their root cause in the fiber and yarn stages of the value chain:
- Appearance defects: hairiness, neps, cloudiness, periodic pattern effects (Moiré), color variations …
- Physical defects: pilling tendency, spirality, hand, abrasion resistance
- Individual defects: slubs, holes, stripes, foreign matter, stains …
This range of issues is too complicated and too expensive to control downstream. Yet they cause a significant share of overall quality costs. The logic is clear:
- Quality defects at the beginning of the value chain cannot later be removed cost-effectively
- Quality defects have to be prevented early – right from the yarn spinning stage
Uster Technologies offers Intelligent Sourcing® as a highly-customized package of services for retailers, garment manufacturers, fabric manufacturers and finishers. The aim is to identify and eliminate the root causes of quality problems from the global supply chain – with sustainable improvement over time.
Uster experts can tailor a solution for any specific need. Please contact the Intelligent Sourcing® team for more details.