WIN Garment Achieves Digital Transformation with Centric PLM

“Before 2021, one of the challenges we faced was a lack of standardized data consolidation, which severely hindered our R&D innovation.”

WIN Garment’s Digital Transformation Project Director, Ms. Qiang Meng, reflects on the pain points the business was experiencing three years ago. By chance, WIN Garment encountered PLM during a digital transformation seminar hosted by the Liutan Group. After two months of exploration and research, WIN Garment decided to implement Centric PLM™ in January 2021.

Now, more than three years later, how have WIN Garment’s business operations changed? What tangible benefits has PLM brought?

Transitioning from OEM to ODM

Wuxi Weiying Apparel Co., Ltd. (WIN Garment) was established in 2000, with Wuxi Liutan Apparel Co., Ltd. as the investment holding company, part of the Jiangsu Liutan Group. The company produces and exports apparel, and specializes in manufacturing garments for international luxury brands such as BURBERRY, C.K., The North Face and others.

From 2001 to 2010, WIN Garment was a typical OEM enterprise. During its transition from OEM to ODM, the company realized that an increasing number of labor-intensive ODM businesses that were lacking innovation were being phased out. To ensure long-term growth in an ever-changing market, the company needed to enhance their agility, resilience and innovation capabilities through digital transformation.

Ms. Qiang Meng explains, “Before 2021, WIN Garment had accumulated a large amount of paper-based technical documentation, style and fabric development data. Each new design proposal failed to effectively leverage this historical information, leading to wasted time and additional costs.”

“At the time, WIN Garment was serving over 50 brands. Due to the absence of a database tailored to the styles of different brands, designs were developed based purely on experience, resulting in low conversion rates and an inability to quickly respond to various clients. Additionally, we had not established a complete development process, and the lack of mobile office capabilities affected the quality and efficiency of proposals.”

Building Standard Libraries and Repositories

Today, WIN Garment has been working with Centric PLM for over three years. According to Ms. Qiang Meng, “Centric PLM has helped WIN Garment achieve standardized data consolidation, significantly enhancing the company’s R&D innovation capabilities and efficiency.”

With Centric Software’s support, WIN Garment standardized the management of product master data to create a library, including colors, sizes, patterns, techniques, materials and supply-demand relationships. At the same time, they established a business data repository, which includes a style library, material library and pattern library.

Ms. Qiang further explains, “Centric PLM also helped us achieve business process collaboration. After implementing PLM, we transitioned from vertical management to project-based management, enabling designers, pattern makers, buyers, technicians and salespeople to collaborate online, which improved team collaboration.”

“Our historical data is also easily retrievable. By analyzing customer brand profiles through PLM and reviewing historical order data, we can understand customer preferences and design products they truly love.”

Comprehensive Improvement in R&D Efficiency

Ms. Qiang Meng states, “By implementing Centric PLM, WIN Garment has improved efficiency across the board. Leveraging the consolidated data, WIN Garment can now utilize existing styles and fabrics to quickly generate style files. This saves 3 to 5 working days in the style creation process compared to before and greatly enhances product development efficiency.”

She added, “Our office efficiency has also improved significantly. The efficiency of electronic order creation increased by 50%, information retrieval efficiency by 200%, and workflow efficiency by 30%. Lastly, whether in theme proposal scenarios or quick response proposal scenarios, WIN Garment can now quickly and effectively share fabric and style information with clients, greatly improving the efficiency and accuracy of proposals.”

Professional and Efficient Collaboration

When discussing the partnership with Centric, Ms. Qiang Meng remarks, “Our impression of Centric can be summed up in two keywords: professionalism and efficiency.”

Before implementing PLM, the customer demands raised by WIN Garment were primarily based on their own operations. The Centric team brought a complete set of standardized industry processes and logic. Over three years of collaboration, Centric has consistently provided quick feedback and solutions to the issues WIN Garment raised, earning WIM Garment’s trust in Centric’s service capabilities and efficiency.

Looking Forward

WIN Garment’s digital transformation began with PLM but does not end there. Ms. Qiang Meng mentions that with the successful completion of their digital transformation and transition to ODM, WIN Garment will continue to strengthen their cooperation with Centric. They hope to leverage powerful market insights and AI-driven capabilities to enhance design data consolidation, style and pattern design and pattern-making capabilities, propelling WIN Garment into a new era.