Kardem, a prominent Turkish ready-made garment manufacturer, has taken a bold step towards modernization by selecting Coats Digital’s FastReactPlan to revolutionize their manual planning processes and enhance production efficiencies. This strategic move aims to empower Kardem to meet the dynamic demands of the fashion industry with agility and precision.
Established in 1990 and headquartered in Istanbul, Kardem has long been a stalwart in the realm of ready-made garments. Specializing in high-volume, time-sensitive fashion garments, they cater not only to Turkey but also to some of the world’s leading brands, including Inditex, Gina Tricot, and Ralph Lauren. Kardem employs a LEAN management approach and operates two factories in Turkey and Serbia, churning out an average of 1.8 million pieces per month.
Kardem’s General Manager and Owner, Ahmet Zeki Erdogan, expressed their satisfaction with Coats Digital’s previous solution, GSDCost, which optimized their cost-to-make processes. Erdogan saw incorporating the advanced planning and scheduling solution, FastReactPlan, as a natural extension of their tech capabilities to digitize manual capacity planning processes effectively across their operations.
Erdogan highlighted that FastReactPlan would provide the much-needed real-time data visibility to optimize capacity planning and production efficiencies. This enhancement would enable Kardem to elevate its customer service by delivering smaller and more complex orders swiftly and punctually. The ability to accurately gauge free and available line capacity on the factory floor will open doors to new business opportunities.
One of the challenges Kardem faced was the manual siloing of crucial information across their business, which hindered their ability to respond to production or capacity issues promptly. This not only made it challenging to meet the surging customer demands for faster, diversified assortments but also led to turning away business due to a lack of insight into available production lines.
Wesley Ekman, the Global Sales Director at Coats Digital, noted the increasing enthusiasm among Turkish manufacturers to embrace technology as a means to navigate the highly competitive landscape of the fashion industry. Coats Digital has been expanding its local team in Turkey to provide comprehensive support for their business-critical digital tools, which are paving the way for an agile, resilient, transparent, and sustainable global fashion supply chain.
Kardem’s decision to embrace digital transformation with Coats Digital’s FastReactPlan is a testament to their commitment to staying at the forefront of the fashion industry’s evolution. As the world of fashion continues to evolve, Kardem is poised to meet its challenges head-on with advanced technology, ensuring that they remain a leading force in the global garment manufacturing landscape.