Balancing inventory levels with customer demand is the ultimate goal of inventory tracking. However, achieving this delicate balance isn’t always straightforward.

In recent years, supply chain disruptions have significantly influenced business operations. This unforeseen shift has affected production and resulted in inventory shortages or surpluses across multiple sectors, including textiles and garment. In this article, TradeLink Technologies will focus on raw materials, one of the three main categories of inventory, and explore a simplified approach to track raw materials in textile and garment businesses.

Raw Material Tracking Process

The essential steps in inventory management include:

• Raw Material PO & Receiving Shipment: Conduct QA/inspection procedures to check for any damaged goods.
• Recording Information: Track items using barcodes/RFID tags or manually enter inventory data into the system, including receiving date, customer, description, etc.
• Monitoring Inventory Levels: Ensure inventory levels meet current demand using strategies such as cycle counting, zone counting, or just-in-time inventory counts.
• Setting Inventory Thresholds: Establish reorder points to prevent inventory overstocking or shortages.
• Reporting and Analysis: Generate reports to analyze inventory demand, use, and return patterns, allowing for necessary adjustments to inventory levels.

Key Concerns in Raw Material Tracking

• Manual Methods: Relying on spreadsheets or manual paperwork for data entry is time-consuming, prone to errors, and reduces inventory management efficiency.
• Product Diversity: The increasing variety of items significantly raises inventory levels, businesses need an accurate management system to reduce errors.
• Lack of Collaboration: Manually updated data is difficult to be synchronized between departments, leading to inconsistencies and limited information sharing. Inventory levels directly impact production; overstock ties up capital, while shortages deter order acceptance.
• High Costs: Manual management drains resources, requiring more labor, increasing costs, and reducing profitability, while being inefficient.

Simplifying Raw Material Tracking for Garment Factory

In response to post-pandemic challenges and economic downturns, businesses are increasingly seeking streamlined solutions. Among them, technology plays a vital role in simplifying inventory tracking processes.

RM1, developed by TradeLink Technologies, offers an innovative solution to streamline manual inventory management, particularly for raw materials. This solution covers the entire inventory lifecycle, from supplier shipments to warehouse receipts, offering myriad benefits such as:

• Cost reduction – reduce labor cost, chargeback due to material quality, avoid inventory shrinkage, improve inventory turnover.
• Shipment traceability – allow finished goods at the factory to anticipate shipment quantity, arrival schedule and plan their production accordingly .
• Inventory visibility – ability to have real-time and accurate information about the quantity, location, and status of inventory within four walls .
• PO collaboration – A platform that facilitates communication between buyers and raw material suppliers at the order level, including discussions on fulfillment commitment and agreement on delivery schedules.
• 2D barcode/RFID tag raw material tracking – simple scan to identify, monitor, and trace movement of raw materials.
• Shipment inspection – integrated with weight scale and photo-taking feature to reinforce quality control.
• Report writer – build your own reports along with a wide range of operation and discrepancy reports.

With simple, user-friendly operations, cloud-based data updates, and support for over 10 languages, including Vietnamese, RM1 will transform your inventory tracking landscape.

Conclusion

The textile and garment industry is restoring growth, bringing new opportunities and challenges. Adopting technology is an effective solution to overcome the limitations of manual methods, allowing garment businesses to focus on production, market demand, and finding sustainable development paths for the future.

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About TradeLink Technologies,

TradeLink Technologies, founded in 1999, is a supply chain technology solutions provider for global and retail companies. We provide a complete set of packing and shipping solutions to enhance accuracy and visibility using the latest in barcoding technology, including RFID. Learn more about the technology and TradeLink here.