Datatex solutions are exclusively for textile & apparel industry

Datatex, one of the leading leading suppliers of IT software solutions to the global textile and apparel industry, has the largest installed base of textile software with customers in 42 countries and 5 continents. Datatex textile ERP platforms represent over 20 years of continuous software development and refinement in close collaboration with users in the textile and apparel sector.

The company’s Head for Sales and Marketing in the APAC region, Rahul Mahajan, discusses about the company’s entry into India, and development over the years.

Give us some background on Datatex’s entry into India and developments over the years till present set-up.

Datatex has been in India since 1997 with the implementation of TIM on AS400 servers for textile organisations. We went on to acquire large share of Indian textile industry as our customers. In the year 2007, we released our state-of-the-art 100 per cent Java J2EE ERP called as NOW (Network Oriented World) for the textile and apparel industry. NOW, due to the latest technology, got very good acceptance from the existing TIM customers as well as new customers who are market leaders. Especially, apparel-related functionality and integration capability with third-party solutions have been appreciated by the industry in India and around the globe.

In all these years, we were present in the Indian market via our business partners and not with our own office. In the year 2018, we set up our own office in Bengaluru. We have a dedicated team of over 55 consultants working for our customers in the Asia Pacific (APAC) region. APAC-specific sales and delivery team structures are in place to serve the market better. The team includes textile and apparel industry-specific functional consultants, technical consultants and support desk for existing customers.

What are the various ERP and other systems Datatex offers to the textile industry? What are their USPs?

As you know, Datatex solutions are exclusively for textile and apparel industry. Datatex offers multiple products for textile and apparel Industry across all the textile supply chain segments like spinning, knitting, weaving, processing and apparel manufacturing in multiple sub verticals like denim, knits, worsted, nonwoven, home textiles, etc.

Datatex has below distinct solutions to cater to industry needs:

• Web-based ERP (NOW) to manage business transactions in sales, purchase, planning, production, warehousing, costing, plant maintenance, quality management, HR payroll and finance modules
• Advanced capacity balancing (MCM) and machine scheduling (MQM) solutions for typical planning needs of the industry
• Special solution (CATS) for fabric defect recording and cut optimisation
• CAMS solution for shop-floor data recording and machine interface for automatic data recording

Can you give us a brief case study of a textile mill that has benefited by way of your systems in India?

I would like to consolidate the experiences in the Indian market. We have implemented Datatex ERP – NOW in many vertically integrated organisations in India. Some of the prominent challenges faced by our customers were:

• Management of raw material and fabric (FG) inventory
• Difficulty in traceability of production specially when product variety is high
• SOP dilution and mismatch in plan v/s actual
• Higher quality conformance requirement by customers
• Business expansion with new business requiring more attention
• All this with lesser order lengths with greater pressure on margins

When Datatex products were deployed at these organisations, below benefits were realised:

• Optimum use of raw material and fabric inventory by auto replenishment, better stock keeping and error free issue/returns. Automatic netting at planning levels helped eliminate excess ordering of the materials.
• Datatex maintains sales order to production order to material receipt traceability across production lots. Improved traceability resulted into better visibility and control on production processes.
• Ease-of-using Datatex solutions and practical controls for ensuring SOP resulted into usage of ERP at all levels without any hindrance.
• Quality is a function of input material and machine performance. Datatex plant maintenance and quality management modules ensured that the preventive maintenance plans and quality parameters are followed across the organisations.
• Datatex products are highly configurable as per dynamic business requirements. So be it new business expansion into nonwoven, technical textiles, etc., or forward or backward integration, or simply new plant set ups, our customers could do it on their own with a little help from our support team. IT solutions became business enablers and contributed to smooth business expansion.
• When number of customers increase and so the orders, the order management needs to be auto allocated to utilise best machine for a job and to be able to deliver in time. The planning solutions have proved immensely helpful to our customers and have improved planning efficiency.

With Industry 4.0 knocking at the door of the Indian textile industry, give us the importance of automation that can go a long way in promoting Indian industry’s domestic production and export.

Industry 4.0 is for everyone’s benefit — be it domestic or export market. Industry 4.0 implementation is about building capability to communicate between machines, software and operators to produce more efficiently conforming to customers’ requirements in terms of quality and quantity while making business sense.

At Datatex, we believe that Industry 4.0 is a reality and we have been delivering the solutions that enable machines to speak to ERPs directly. We have platform that enables ERP or any software to instruct machines based on dynamic values based on customer, region or type of product. The instructions can be with respect to production quantities or with respect to production set up in terms of speed, temperature or pressure setting. It can be used for continuous or batch processes be it spinning, weaving, knitting, processing or garmenting operations – across material receipt to FG packing and dispatches.

Majority of Indian textile industry lies in MSME, and how can ERP be an answer to their needs?

Size of the organisation should not be considered for the need of ERP. ERP should be way of life, to organise resources better in order to realise better profits. Right selection of ERP with a practical approach to implement would certainly help MSME realise benefits. MSMEs with varied product line should rope in ERPs that would help improve their complex material management and customised production requirements.

What are the plans of Datatex for the future? Will there be more products, investment, etc.

We will continue to keep our focus on textiles and apparel industry as it has been for the last 30+ years. Apart from the ERP, planning and automation, we have been adding various solutions like Vendor portal, plant maintenance on handheld, workflow management for our NOW customers.

We are working on MES systems that can be delivered on a turnkey basis to our customers. Once implemented, irrespective of make of machines, our customers would have seamless access and control of production information to plan and produce efficiently.

Tell us about Datatex growth in other countries, particularly in Asia and also about its research activities in India?

We are experiencing great demand of IT solutions in Asia and APAC in general. In fact that’s the reasons we have set up our own office in India from where we support the customers in this region.

Our customer inputs from across the globe and across product categories are significant part our research initiatives in terms of technological or functional improvements. We keep on investing our resources into the inputs so that most of our customers are benefitted with new and improved functionality.