Yeshica Indra La Salle College
Fashion Business 3.2
Report
Company Wacoal is a worldwide lingerie brand and manufacturing that was first based in Japan found by Koichi Tsukamoto in 1946 right after the World War II. The Wacoal logo which is the symbol of blossoming flower, representing the company’s continuous growth and success, while designating pink and red-wine as official colors for the company logo. It is describing the company’s elegance and beauty in its product design along with their soft and flexible material. Wacoal also supports Breast Cancer Awareness as their part of CSR program of giving back (Corporate Social Responsiiliby).
Factory Wacoal is a global brand which factories are spread worldwide, among Indonesia the other manufacturing countries are Japan, Thailand and Taiwan. The PT. Wacoal Indonesia is located at Jl. Tarikolot, Citeureup, Bogor. They are established in 1981 and they are going to celebrate their 30 years this year by holding a fashion show. Ten years after the factory are established, Wacoal Japan signed a joint venture agreement as an international subsidiary and on 1991, their factory is inaugurated. The Indonesian Wacoal itself has been doing the manufacturing themselves starting from the design, picking and researching the raw materials, production up until the selling process. Their merchandiseplanning department follows orders, merchandise reports, export and import productions, etc. The Indonesian do 96% of the production and the rest is import while they do 30% of export. Because import is more limited due to higher cost. Today, the factory has more human power compared to their machines, about 2000 in count. The reason is because the machines have to be buffered each time they altered styles. There are 30% more machines than the operator though. There are 3 different kinds, which a factory operates; EOM that only assist the engineering, ODM which only provides design and CMT which only offer the sewing services. Wacoal only provides the full services instead of one/two of these parts unlike other brands such as GAP, Zara and Victoria Secret which uses mostly sub cons from other factories. Although under the same name, there still is competition between the Wacoal manufacturers of different country. They compete by: Profits; which are measured by their factory efficiency, quality and defects. And image; This the Japanese has excelled. By the higher selling price of the products there compared to the one sold in Indonesia, they offer a better costumer service than any other country. While Indonesia can’t achieve this by the modest price of the Indonesian market price so their image are not as well seen compared to the Japanese.
Although the factory in Japan has decreased in size over time due to the high production cost. And among the International Business, they would have a buying exhibition where a Wacoal factory would buy from another Wacoal factory abroad due to reasons of trying a new market or experimenting a new product. These buying exhibitions would be held in June and December. The factory produces for the three brands PT. Wacoal has targeted differently, that are:
Wacoal is targeted for the more mature women. Although the other brands like Luludi also offers comfort, Wacoal is more representing the lifestyle of the woman.
Luludi is for every woman – though it doesn’t have an exact target market because its main focus is comfort and emphasizes on that every woman fits that – although this may lean more towards the mature market.
Sorci Age. While Wacoal is targeted to the more mature, Sorci Age has a more limited target around 17 to 25 year olds much hipper young adults.
Production Flow
PATTERN -> MATERIAL -> CUTTING -> SEWING
->
CONTROL
->
SHIPPING
PATTERN The designer would send a pattern to the production team and the original pattern will then be used to make copies out of it because the original designer’s pattern may not be altered or damaged.
MATERIAL The first storage room is where all the raw materials are kept. One kind of material can be used for various kinds of styles. When the materials are first received, then it will be input in data and given to the QC located at the back of the storage to be checked for fabric defects as the raw materials do come from the supplier instead of themselves. The QC would then check rolls and rolls of fabrics. The Wacoal has 3 QC checking machines. One machine can inspect up to 20 rolls of fabrics under the light. So their efficiency of quality checking can go up to 60 rolls per day due to high demands. The inspector would then insert one end of the fabric to the machine and mark the spots where the fabric defects is and count of how much defects there are in a meter of fabric then grade them altogether. The blue circle sticker marks that the fabric is a grade A with little to no defects
The yellow circle sticker marks that the fabric is a grade B with some tolerable defects
The red circle sticker marks that the fabric is a grade C which amounts of defects must be rejected by the Wacoal standards and be returned to the supplier which they are held accountable for since the Wacoal standards are grade B. The materials that are to be manufactured are the ones that had already been QC-ed at the storage firstly. Most of the materials that Wacoal uses for the undergarments are lace and material.
CUTTING In the cutting process, the two materials: laces and materials need to be separated. There are different types of ways of the fabrics are cut they are: Rotary The Rotary knife that are used to cut the laces are done manually as they are used to cut delicate laces according to the pattern. The pieces of cut laces needs to be even and exactly the same with the other pieces and so the workers using needs precision in using the knife. The Rotary knife itself with its sharp gear edges are imported from Japan and the Wacoal Indonesia are the only fabric in Indonesia using this technology. Machine Cutting The cutting machine or the bend knife can’t be used to cut many at the same time but it is used to cut the materials. Press Cutting The pressing machine, named Hagata – are used to cut the sponge for the foams inside the brasserie so it will be more précised than done manually but this machine also cant be used to cut so many at the same time. After the cutting process is done, each pieces are checked for quality and the process itself is called Kumiawaze where it is done manually and the defects then are found and marked and may be disposed later. In the production place there are also the Spreading table where the layer are spread to be cut and after the cutting process is done, it is prepared in the setting place to be shipped to sewing.
SEWING The sewing process is also done in another building called the sewing area where everyday around 1.30 pm they do a production control by the daily report production. They check the quality and quantity of the production, for example – in 1000, there can be just 3 defected pieces, so that means they got a 0.3 percent defects quality. There they also record the production news and complaints area with posted pictures of errors of products. At the sewing area, the tables of the sewers are placed in skew in order to save a lot of space and also it makes quality checking a lot easier and time saving. On each of the sewer’s table there posted a sewing guide so to help them not to make any mistakes and there contains all the designs and processes. The sewing processes also begin from one end and shaped as U where at another end the Quality control would begin. Sewing process starts
Quality Control
There is a clear space at the sewing area called as the Sewing Simulation Area that is used every time there is a different article or a new style. Where they would do a new simulation of the steps of sewing.
The sewing process is also divided into groups:
The top part: The first is take the cup that is already made at the cutting process The next is the layer (the symmetrical lace that was cut by the Rotary at the cutting process) Then the inside and the outer part are cut to be the left and right cups The bottom part: Is made up of lace. There is also a piece that is made up of lycra or etc. There is the elastic at the bottom with a boning called T-Bone that is imported from Thailand that can be flexure as it is flexible. The underwire can’t be inserted at the wrong fold under the bust, as it would cause extreme discomfort. The bottom and top part are attached. The top and bottom part are then sewn into one whole piece. Next the straps, which are bought from Wacoal are then attached.
CONTROL AND PACKING After the whole thing is done, then the product is again checked on the mannequin for quality control before it is send to the other storage for packing. At the packing storage, the products then are again checked from inside the boxes for quantity and quality. The factory also has their own labeling machine, as it is required from the Indonesian Department of Commerce. They have both the washing label tag machine and the tag label.
SHIPPING
The shipping is then set. Packing is separated between globally and locally. The solitary packages are packed in the small boxes according to the orders. They take orders by: per 5, per 10 or globally in which they don’t pack at all but ship them right away. Their standard is that if one has gone missing, then it has to be replaced by the whole storage by the selling price, not by the production price.
Yeshica Indra Fashion Business 3.2