Unionwear: Succeeding While Others are Fleeing
Customer Company Size
Mid-size Company
Region
- America
Country
- United States
Product
- Rootstock Manufacturing ERP
Tech Stack
- Salesforce’s Force.com platform
Implementation Scale
- Enterprise-wide Deployment
Impact Metrics
- Productivity Improvements
- Cost Savings
Technology Category
- Platform as a Service (PaaS) - Application Development Platforms
Applicable Industries
- Apparel
Applicable Functions
- Discrete Manufacturing
Use Cases
- Manufacturing System Automation
- Inventory Management
Services
- Cloud Planning, Design & Implementation Services
About The Customer
Unionwear is a manufacturer of custom-made baseball caps, tote bags, and apparel. The company is based in Newark, NJ, and employs 120 union workers. Despite operating in a historically expensive location and in an industry that has seen a significant decline in the US, Unionwear has been able to succeed by embracing lean manufacturing and continuous improvement. The company has been practicing this process for 9 years, and as a result, they have been able to triple their productivity. Unionwear's primary raw material is fabric, and customer demands require that they use a multitude of colors and types of fabric.
The Challenge
Unionwear, a custom-made baseball cap, tote bags, and apparel manufacturer based in Newark, NJ, operates in a challenging market. The clothing and apparel industry in America has seen a significant decline, with the percentage of clothing and apparel consumed by Americans that is made in America dropping from 95% in 1960 to about 2% today. Additionally, the apparel spending by the average US household has dropped from $4,300 to $1,700, and the percentage of household spending on apparel has dropped from about 10% in 1960 to 3.5% today. As a result, the apparel industry employment has contracted from an average employment of 902,000 in 1960 to about 136,000 today. Unionwear, however, has been able to succeed in this challenging market by embracing lean manufacturing and continuous improvement.
The Solution
Unionwear adopted Rootstock Manufacturing ERP, a system designed for the manufacturing environment. Rootstock is delivered from the Cloud and is the largest single native application on Salesforce’s Force.com platform. Its design facilitates fast and easy implementations, no major IT infrastructure investment, and the ability to grow with the successful manufacturer. Unionwear wanted to adopt a system that would enhance their goal of increasing value to the customer while not consuming valuable resources in the care and feeding of a complex system. Unionwear is focusing on two primary areas to continue their process of continuous improvement. The first is in the area of inventory. It is critical to plan precisely the amount of material required for production and to know exactly what is available for production at any given moment. The second area is the measurement of efficiency. Unionwear only measures efficiency in the production of finished goods, as a finished product ready to ship is value to their customer.
Operational Impact
Quantitative Benefit
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