The 5th edition of Resilient Tirupur, organised by Tiruppur Exporters Association (TEA) and NIFT TEA Institute in association with Sripuram Trust and TTPK, was attended by over 1,000 participants including factory owners, supply chain partners, senior professionals and students from textile/fashion institutes. The event was held on February 8 in Tiruppur.
As the name suggests, Resilient Tirupur is a testimony of the resilience of people of the knits capital of India. It was started in 2012 bringing together the apparel industry players to get inspired, learn from leading experts and renew their commitment to achieving business growth and well-being of millions of people associated with the industry.
Speaking at the event Surinder Jain, business director of Wazir Advisors, emphasised on the need to increase India’s share of exports to the US and EU. He said Chinese exporters have an advantage over India in terms of lower interest costs, lower overheads due to economies of scale and high efficiencies. He spoke of a Virtual Integration model practised by Chinese groups. He gave example of GTT group, where a core group of companies does all customer facing functions like marketing, merchandising, design, product development and approvals, whereas the order execution functions like fabric trims and garment production are conducted by other factories located nearby and profits get shared by the entire group. The group has a $4 billion turnover. Due to such reasons, China is competitive in spite of higher labour cost compared to India.
In his address on ‘Recipe for Resilience: Manufacturing Efficiency and Supply Chain Management’, Rajesh Bheda, MD, Rajesh Bheda Consulting, said, “Lord Hanuman had to be reminded of his powers by Jambwan, at the time of a need of flying to Lanka. Upon the reminder, Hanuman regained his powers and took the flight to Lanka and rest is known to all of us. Similarly, all of us have powers to do extraordinary things, but the Hanuman in us needs to be invoked.” With case studies, he demonstrated how the factories in Tiruppur can and have improved productivity by 25 per cent to 30 per cent. He also shared cases of factories of leading international groups achieving benchmarks productivity of 75+ per cent efficiency in Ethiopia with the application of best practices, against most factories struggling with low productivity there.
Emphasising the need for creating agile supply chains to reduce lead-times and on-time delivery, he stated that factories in Tiruppur must target 45-day lead time than continuing with 75- or 60-day lead time. He asked how many factories in Tiruppur are capable of virtual prototyping, which is the need of the hour for speed in the fashion business.
