The Fact

Brands gets recognition for its quality products. Manufactures get continuous production orders for
their quality work and making quality garments.
So, serious business owners always give importance in product quality control and process control.
Making and delivering good quality products should be the main goal for any fashion brands and
fashion manufacturing companies.
If you aware about the fashion supply chain, you may know that many clothing brands used to
outsource stitching production and they handle the finishing in packaging at the end. There are
many apparel manufacturers who take orders from the apparel buyers. Due to their capacity
limitation, they used to outsource the garment stitching. This is a common practice in fashion
sourcing.
Managing quality of the garment, trims, and raw materials is manageable when all processes are
done inhouse. When garment quality is checked, inspected, and controlled by your own team as
they will be committed to do their job.
You can't expect same level of stitching quality (and finishing quality) when you outsource the
production from subcontractors.

Challenges in managing quality of outsourced orders

You will be shipping all the orders to your buyer from your end. So, you cannot neglect finished
garment quality for the outsource garments. If something not made as per specs by your
subcontractors, you will be responsible for that quality issue.
To the buyers, it doesn't matter who is making their garments. They need quality product, and the
finished garment quality must meet their requirement.
In my interaction of with big apparel manufacturers and with some buying house employees, I came
to know that most of them are facing challenges in controlling quality of the outsourced orders. It is
not only the delay of manufacturing, but they do also not get the production status of their orders
when they need it. Today many buyers need quality control status of the order that are on the
production stage.
Many small job-workers do not employ any quality checkers and quality controller for managing
quality. How can you expect quality inspection report from them?
That is why you can’t expect same level of product quality that you can make inhouse production
facilities.

So, now the question is how one can manage the outsource orders when they need to work
subcontractors?
You can’t apply your quality control policy in your vendors factories. You can't increase the cost of
quality of the vendor factories.

Work around for controlling quality of subcontracting orders

You can improve product quality by reducing defect generation and eliminating the sources of defect
generation at the production stage.
How will you do that?

  1.  A detailed quality checking reports of garment production processes, quality audit report
    can assist on improving process quality.
  2. You need day to day production status, tracking of quality issues in the previous orders.
  3. You need order wise quality performance report of the orders daily basis
  4. You need list of frequently occurring defects and further you may need the source of
    defects.
  5. . You need daily quality data analysis and projection of quality issues for a specific order.
    To get all these reports and information you need to use technology solutions that will help you
    capturing apparel quality data on real-time and improve the process visibility of all order including
    inhouse production and outsourced orders.

Solution – Bringing quality data in single platform

So in today's competitive market, you can control product quality of the outsource orders by
improving visibility, and data transparency. To achieve this goal, you need to take help of the latest
quality control applications.
Provide SQC applications to the quality checkers. Such quality applications can be installed in tablet
and mobile phones. Checkers will collect quality inspection data when they visit the subcontractors’
production facilities. If the subcontractors have quality checkers, you can suggest them to use
mobile application for capturing quality inspection data.
Capture garment quality checking data through SQC applications. Make the quality reports available
to your internal team in real-time who can take decision on further action. Many SQC applications
are capable of providing detailed statistic of quality DHU, style wise quality performance, identifying
frequently occurring defects and can identify the source of any defects. Get repair work information
and track time for the repair work.
That is how you know your suppliers’ performance in terms quality management. This tool can assist
you controlling your subcontractors and evaluate them for placing future orders.
If there is no system of quality checking and quality report making, mobile applications are right tool
for starting quality checking and at the same recording all the flaws found in stitched garments, in
operations when checker do inline inspection.

StitchMES’s quality control module is a right tool for managing inhouse garment quality as well as
garment quality of outsource orders. An easy to install mobile based quality control application.
Book a demo to know more about StitchMES Quality Control Application.