Business need:
Located at North-Portugal’s important center for textile and apparel manufacturing, Barcelos, Miguel Sousa Confeçcoes S.A. specializes in fashion pieces manufactured from a variety of jersey fabrics and other types of knitwear. Each piece is developed based on the demands of their customers and are produced in house from design all the way through to the final product. Known for its high-quality seam processing, Miguel Sousa is a reliable source for quality garment production.
The challenge:
With sewing outsourced to a total of 20 subcontractors and a huge variety of styles and colors in the pipeline at all times, the company sees itself continuously confronted with the high demands of handling each individual order. In addition, the establishment of their own brand collection will now become the next adventure for the 40-year-old self-made man, Miguel, and his wife Claudia, an accomplished woman in the world of clothing manufacturing.
The solution:
They have been evaluating the possibilities of implementing state-of-the-art automation solutions to help manage the growth of the company since being founded in 2001. After a lot of testing of products on the market, they began investing in premium technology. “Our decision to work with Gerber Technology has repeatedly proven to be the best possible way to sustainably secure the continued existence and development of our business,” said Miguel Sousa. “We grew up with Gerber products and value the industry leading, process-oriented consulting and reliable service provided by the Gerber team on site here in Portugal.”
The benefits:
There was strong interest when the global technology partner introduced the innovative cut ticket option — implementing a fully integrated solution from AccuMark pattern design and AccuNest optimized markers to material spreading right through to automated cutting. Today, the stringent and fully controllable processing of orders is as follows:
- Cut plans are developed in AccuMark
- Followed by marker making and optimizing via AccuNest
- AccuMark generates a printed cut ticket with barcode per order
- Scanning of the cut ticket barcode to retrieve spread details
- Gerber’s Label ID applies piece and cut ticket label to the spread – or to different layers within the multi-color spread
- AccuPlan generates optimized cut plans taking into account the entire workflow, decreasing lead times, increasing efficiency
- Gerber Paragon cutter software to provide easy access right at the screen to all relevant job details and metrics
“Given the variety of materials and colors we face, the integrated process we now have in place has a major impact on the output we are able to generate – productivity all together increased by 25 to 30% ”. The cut ticket application supports the company’s plan for further growth and development allowing them to take their brand to the next level.
