Northshore Apparel Ghana has partnered with Coats Digital to implement digital solutions and build traceable supply chains. WTiN asks how this will help the facility successfully position itself.
Northshore Apparel Ghana Ltd has partnered with Coats Digital to power Northern Ghana’s first regenerative apparel manufacturing hub with advanced digital solutions.
Coats Digital’s GSDCost, FastReactPlan and FastReactFabric form the digital foundation of a purpose-built, zero-waste apparel facility creating thousands of jobs in Northern Ghana. WTiN previously reported on how the facility will optimise Ghanaian apparel manufacturing.
Nurideen Mohammed, co-founder and CEO of Northshore Apparel Ghana says: “We wanted to create a regenerative manufacturing ecosystem that delivers dignity, opportunity and long-term prosperity for Northern Ghana. To do that successfully, digitalisation had to be designed in from day one.”
Northshore Apparel Ghana has partnered with Coats Digital to implement digital solutions and build traceable supply chain
Advancing digital solutions
Mohammed explains Northshore has aimed for an integrated solution to give the facility control of its most “critical costs drivers – labour, fabric and delivery performance”. He says the team chose Coats Digital because of its “deep industry expertise and the strength of its integrated solutions”.
Coats Digital’s FastReactPlan will enable Northshore to stimulate new orders and plan production proactively. The tool has been developed exclusively for the fashion, textile and apparel industry and can be configured in multiple ways to reflect industry best practice and best business requirements.
Meanwhile, GSDCost supports a collaborative, transparent and sustainable supply chain through the use of standard motion codes and predetermined times to help brands and suppliers meet corporate social responsibility (CSR) goals.
FastReactFabric combines Coats Digital’s previous IntelloCut and IntelloBuy solutions into one platform, providing a closed-loop, continuous 360-degree feedback ecosystem between buying and cutting operations, so manufacturers can accurately procure and utilise fabric effectively – reducing waste, boosting efficiency and increasing their bottom line.
“So, this will allow us to confirm orders faster and more reliable,” says Mohammed. “More importantly, we believe that some of these things will be able to enable us to transition from a more reactive operation to a more proactive operation because decisions are based on data and this would give us control of our margins. It will also help us win more trust with our customers.”
Himanshu Mehrotra, managing director, Coats Digital, adds: “By deploying our suite of solutions as an integrated ecosystem, Northshore Apparel is setting itself up for long-term resilience, operational excellence and ethical growth. This is a powerful example of how digitisation can enable not only more efficient supply chains, but also fairer work, reduced waste and stronger partnerships between brands and manufacturers.”
Mehrotra sees Ghana as “becoming a genuine diversification opportunity for many global brands”. By embedding digital solutions from day one and training Northshore engineers on Coats Digital’s suite as the first licensed practitioners in Ghana, he is confident that Ghana can compete competitively on a global scale.
Northshore Apparel Ghana is positioning itself as Northern Ghana’s first regenerative apparel manufacturing hub
Building traceable supply chains
Advancing digital solutions not only means more efficiency, but Northshore intends to use Coats Digital’s suite to build more traceable supply chains.
Mohammed explains Northshore is currently working on supplier mapping to put its suppliers into a tier system. Digitalisation, he says, is helping in this development.
Northshore has a mission to uncover hidden tiers from its suppliers – the journey its suppliers take before it reaches the factory floor. As part of its Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system Northshore has implemented a batch management system and barcode system.
When onboarding a new customer, they must fill out a questionnaire detailing where they sourced their yarn from and which batch it came from. When the yarn arrives at Northshore it is given a special code containing this information. The code will then follow the yarn’s processing journey, tracking its every move and recording it.
“This helps us with our quality management processes, in the sense that we are able to trace and work effectively with our suppliers in respect of what materials they are sending to us,” says Mohammed. “We are then able to trace what we receive, when we receive it, when it was converted and when it was shipped out.”
Coats Digital is supporting these efforts by following the fabrics on their journey and recording all the data to provide increasingly more accurate production timescales and deliverables.
However, Coats Digital is going even further by developing the feedback coming from the factory lines.
Mehrotra explains: “When the order comes in for a particular customer and say, we earlier planned 1,000 pieces on a line, but we realised because of the machines and the operator efficiencies, and so on that we can only make 800, that learning can automatically feed into our planning and we can use it for future planning.”
This circular process, he adds, is where he feels the digitalisation journey is heading towards.
Role of AI
Looking ahead Mohammed says as the facility advanced it will look to integrate artificial intelligence (AI) in the future “because it brings a cost reduction and value”. He says the goal is to establish a smart facility.
Considering its implementation Mehrotra says it will enable future problem solving but the conversation about AI in any industry is data – and specifically the absence of it.
“So, most garment factories today are running on fragmented information. Planning is in one system, costing is another, fabric is maybe in a spreadsheeted, execution is on the floor and captured by hand, etc.”
For AI to help predict and optimise operations, he says, Coats Digital wants to develop a clean, single, structured data foundation underneath operations, and is already making headway in this area.
Moving forward both Mohammed and Mehrotra want to see their collaboration develop and hit new levels.
“As we move forward, our main customers are going to be manufacturers and brands,” says Mohammed. “But primarily how we support out manufacturers to be more collaborative with the brands is going to be one of our key areas that we are going to focus on.”
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