The Research on Private Textile Industry Information Resources

The Research on Private Textile Industry Information Resources
Integration System in South of Jiangsu
GAO Peng
School of Management, Jiangsu Teachers University of Technology, P.R China, 213001
[email protected]
Abstract: Based on the investigation about the current situation of the private textile industry
informatization in south of Jiangsu province. The author analyzed the problems and causes that made
the problems in the process of industry informatization and set up a set of information resources
integration system to be suited to the private textile industry in south of Jiangsu province; discussed the
total solution of the system, developing principle and key technology problems etc. and analyzed the
guarantee factors to make the plan be successful in the end of the paper.
Keywords: enterprise informatization, private textile industry, integration system, customization
self-defined
1.
Instruction
With the rapid development of computer, more and more traditional industry can’t be spared under a tide
of information. The fierce market competition sets higher requirements for enterprises in the speed,
quality, service, cost, innovation and agility. Textile industry is China's traditional manufacturing
industry. It occupies a large proportion of the national economy and industrial structure and is the key
industries of national information. With China's accession to WTO, the world market on China's textile
product demand is growing which poses a severe challenge to the textile industry as well as an
opportunity. Under such circumstances, to develop business management information technology
applications which take comprehensive digital resource model as the core, to speed up the process of
information to reduce operating costs have become the strategic choice to enhance the core
competitiveness to the majority of the textile enterprises, especially small and medium textile
enterprises.
Current research on the textile enterprise information system focused largely on the industry ERP
software applications, or existing problems in ERP implementation process, but few proposes an
effective solution to t small and medium textile enterprises’ information resource management. This
paper aims at the construction of private textile enterprise information management system in South of
Jiangsu which can play a certain role in small and medium enterprises informationization.
2. The current situation and the problems of the private textile industry in south
of Jiangsu informationization
2.1 Current situation investigation
South of Jiangsu is China’s textile industrial base since the ancient times. The area has collected one
large quantities of fund- abundant country medium Textile enterprise, in addition each kind of privately
operated Rural enterprise as well as “the family” the type textile workshop which has formed the
multi-faceted export model industry colony. The textile industry has become the important cornerstone
industry as well as the machinery, the chemical industry and so on. However this textile industry mostly
belongs to the labor force intensity enterprise, the technique content is low, researches and develops
ability to be weak independently, the fund scale is quite limited and the information foundation is quite
weak. In order to change this situation, the local government has increased investment on the textile
enterprise informationization in recent years. For the enterprises needs of improving their management
level, information integration and business collaboration, different levels of informationization had
carried out. In order to understand present situation and the benefit of textile information system
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application, we carried on a questionnaire survey to 30 Textile enterprise's information situation
including hardware facility, the software development and applied, the personnel participate degree and
so on. The interviewed object includes State-owned business taking Wuxi No.1 textile Ltd. as
representative, township private enterprises taking Jinhua Yashuai textile Ltd. and Jiangsu positive lake
group as representative, some “Domestic workshop” type Small business in Changzhou area. The
findings are summarized in below table:
Table 1: South of Jiangsu Textile enterprise information hardware facility investigation list
Enterprise type
State-owned
Township private
Domestic workshop
Total
Quantity
3
12
15
30
Have
computer
Completes
LAN
3
12
10
25
3
8
3
12
Server type
Specialized
3
2
0
5
Ordinary
0
6
3
8
Table 2: South of Jiangsu Textile enterprise information software applies investigation list
Total
Software
system type
System
development
way
Module
quantity
Whether the
chief leader
participate
Enterprises
performance
Excel
Desktop system
DB Integration
Management
System
Independent
Outsourcing
Purchases the
mature software
Sole
State-owned
Township private
Domestic workshop
3
0
0
3
12
2
6
4
15
10
3
2
0
1
1
0
3
7
0
2
3
0
2
11
Limited
0
8
4
Majority
3
2
0
Yes
3
7
8
No
0
5
7
Enhancement
3
5
2
not obviously
0
7
13
We can see from the table that the information situation of State-owned business is quite optimistic.
They have all Used the integrative system to carry on unified plan and the management of the enterprise
physical distribution and the fund, which lead to good society and the economic efficiency; “Domestic
workshop” hasn’t achieved the information system basic condition in hardware facility, software
popularization and fund scale; Township private enterprise has been greatly improved in hardware
facility which LAN covering up to 80%, but information technology hasn’t improved significantly with
enterprise efficiency, and only about 40%. So, township private enterprise will be the focus of next
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phase of the textile information.
2.2 Analysis about the current system problems
2.2.1 The effect of the system cluster is weaker
Most private enterprises applied various business information systems to assist management, like CAD,
CAM, invoicing system, Kingdee financial system, But the real achievement of the system cluster and
sharing of data is only less than 30%. Between the various systems of "drying up" information silos
caused by the phenomenon has seriously affected the textile industry to upgrade the level of
informationization. Enterprise needs to effectively integrate CRM systems, E-commerce, supply chain
systems, product data management systems, manufacturing execution systems, workflow management
systems, enterprise knowledge portals, collaborative commerce systems and so on. System integration
application will be the general trend.
2.2.2 Lack of the application system that qualify the industry character
The investigation found that 70% of private enterprises simply buy a commercial software before they
were to conduct a detailed investigation of demand when building information systems. Commercial
software, including a high maturity, a complete management thinking, complete functions and high
degree of standardization, can play an important role in improving enterprise management. However, the
privately textile industry is a significant industrial characteristics of traditional industries:
1. It has the typical characteristics of the continuity of production. The industrial chain is longer than the
general processing assembly industry.
2. It has a wide range of processes and products, but the product standardization is low;
3. Terminal market is personalized, diversified, the demand trends in small quantities to enhance;
4. It has a higher raw material supply sources, but only a single species of raw materials.
Thus a common ERP software, in many ways, does not apply to textile industry. For example, the BOM
in production plan system is necessary for MRP, but the raw materials is only cotton in textile enterprise,
processing technology is rather special, therefore need to change the traditional BOM table to "cotton
using table". So private textile enterprises should not be one-sided pursuit of the advanced software, it
should be combined with industry characteristics, using tailor-made method, ask a professional software
company to establish a suitable overall solution on the basis of detailed investigation in the business
process and then develop an effective information system.
2.2.3 The major application range of the system exist the gap and the lack of spread
The privately textile enterprises that carry on a integrated system mostly concentrate on external
applications like invoicing and finance. As for the textile industry is concerned, production quality
control, process management should be the focus of its informationization. Production is the textile
company's core areas, only using lean production thinking to carry on a centralized management on
quantity, quality of semi-finished production and equipment condition in various of processing can an
enterprise have a more sensitive response to the market. Although some enterprises have used the
overseas sophisticated equipment which has the automatic gathering data function, but the interface
issue if very difficult to resolve. Production management system is therefore more difficult to
implement.
In addition, the poor performance of dynamic expansion of existing systems is also one of the issues
affecting the efficiency of it. Each process has large of quality indicators which is constantly expanding
in textile enterprise and it focuses on different indicators in different stage. Most of the existing software
can do t user-defined on data show format, it must be the developers to achieve the content expansion.
Since most of the existing software using C/S mode, system upgrades and maintenance more difficult, it
also increases the difficulty of the implementation of production management system.
3. The construction plan about the information resources integration system of
private textile industry in south of Jiangsu
According to the present situation of South of Jiangsu private textile Industry information, usability,
flexibility and other issues are the main factors of hindering the information process. Therefore, we must
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establish a set of information resource integration system that qualify textile industry’s own character.
3.1 Total solution plan
Based on the system research to the specific business, the entire information system can be divided into
six sub-systems of systems management, marketing management, inventory management, production
management and finance management. The system uses C/S mode, the background using SQLServer or
Oracle DB. All the data follow the concept of once input and multiple use, which fully reflects the
information integration features.
For example, for the dyeing textile industry, three subsystem modules of inventory, process planning and
production subsystems are relatively strong characteristics. Inventory subsystem carries on effective
management, control and supervision to various materials procurement, warehousing, and inventory. It
includes yarn, colored-yarn and product management and every part includes the function of stock
account, a running account and stock age analysis which eliminates the abnormal outflow of corporate
materials and ensure a reasonable business inventories effectively. Process planning subsystem focuses
on process order management. System will automatically calculate the amount of cast material
according to the contract-like cloth, various type of yarn in the inventory and several parameters like
flower-shaped yarn row list , warp and weft of 100 meters. It will also auto-cast material together to
form a single yarn dyeing as the basis of production. Production subsystem includes three parts of
production statistics, quality inspection and equipment management. It should provide native database
interfaces with advanced textile equipment, develop timing of data transmission functions to complete
automatic collection and summary of key producing quality data.
Marketing systems and financial systems, relatively versatility, can be still used in commercial
information system processing.
System development process due to maximize the use of prototyping development methodology to
maintain a high degree of flexibility. The developer must keep in mind the needs of the user to adjust the
function until the system to achieve a more stable state.
3.2 The developing principle of the system
1. Practical principles. Information resource integration system must meet current operational
requirements and be practical application-oriented.
2. Low-input, low-cost principles.
3. The principles of step by step implements. In general, the enterprise should focus on advanced
technology and gradually improve the function of the system according to he current status of
management infrastructure and computer application. In the technology the system should be guarantees
of future scalability and feasibility. In the implementation, the sub-division can be achieved to perfect it
step by step. But the step by step implementation must be carried out under the guidance of the overall
design.
3.3 To set up the customization self-defined developing platform
The current textiles information systems have some weakness, such as too many indicators, difficulty to
expand system; so it is important to establish a customization development platform.
The customization development platform includes self-defined functions, self-defined documentation
and self-defined reports. Using dynamic Dw, Formula 1 and other external components to develop, the
sub-modes which are parallel connected can use the above methods to do the customized development.
The customized development is not only refers to the software interface style and the display format can
be user-modified, but the basic data items, data processing logic and data reports can be customized by
the advanced users. This is the real sense of "business process customization." In general, the
customization development platform can achieve the following objectives:
1. Greatly simplified the system development work, so the developer can focus on the working of
construction system framework, research core business process, improve the model library and
middleware, fundamentally improve the quality of software.
2. Release the work of non-core business process definition and functional module development to the
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end users, by doing this work the end users can not only better understand the business process but also
improve their development skills. On the other hand, the customization development can increase user
participation and stimulate the user's initiative, which is conducive to the system maintenance.
3. The customization development makes the system has quick response to the business process or
organizational structure changes, and improves the system’s flexibility
4. The grantee factors to make the information integration system be successful
The information systems are not only a technical system but also a complex social system. Sunan
private textile enterprises must pay attention to the following grantee factors to achieve the final success
in informationization in addition to actively explore application software development:
4.1 To strengthen the effect of the top leaders in the process of the system construction
Textile information system is a typical “top leader project”. In the process of design, development and
implementation, it will touch interests of the parties which likely lead to encounter greater resistance.
Therefore, the success of it can’t do without the full support of the top leader. However, the majority of
small enterprises top leader is rather weak sense of informationization. They equate information with
“computerization” and act only as a “user”, not a “barrier excluder”. The situation must be changed.
They must produce a clear understanding of information system’s benefit and use their authority to
remove obstacles to ensure the implementation of the system.
4.2 To Strengthen the introduction of the professional talented persons
The successful implementation of information systems can not do without the participation of
high-quality professional talent persons who not only understand the business processes, but also
understand informationization. On the one hand, they can communicate between developers and users,
on the other hand they can serve as an administrator to advanced function like permission setting,
customization development platform using etc. So, the privately textile enterprise should strengthen
introduction of professional by improving treatment and working environment.
4.3 The government should take more investment to the textile informatization constantly
At present the majority of our enterprise information system investment is too large. Local government
should respond positively to the national policy of information, act as "advocate" role, provide
preferential terms to those who have obvious economic benefits based on information systems and
support a number of enterprises that have strong willingness of information but lack of fund, which
promote the development of textile industry information.
5. Conclusion
The construction of private textile information resources integration systems is not only a technical
system but also a complex social system. According to the total solution plan, we have developed a set
of management information system and put it into use in some private textile enterprise in Changzhou
and Wuxi. The practice verified that the system can get the better effect and qualify the expanding value
to spread in a certain extent.
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