Tukatech A Case Study

Tukatech

From Inspiration to InnovationAbout Brandix

38 Manufacturing Facilities in Sri Lanka, India, and Bangla-desh

In Business since 1969, Bran-dix itself formed from several other companies in 2002

Specializes in product devel-opment, manufacturing, and marketing

Makes their own fabric, thread, buttons and hangersR&D, washing, dyeing, finish-ing and quality control.

Utilizing TUKAcad and SMARTmark

Company Vision “To be THE inspired solution for branded clothing.”

World’s first LEED Platinum rated apparel factory and first apparel manufacturer to be ISO 50001 certified

With a long list of international customers and an even longer history in the apparel industry, Brandix is one of the leading garment manufacturers in Sri Lanka. Bran-dix Casualwear, a division focused on creating value-added bottoms for men, women, and children, has switched to Tukatech’s design and pre-production sys-tems with excellent results.Sri Lankan owned and operated, Brandix Casualwear has produced garments for many of the world’s lead-ing retailers for more than two decades, and has estab-lished itself as one of the most prominent manufactur-ers in the world. With customers including Gap, Banana Republic, Old Navy, Marks & Spencer, Land’s End, Jack Wills, Columbia, and many more, Brandix Casualwear has grown rapidly in the last few years and has cement-

Brandix Casualwear’s headquarters.

Tukatech

Case Study

ed their place in the upper echelon of garment produc-ers worldwide. “Our strength is making value-added bottoms with elevated washes and fin-ishes,” said Dhananjaya Rajapaksha, CEO of Brandix Casualwear. With many in-ternational retailers working with manufacturers based in Bangladesh or Vietnam, Brandix Casualwear and other Sri Lankan garment producers are positioning their country as a place where clothes can be made under some of the best working conditions in the world and with exceptional added value.“We have to look for im-provements,” said Dhanan-jaya. “Woven bottoms have the biggest price challenge in the industry, because of the less expensive work coming out of other coun-tries. We must be sharper in our cost structure than we have been before.”“We looked around for solu-tions to improve our cost base in order to grow and even sustain the business that we have here,” said Dhananjaya. “We have a lot of skills that we have de-veloped over the years that we just can’t abandon, we had to take certain steps to-wards preserving our opera-tion in Sri Lanka. The ques-tion was who would take these steps with us. We already had big investments

TUKAcad 2012 edition, the advanced pattern making software.

in CAD systems, and our people are already trained to work a certain way.”Dhananjaya admits that there were no real prob-lems with the company’s previous CAD system, but that something needed to drastically change in order for Brandix Casualwear to remain competitive in a shift-ing global market, and based on the work done in a different di-vision of Brandix, it became apparent that Tukatech was able to provide that change.Dhananjaya credits Bran-dix’s Denim division with

showing him the benefits of using TUKAcad and SMARTmark. Brandix Denim had started using Tukat-ech systems in March of 2011 and within few days reported considerable sav-ings and had more than doubled their efficiency.

After seeing these improve-ments in their sister divi-sion, Dhananjaya said that he was convinced that there was a lot of potential for

“I’m happy to say that we did improve our efficiency [by 33%] and met our goals in phase one, and Tukatech was a part of that.“

-Dhananjaya RajapakshaCEO, Brandix Casualwear

Case Study

said Dhananjaya. “Whether that meant refocusing our resources or moving to a new location, that was what we set out to do. I’m happy to say that we did improve our efficiency and met our

goals in phase one, and Tukat-ech was a part of that.““Today, our people are using Tukatech’s CAD to a much larger extent than

they were with our previous CAD system” said Thushard Saumydasa, Head of Prod-uct Development.“Cost alone is not our focus. We want to provide speed

and value to our custom-ers,” said Dhananjaya. “And in providing speed, everything else matters. Tukatech has helped us to cut fabric faster and more accurately, which are two very key components to our continued success.” He fur-ther added, “we are getting better quality, more pro-ductivity and better fabric utilization from our auto-matic cutters because the data coming from TUKAcad is further engineered. This really is an added bonus we never expected”“Another change we have seen since switching to Tu-katech’s system is a drastic improvement in our sample approval,” said Dhanan-jaya. “Almost one hundred percent of our samples are approved by our customers

Tukatech

Pattern Makers at work in Brandix Casualwear’s CAD room.

savings, and he decided to meet with Mr. Ram Sa-reen, Tukatech’s founder and CEO. ““Mr. Sareen came in and showed that he had an extensive knowledge

about garment manufac-turing. He knew what our technical people needed,” said Dhananjaya. “He worked with us to give us what we wanted in a software system, like unique features to cal-culate shrinkage in any pattern at any segment, get better fitting gar-ments first time without having to make a sample to learn the mistakes. He sent his technical team from USA and India, and many of our requests for what we wanted to see in the software were accom-modated.”“When we initially switched to using Tu-katech, it was part of an overall project, which was to improve the overall ef-ficiency of our operation by 33% in three months,”

“Our first submitted sample approval has reached the highest level possible.”

-Thushard Saumydasa, Head of Product Development

the first time.”“The feedback I’ve gotten from my managers is that the new Tukatech system has more functionality com-pared to the latest CAD systems they had and it is much easier to manage and use,” said Dhananjaya. “The most encouraging thing I’ve heard from the employees is the way that the imple-mentation of the system was handled. The way Tu-katech brought in the initial team and interacted with our technical team was very beneficial. They listened to what we do and customized the systems to our needs. Many of our requests re-garding the software were addressed during this im-plementation period.”“Working with Brad White-ley, Ganesan and Boris Vishnevsky, Tukatech’s Chief Technical Officer, we were really able to custom-ize the TUKAcad software so that it was able to meet our specific needs,” said Thushard. “we know what our customers do and what they expect from us, we

AboutTukatechTukatech is a Los Angeles-based company that provides 2D and 3D software solutions and manufacturing equipment to garment producers. It also provides web-based product development services and PDM/PLM systems, supported by brick and mortar centers strategically located in garment hubs worldwide. With over 12,000 systems sold and about 3,500 competitive systems replaced, Tukatech is the fastest growing garment CAD/CAM company in the world. Tukatech has been ranked by Apparel Magazine as the #1 Apparel software company in the world.

Case Study

know what patternmakers needed, we knew what we needed from our systems and TUKATECH made it happen. I had the opportu-nity to discuss with Tukat-ech’s team and learn how to do those things.”Though Dhananjaya and Thushard acknowledge the savings are big with produc-tivity, fabric consumption and quality of patterns, they say it is too soon to pro-vide exact figures as to how much time and money they have saved since switching to Tukatech. They acknowl-edge that the operation as a whole has improved in the last few months, and that with the system in place, there is a lot of potential for growth and further im-proved efficiency.Further, Thushard has taken advantage of TUKAcad’s automated reports. “Instead of creating the reports my-self, the software creates them automatically, which saves me time and increas-es my overall efficiency.”Dhananjaya expressed his enthusiasm for the reports generated by TUKAcad, and indicated that the reports make far-reaching improve-

ments for Brandix Casual-wear. “These reports are essential for non-technical employees, like merchan-disers and sales people. This is a whole new area for us with a lot of potential ap-plications.” “We are currently in our second round of training, the advance training for non-CAD users to get best possible results from their CAD data,” added Dhanan-jaya. “We would like to use Tukatech to make more structural changes to our infrastructure, and advance our company’s mindset. “When I was looking at the whole operation, I real-ized that our technology has advanced, but certain mindsets have not changed. We’d like to use Tukatech to bring technology into our merchandising, prod-uct development, planning, engineering and sales de-partments.” The Windows based system is almost like a built-in PLM system with work-flow engineering done by TUKATECH, really, it is not just a CAD system, it is way more than that” he added. “We are in the fashion ap-parel industry, and fashion keeps changing fast. We must also be fast,” said Dhananjaya. “Tukatech al-lows us to be faster, more efficient, and ultimately im-proves our bottom line.” •