Yakka is an iconic Australian owned apparel brand, who has been supplying work wear for over 70 years (see www.yakka.com.au).
Yakka have three principal brands, Yakka, Can't Tear 'Em and Icon, with manufacturing sourced from Fiji, Australia, Hong Kong, China and Indonesia.
Under Yakka's previous supply chain, manufacturers provided apparel products to a central warehousing operation in Somerton, Victoria, Australia.
Yakka Warehousing operated an 'in-house' print bureau, within which merchandising information was printed onto branded tags, which were then attached to the garments on receipt from manufacturers, prior to distribution to retail.
This process entailed the use of high cost labour resources, and created an extra step in the supply chain that delayed the product time to market.
Yakka's desired supply chain process involved each product item being tagged at source (i.e. point of production); with garments arriving at Yakka's Somerton distribution centre fully retail compliant.
Yakka's variable information requirements are complex.
There are twelve different tag 'formats', all containing colour printed brand identification.
On each tag, Yakka require information to be printed that is variable throughout the total batch of tags supplied in each run. Common examples are the product description, style, colour, size, lot number and barcode.
Image Label Systems have worked with Yakka to develop a solution to meet Yakka's supply chain objectives.
Image Label Systems and Yakka have a developed a system that extracts the required variable information from the Yakka, Can't Tear 'Em and Icon management information systems.
Yakka upload the variable information every night to a secure FTP site, where it is electronically interrogated, and sent overnight to the appropriate ILS print facility, based on Yakka's nominated point of production (e.g. a China based manufacturer - the files are sent to ILS China).
Variable Information files are then electronically downloaded to an in house ILS data base system that produces internal quality and production documentation, and electronic print compatible files.
Labels/Tags are then printed directly from these variable information files, grouped by Yakka production site for that region (e.g. China) and distributed to point of production.
This entire process is managed in a 2-5 day window, depending upon point of production.
This program has achieved the following benefits for Yakka:
End of case study.