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 leading retailers for more than two decades, and has established itself as one of the most prominent manufacturers in the world. With customers including Gap, Banana Republic, Old Navy, Marks & Spencer, Land’s End, Jack Wills, Co-lumbia, and many more, Brandix Casualwear has grown rapidly in the last few years and has cemented their

Brandix Casualwear’s headquarters.

Tukatech

Case Study

place in the upper echelon of garment producers world-wide. “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 position-ing 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 towards preserving our operation in Sri Lanka. The question 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 problems with the company’s previ-ous CAD system, but that something needed to drasti-cally change in order for Brandix Casualwear to remain competitive in a shift-ing global market, and based on the work done in a different division 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 SMART-

mark. Brandix Denim had started using Tukatech sys-tems in March of 2011 and within few days reported considerable savings and had more than doubled their efficiency. The positive changes made

in Brandix’s denim division were noticed by several people throughout the com-pany, including Chairmain Arshoff Omar. “Tukatech is a multi-disciplinary tool that has helped us tremendously

“Tukatech is a multi-disciplinary tool that has helped us tremen-dously to shrink price, bulk and sample conversion time and pat-tern accuracy.”

-Ashroff OmarChairman, Brandix

Case Study

do. I’m happy to say that we did improve our efficiency and met our goals in phase one, and Tukatech 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 sys-tem” said Thushard Saumy-dasa, Head of Product De-velopment.“Cost alone is not our focus. We want to provide speed and value to our customers,” 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 compo-nents to our continued suc-cess.” He further added, “we are getting better quality, more productivity and bet-ter fabric utilization from our

automatic cutters because the data coming from TU-KAcad is further engineered. This really is an added bo-nus we never expected”“Another change we have seen since switching to Tu-katech’s system is a drastic improvement in our sample approval,” said Dhananjaya. “Almost one hundred per-cent of our samples are ap-proved by our customers the first time.”“The feedback I’ve got-ten from my managers is that the new Tukatech sys-tem has more functionality compared 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 implemen-tation of the system was

Tukatech

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

to shrink price, bulk and sample conversion time and pattern accuracy.”After seeing these im-provements in their sister division, Dhananjaya said that he was convinced that there was a lot of po-tential for savings, and he decided to meet with Mr. Ram Sareen, 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 garments 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 accommo-dated.”“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,” said Dhananjaya. “Wheth-er that meant refocusing our resources or moving to a new location, that was what we set out to

handled. The way Tukatech brought in the initial team and interacted with our tech-nical team was very benefi-cial. They listened to what we do and customized the systems to our needs. Many of our requests regarding the software were addressed during this implementation period.”“Working with Brad White-ley, Ganesan and Boris Vishnevsky, Tukatech’s Chief Technical Officer, we were really able to customize 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 know what patternmakers needed, we knew what we needed from our systems and TUKATECH made it happen. I had the opportunity to discuss with Tukatech’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 provide

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

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 improved efficiency.Further, Thushard has taken advantage of TUKAcad’s au-tomated reports. “Instead of creating the reports myself, the software creates them automatically, which saves me time and increases 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 merchandis-ers and sales people. This is a whole new area for us with a lot of potential applica-tions.”

“We are currently in our second round of training, the advance training for non-CAD users to get best pos-sible results from their CAD data,” added Dhananjaya. “We would like to use Tukat-ech to make more structural changes to our infrastruc-ture, and advance our com-pany’s mindset. “When I was looking at the whole operation, I realized that our technology has advanced, but certain mind-sets have not changed. We’d like to use Tukatech to bring technology into our mer-chandising, product develop-ment, planning, engineering and sales departments.” The Windows based system is almost like a built-in PLM system with work-flow engi-neering 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.” •

“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

exact figures as to how much time and money they have saved since switching to Tukatech. They ac-knowledge