Industrias Haber’s Customer Story

Challenge
Industrias Haber’s designs, manufactures and retails suits and uniforms for men and women. In addition to its own brands, High Life, Robert’s and Men’s Fashion, the 100% Mexican company also, works with industry heavyweights Hugo Boss, Ermenegildo Zegna, Canali, Valentino and Armani, and exports to Canada, the US and Mexico.

With business booming and orders rolling in, Haber’s needed a production process that would allow it to manage the 130,000 garments it was producing a month as efficiently as possible, so that it could reduce its time to market and keep its offer cost-competitive, without sacrificing the quality, fit and attention to detail so crucial to quality tailored clothing.

Solution
Industrias Haber’s had already worked with Lectra to automate its pattern making process, but the truly dramatic change came when the suit manufacturer decided to give its cutting room a makeover. Haber’s teamed up with Lectra’s experts to automate marker making and cut-order planning at its factory. When combined with Lectra’s high-speed Vector cutting machines, the new processes allowed the company to reduce fabric waste by 3-4%; improve product quality by 20-25%; boost production efficiency by 10%; and cut its manufacturing process down from 15 to 10 days. This meant they could compete with other brands on speed, while continuing to set themselves apart with superior quality and service.

Markets
Suits, uniforms and casual wear

Location
Santiago Tianguistenco, Estado de Mexico

Lectra Solution
 

Industrias Haber’s started out as a small family operation producing 20 suits a day and has grown to become one of the biggest suit and uniform manufacturers in Mexico.

Haber’s own brands are sold throughout Mexico in the company’s 120 retail stores, and the company also works with big-name brands such as Hugo Boss, Ermenegildo Zegna and Armani. “Our goal is to become the biggest fashion supplier in Mexico and Latin America by providing a superior-quality product at an accessible price,” says Oscar Álvarez, Director of Operations for Industrias Haber’s.

Keeping Pace with the Market
Controlling planning and production for 3,000 suits a day is no easy task and with competition heating up in the marketplace, Haber’s was under pressure to keep its prices down, while delivering orders on increasingly shorter turnaround times. The manufacturer needed to make its operation more cost-efficient, while maintaining the rigorous fit and quality standards that set its offer apart from competitors. Working together, Haber’s and Lectra found ways to save on costs by using marker-making technology and zerobuffer cutting machines that minimized expensive cutting errors and reduced fabric waste by 2.5%. “We are now more efficient and precise,” affirms Edilberto Trujillo Sánchez, Quality Control Director at the Haber’s plant. “It would be next to impossible for us to achieve our high product-quality standards without Lectra’s fast and accurate automatic cutting.”

A Cutting-Room Convert
Cutting Room Manager Rubén Rubilar will be the first to tell you he had reservations about Haber’s decision to begin using Lectra’s cut-order planning technology, Optiplan. He had come from a more traditional cutting room and was doubtful that the new solution’s benefits would justify the radical change. Today, Rubilar has become Optiplan’s biggest advocate. “With Lectra’s cutting-room solution, we can run simulations of different production scenarios and choose the one that gives us the best result,” Rubilar explains.

“Optiplan has changed the way we make manufacturing decisions; we are now much more flexible and agile when it comes to production.” Using Lectra technology, Rubilar has been able to reduce lead time for orders by 30% and increase productivity by 10%. In addition, by moving from manual to automatic cutting with Vector, Haber’s has doubled its cutting capacity from 1200 to 2400 units per day.

 “We have gone from a 15-day process to 10 days. And sometimes we’ve done it in just 3 days.” – Rubén Rubilar, Cutting Room Manager.

A Future That’s Made To Measue
“It is important for us to keep offering our customers new possibilities,” says Oscar Álvarez, Director of Operations for Industrias Haber’s. “So our focus now is on developing our made-to-measure offer.” Armed with an efficient development process and a fast, agile cutting room, Haber’s has the tools it needs to develop its custom-tailoring business, with an eye to becoming the best in its market. “These are premium-quality suits that need to be cut and sewn precisely, and must be delivered on time,” emphasizes Rubilar. “If it weren’t for the system that we currently have in place, we wouldn’t be able to meet our customers’ exacting standards.”

As the Mexican company forges ahead with its ambitious plans for expansion, it knows it can count on Lectra’s expert guidance and technology for all of its future needs. “I’m sure that Lectra will continue to develop new technologies and new ideas, and we are more than delighted to keep pace with them,” concludes Trujillo Sánchez, with a confident smile.

 

Source:  Lectra