Category: TECHNOLOGY AND INNOVATION
Country: Bangladesh
Region: Asia
By Laurena McKenna
Coats Digital
GTS NewsDesk
04th December 2024
FastReactPlan has enabled SQ Celsius to streamline and consolidate its diverse planning processes into a single platform - delivering a 6% improvement in production efficiency; an 8% increase in On-Time Delivery Performance; a 7% reduction in overtime and a boost to business growth by over 5%
DHAKA, BANGLADESH and LONDON, UK – 04 December, 2024 – Coats Digital is delighted to announce that following the implementation of Coats Digital’s FastReactPlan, leading Knitwear specialist, SQ Celsius Ltd has improved its production efficiencies by 6 percent, increased OTDP by 8 percent and reduced unnecessary overtime hours by 7 percent, since its adoption of FastReactPlan in 2019. By optimising planning data visibility across relevant teams, SQ Celsius has benefited from more systematic and efficient line scheduling, enhanced productive working practices and the ability to respond to last-minute product changes in an agile way, enabling the company to realise a staggering 5 percent boost to business growth with considerable annual profits.
Headquartered in Dhaka, Bangladesh, SQ Celsius, is the specialist knitwear subsidiary of leading Bangladeshi apparel manufacturing superpower, SQ Group. Boasting a workforce of 18,000, and providing over 2,475 knitting machines across its two factories in Gazipur and Mymensingh, SQ Group produces over 2.4 million pieces a month and reports an annual turnover of over 153 million USD. SQ Celsius’s customers include M&S, H&M, Inditex, Ralph Lauren, PVH & GAP brands, among many others. All the major manufacturing facilities within SQ Group enjoy LEED© Platinum Certifications, the highest level of distinction awarded by the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC).
Before implementing FastReactPlan, SQ Celsius struggled with inefficiencies caused by reliance on Excel spreadsheets for capacity planning, production scheduling, and inventory management. This fragmented approach left crucial data siloed across departments, resulting in a lack of visibility into machine availability, production timelines, and material readiness. These issues led to frequent delays, delivery extensions, costly air shipments, and dissatisfied customers, significantly impacting profitability and operational efficiency.
Additionally, the inability to manage fluctuating demand created imbalances in production capacity, while inaccurate inventory data disrupted cash flow and increased overhead costs. These inefficiencies made it difficult to meet customer expectations or achieve optimal productivity.
Trevin Banks-Clifford-Wijesinghe, Head of Planning, SQ Celsius, said: “Before adopting Coats Digital’s FastReactPlan, we faced significant operational challenges due to the lack of visibility across our capacity planning boards at both of our production facilities. This disjointed approach made it incredibly difficult to accurately forecast capacity, manage fluctuating demand, and align production schedules effectively. Without a clear, unified view of our resources, we often encountered production bottlenecks, extended lead times, and missed delivery commitments. These inefficiencies not only impacted our ability to meet customer expectations but also created financial strain.”
Following the implementation of FastReactPlan, SQ Celsius quickly benefited from access to business-critical planning and production information from the same, single, digitised source. The enhanced data visibility consequently fostered closer alignment and seamless collaboration across all levels of the organisation, enabling planners to create accurate Cost-to-Make (CM) quotes based on real-time capacity availability, and greater flexibility to manage more diverse orders and style change requests swiftly.
Shane Baldsing, CEO, SQ Celsius, said: "FastReactPlan has truly revolutionised our operations. The solution provides a clear, real-time view of capacity planning across our production sites, which has enabled us to balance inventory effectively and improve cash flow management. By precisely aligning resources, we’ve significantly reduced unnecessary material purchases, which has freed up capital and eliminated inefficiencies.
FastReactPlan’s ability to support swift order confirmations and daily reporting has also strengthened our customer relationships, ensuring loyalty and repeat business. Overall, FastReactPlan has driven measurable cost savings, streamlined processes, and enhanced team collaboration, positioning us for sustained growth and success."
Since the adoption of FastReactPlan, SQ Celsius has achieved a 6 percent improvement in production efficiency and an 8 percent increase in on-time delivery performance. Unnecessary overtime hours have been reduced by 7 percent, leading to significant cost savings. Enhanced visibility of planning data across teams has streamlined line scheduling, fostered more productive workflows, and improved responsiveness to last-minute product changes.
Trevin Banks Clifford Wijesinghe, Head of Planning, SQ Celsius, said: "FastReactPlan has been an absolute game-changer for our business. Its ability to centralise and streamline planning processes has unlocked new levels of efficiency and agility that has directly helped us to achieve remarkable market growth and reinforced our position in a highly competitive market.”
Part of Coats Digital’s core Manufacturing Solution Suite, FastReactPlan is a dynamic, visual production planning and control tool that optimises delivery, efficiency and lead times. Designed and developed specifically for footwear and apparel manufacturers, it helps companies integrate capacity, critical path and materials into an integrated planning system.
Golam Mahbub Sikder, Customer Success Manager, Coats Digital said: “We are thrilled to see the exceptional results SQ Celsius has achieved with FastReactPlan. This success highlights the vital role that precise and highly visual capacity planning plays in driving operational efficiency and fostering real growth for textile and apparel manufacturers. The improvements SQ Celsius has realised across its business are a testament to the transformative power of digitization. We are excited to continue our partnership with SQ Celsius as it progresses on its journey to further optimise operations and achieve new milestones.”
Key Benefits and ROI for SQ Celsius:
-Improved production efficiencies by 6%
-Reduced overtime by 7%
-Improved OTDP by 8%
-Quicker response in accepting or changing customer orders providing a better customer experience
-Better inventory management – reducing waste & holding costs and improving cash flow
-Standardised PO, Colour & delivery level visibility across all departments ensuring greater customer retention
-Automated data capture and consolidation.
About SQ Celsius
SQ Celsius is a specialist knitwear manufacturing facility in Bangladesh and a subsidiary of Q Collection Pte Ltd, headquartered in Singapore. With a workforce of 18,000 across the Group and over 2,475 knitting machines in its two factories located in Gazipur and Mymensingh, SQ Celsius produces more than 2.4 million pieces per month, generating an annual turnover exceeding USD 153 million. The Company's customers include global brands such as Old Navy, M&S, H&M, Inditex, and PVH, among others. All major manufacturing facilities within the SQ Group hold LEED© Platinum Certifications—the highest distinction awarded by the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC).
About Coats Digital
Coats Digital is the leading digital transformation partner for the fashion supply chain, powering sustainable processes and high value insights through connected technologies. We leverage deep industry and technology expertise to help brands and manufacturers optimise, connect and accelerate business critical processes from design and development to method-time-cost optimisation, production planning and control, fabric optimisation and shop floor execution. Used in over 3,000 factories globally, our unmatched end-to-end apparel, footwear and textile software and SaaS solutions improve agility, speed to market, efficiency, transparency and sustainability.
Coats Digital is the software business of Coats Group, the world’s leading industrial thread company and a trusted industry player.
About FastReactPlan
FastReactPlan is developed exclusively for the fashion, textile and apparel industry and can be configured in multiple ways to reflect industry best practice and specific business requirements.
FastReactPlan is the market-leading apparel production planning software solution, supporting a faster, more reliable order confirmation process and production plan which is optimised for delivery, speed and efficiency.
The highly visual, flexible ‘drag and drop’ approach to planning allows effective master planning across multiple factories, as well as fast, detailed and accurate scheduling of manufacturing lines/machines. Critical pre-production activities and material requirements are dynamically driven by the latest plan on a LEAN ‘just in time’ basis, supporting the reduction of inventory and lead times.
Copyrights © 2025 GLOBAL TEXTILE SOURCE. All rights reserved.
