Please read the following article: China's Shirt FactoriesInvest in Efficiency as Wages Rise:
One thousand one hundred and sixteen seconds. That's exactly howlong 1t should take to stitch together a men's dress shirt,according to Eugene Lee, a plant manager at Hong Kong's TAL Group.He knows, because his job is to get the production line at thefactory he oversees in Dongguan, China, to run with Japanese-styleprecision. Each team of about 30 workers is assigned targets.Attaching a collar? That should take 23 seconds. A cuff? Twentyseconds. Lee's line supervisors will sometimes stand behind workersat sewing machines, stopwatch in hand, to assess whether a team'sworking too fast or too slow. The information is posted on awhiteboard, so managers can identify bottlenecks. \"In the old daysa leader used a gut feel, but a lot of times the analysis wasincorrect,\" says Lee. \"We're using real data.\" T AL is one ofseveral companies trying to squeeze more productivity from itsChinese workforce. The effort by factory operators in industriessuch as apparel, toys, and electronics is largely a response torising labor costs. According to the National Bureau of Statisticsof China, urban manufacturing wages rose 73 percent from 2009 to2013, the latest year for which data is available. \"You can't wastelabor, because wages are too high now,\" says Shaun Rein, managingdirector of Shanghai-based China Market Research and author of TheEnd of Copycat China. \"The typical Chinese worker is about aquarter as efficient as a German or an American factory worker,\" hesays. For companies looking to boost productivity, Rein says,\"there's a lot oflow-hanging fruit,\" such as investing in workertraining and automation.
One of the world's largest makers of men's dress shirts,privately held TAL has more than 25,000 workers in China, Vietnam,and other Southeast Asian countries and logged sales of $850million in 2014. Customers include Burberry, LL.Bean, and EddieBauer. Like other apparel makers, TAL is adapting to the rise offast fashion. H&M and Zara introduce styles every few weeks,spurring other retailers to step up their own schedules. Orders aresmaller and more complex. A men's dress shirt that used to come inone standard fit might now be available in classic, slim, and extraslim. Brands and suppliers have to work together more closely, saysJim Ditzel, senior vice president for supply chain at LL.Bean. \"Itused to be they would just cut and sew for us,\" he says of T AL.The two companies now also \"share information on trends, what theysee in the marketplace, and what we are seeing.\" Another feature oftoday's high-velocity retail environment is that customers are muchless tolerant of delivery delays. \"In a two-season year,[merchandise] would be on the shelf for six months, so if youmissed the delivery deadline by two weeks, it was no big deal,\"says T AL Chief Executive Officer Roger Lee. Nowadays, somecustomers assess a 10 percent penalty if a shipment is even one daylate. \"And on top of that, we have to air ship the goodsourselves-at our own expense,\" Lee says. Borrowing from leanmanufacturing, a concept popularized by Toyota Motor and otherJapanese companies, T AL is running more-but smaller-productionlines. That way a problem with one worker or machine might affectonly tens of items rather than hundreds. Teams are a third the sizethey used to be, and pay is based on the team's output rather thanthe worker's. Each team has a floating member (called a waterspider, \"because they jump all over the place,\" says factorymanager Lee) who can perform various tasks, whether assisting acolleague who's fallen behind or fetching labels.
As they invest more in training, companies have more to losefrom employee turnover-and greater incentive to treat employeesbetter. \"No workers will come and join a factory\" if conditions arepoor, says Allan C.K. Chan, associate head of the Institute ofTextiles and Clothing at Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Still,the new world of shorter production schedules takes its toll,according to Geoffrey Crothall, communications director at ChinaLabour Bulletin in Hong Kong. \"All the pressure that supplierfactories get from brands gets transferred down to the workers,\" hesays. \"The line supervisor is under pressure to ensure qualitycontrol and bulk deliverv, all in the short time required.
Write a 500 Word document responding to the followingquestions:
Does the use of e-commerce data and information sharing has apositive impact on manufacturing productivity, efficiency, andexternal logistics infrastructure?
What is a feature of today’s high-velocity retail environmentthat customers are much less tolerant of?
What is the output-to-input ratio measure?
