Grupo Libra is a premium denim manufacturer located in Torreon, Mexico established in 1947 to distribute its Venado brand jean across Mexico. They have production capacities of 150,000 units per month, and have some of the most sophisticated machinery and techniques available to the North American marketplace. Their client base includes DKNY, Liz Claiborne, Tommy Hilfiger and Macy's.
The challenges that Grupo Libra face arise are both on the product development and production processes. Their U.S. client bases' development process relies on email to submit their technical drawings to develop their seasonal collections, and excel spreadsheets to manage both the cost and prototype development. Once the products have been adopted, production workflow is transmitted on a weekly basis via email and spreadsheet to the client. In addition, the production team must manage the 7 factories that are responsible for the assembly of these products and the processing upon their completion.
Timereaction has simplified the development to delivery process. Their U.S. based clients are given permission to upload the technical drawings to a securely protected folder. Grupo Libra's development team can then use this information to generate a cost for the product based on the information supplied and upload these details to the cloud. The client can then login and access the information, choose the products for their seasonal calendar, and create a request for development samples. This request then starts a message containing all of the details, comments and changes that take place from the initial development through to the production approval process. This is accomplished without the need for email or attachments. Once a purchase order is received, the production team can then start to create various workflows which are placed onto a shared calendar, keeping both the supply chain and clients alerted to progress as their product moves through the production process.
The benefits to Grupo Libra are two-fold. Timereaction allows the internal development and production team to be in constant communication based on their shared messaging and calendaring systems in their local language. In a quote from Company President Sr. Ricardo Marcos "the way all the staff at the company can see, participate and supervise the work in process is fundamental because any system gives good results if the people—executives or staff—follow up 100%." Clients can keep track of the products as it moves through the development to delivery cycle, alerted to any potential problems before they become critical.