MOPS

DORE DORE
Team:
Pradeeksha N
Praveen Balaji
Preethi Narayanan
Samyuktha R B
Dore’s Family Business

Doré society was established by Jean Baptiste, in 1819 after the French revolution

Doré society has achieved the pinnacle of growth though the women’s back-seam stockings are
plummeting

Layoffs seemed imminent

Doré-Doré established the Childrens knitwear section

1990

Doré-Doré Children knitwear advertisement campaign began

The competitive pressure started building, while the labour cost started increasing

The main problem with Doré-Doré is the SKU it was at 25,000 /35,000 units for replenishment

Only kidswear did not have SKU but maintained on the basis of advanced order

The forecast went worse and they couldn't sell the produced stock during the past 2 years and much
were sold at lower price, then came the “quick response” strategy
Company Background

● Company Divisions:
➔ Hosiery -
◆ socks, stockings
◆ 88% of DD’s sales
◆ Both classic and fashion items
➔ Knitwear -
◆ children’s knitwear
◆ 75% of collection kept changing
and 50% were classics
● DD’s Focus: High end markets, Quality and Fashion
● DD trademark products and produced for other private designers
● DD served nearly 8000 French clients - speciality retailers and exclusive departmental store
● DD French Hosiery market segment - 30-40% market share
● High end market segment - 5% of French Hosiery Market
● DD Hosiery - 4-5% of French market in units and 6-8% sales in French Francs(FF).
● DD’s French children’s knitwear - 0.5%
● DD’s annual sales - 250,000,000 FF
● Exports - 35% of company’s total sales
 DD Operations
● Two main sites:
○ Mery plant - encompassing all children’s knitwear operations
○ Gres complex - company headquarters and central hosiery factory with knitting and sewing plant
● Each day production - 37,000 pairs of hose and 2,000 children’s garments
● Production of hosiery in two campaigns or two separate batches
○ Few retailers palace order and first batch of each style will be produced
○ Then preliminary forecasts will be revised and second campaign will be run to meet the need.
● But forecasts were uncertain leading high inventory costs and items were left unsold.
● DD’s forecast was based on intuition and experience of veteran sales representatives and production co-
ordinators.
● Marguet’s desire - reduce manufacturing lead time and track seasonal demand fluctuations with
company’s desire to maintain level employment.
Cellular Manufacturing Experiments in Children’s Knitwear Division

● Factors to begin manufacturing in Children's Knitwear division

○ To experiment outside of Dore Dore’s Flagship Hosiery line
○ Was less dependent on expensive, heavy machinery
○ Children’s knitwear was more competitive market
● The planning and production cycle was divided into five steps:
○ Yarn and Fabric Suppliers
○ Knitting
○ Dyeing
○ Cutting
○ Sewing and Finishing
 Continued
● Dore Dore’s average production batch size - 200 pieces
● Workers in the sewing operation were compensated
under a piece-rate system
● 55 sewing machines installed with 42 workers
● The sewing machine operators worked eight hours per
day, 5 days per week
● Sewing an average knitwear took 10 minutes of actual
labour
● Cellular Manufacturing system
○ A group of cross-trained workers operated a small cluster
of machines to manufacture a family of similar items.
● In July 1989, Institut Textile de France (ITF) suggested
six workers to be the appropriate number for balancing
the process within a cell.
Cell Design

● First cell designed by ITF from Eurolog.

● 6 people and 12 sewing machines assigned to each cell.
● Sewing machines cost from 30,000-80,000FF.
● Quick repair and replacement if a cell broke down.
● Replacement setup period - 5 to 10 minutes
● Batches were spilt and garments passed from operation to operation
● Once the first operation is complete, the completed piece will be placed in the next station, making it
accessible to other operators.
● Cross-trained workers help work if work began to accumulate in any operation
Continued

● The cell configuration designed by

ITF in a horseshoe shape.
● This was found cumbersome
because:
○ Worked best only if it was
unidirectional
○ Workers wanted to face each other
to facilitate communication
● To help becoming more flexible,
Marguet hired a professional trainer
to provide additional instruction
Cell Results

Throughput time dropped from 15 working days to 1 day

Defective rate dropped from 5% to 2.5%

Defective items were found before that item left the cell and corrected using cross
training

Motivation of the workers remained high

In 1990, second cell of 6 workers were organized

Cross training was provided by first line supervisors

Diff between traditional and cells were – supervisors had low role

Batches moved by themselves in cells – issues were resolved within the cells

Supervisors started to cross train workers – to show they still had a role in the factory

Another tradition role – resolve conflict – but in cells conflicts were resolved by themselves first

This helped 2 workers who were ardent enemies at least to work together even though they
couldn’t be friends together
Team remained together and loyalty by cell members saw a rise

Hosiery Operations

Central Hosiery factory at Gres was original Dore Dore

200 tons of RM were stored

QC – thickness, colour, spectroscopic light to verify correct colouring

Before knitting = yarn was completely respooled (wind back) – to confirm consistency

365 different styles

35000 SKU’s annually

120 pairs in a batch – multiple sizes in each batch

1) Knitting – Throughput – 1 week ; 6-8 min actual production time/pair

Machines ran for 24 hours a day, 7 days a week at Gre’s

In small shops, 3 shifts/ day

Machine cost 220000FF – produced 0.6% defects, 10% second quality

2) Closing the Toe – BTT - 1 week ; 1 min prdtn time/pair

 Windowless noisy rooms, 2 sides – 1 side loading heavier yarns into the machine which
closed toe automatically

Other side – workers closed it – 30 needles per inch

3) Ironing – BTT - 1 week ; 1 min prdtn/pair ; 15 secs labour content/pair

Only men, whereas toe sewing and QC only women

4) QC & Packaging – BTT – 2-3 weeks ; 1-4 min labour content/pair

5) After ironing – hosiery sent to QC or embroidery room – 1 week for motifs – small defects
were repaired – pairs correctly matched – stamp the brand on the hosiery – slide tissue paper
inside each piece – placed in box – shipped to warehouse
Limitations

● Availability of raw materials

○ Supplier-partnership program with two vendors
● Computerized forecasting systems
○ Hosiery MRP was limited in size and capability
○ Better indication of sales demand
○ Maruget tried incentivizing sales representatives to negotiate orders
Thank You!