HCM City (VNS/VNA) - Garment and textile companies need to develop astrategy for digital transformation to ensure their survival and futuredevelopment, a seminar heard in HCM City on October 6.

Brad Park of Global Dyeing Company said consumers were demanding more andchanging quickly.

Production needs to follow consumers’ demand so that production and deliverytimes are reduced, according to Park.

Besides, consumers also pay closer attention to companies’ corporate socialresponsibility and environmental protection.

Companies must work to satisfy customers’ demand, reduce the cost, waste andlead time, and improve quality and design, he said.

“Digital transformation would help enterprises respond rapidly to the market,”he said.

"Firms need to identify which processes they need to transform and map outan optimal digital transformation process with the support of technologysolution providers.

"But besides improvement in technology, firms also need to improve humanresources and pay more attention to environmental protection," he said.

Sam Lee of Inteco, a company that offers consultancy for factory automation,said businesses in many countries were adopting smart manufacturing to replacehuman workers in a variety of operations.

According to Lee, garment and textile is one of the key industries in Vietnamwith increasing exports in recent years, but manufacturing and exports mainlybased on the CMT (cut-make-trim) model, while more advanced business modelslike Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) and Original Design Manufacturer(ODM) remain modest.

Manufacturing based on the CMT model requires a large number of workers,resulting in high production costs, and automation will help reduce them.

Lee spoke about the success achieved by the Republic of Korea’s Hansae Co Ltd.,an OEM manufacturer and exporter of apparel, saying automation had helped thecompany increase its revenues strongly between 2016 and 2019.

Park said Vietnam’s textile industry had great potential for development.

With its experience in global operations, his company wants to join hands withthe Vietnam Textile and Apparel Association to “lead innovation for smart,green manufacturing in Vietnam.”

“Transform digitally or die. We must join hands to develop together.”

The seminar also discussed the online exhibition trend and B2B biz-matching.

Jun Chol, director of the Coex Vietnam representative office, said COVID-19 hadgreatly impacted the business-to-business exhibition industry across the world.

Virtual exhibitions offered new opportunities for manufacturers, eliminatinggeographical barriers so that companies could reach a much larger audience, hesaid.

But physical exhibitions could not be replaced by online ones, and would resumeafter the pandemic, he said. There would be a rising trend of online-offlinemodels, he said.

Themed Digital transformation in the textile and garment sector to overcome theCOVID-19 pandemic, the two-day seminar was organised by VITAS and the KoreaInstitute of Industrial Technology.

The seminar is scheduled to discuss virtual fashion and 3D design on October 7.

The event seeks to share new global technological trends and enhance cooperationbetween the Korean and Vietnamese garment and textile industries./.