Tag: Technology

Insights from speaking engagements: 2021

At Shahi, we believe in sharing our experiences and learning with all the stakeholders in the fashion industry and beyond. This is an ongoing post to share insights from our speaking engagements in 2021. Read insights from previous years’ engagements: 2020, 2019.

December 14, 2021 | SLCP Signatory Webinar

Manjunatha Sriramaiah, Assistant General Manager of Compliance at Shahi spoke at the Social Labour Convergence Program Signatory Webinar 2021 held in December. He highlighted how Shahi became an early signatory to SLCP owing to the program’s numerous benefits, including value-added service for our customers, capacity building for our employees, and the tool’s credibility. Currently, 76% of our facilities have completed the SLCP self-assessment, saving us 4,416 hours due to reduced audits.

Read more in our case study.

December 14, 2021 | #ETConvergenceSeries Industry 4.0: Connected Operations for smart manufacturing

Our Chief Technology Officer, Puneesh Lamba was featured on a panel at the coveted ET Convergence Series. He spoke about automated and smart manufacturing in the apparel industry and the potential it holds to develop more robust businesses. This panel was organized by The Economic Times and powered by Amazon Web Services (AWS), and Deloitte. Other esteemed guests on the panel represented MTR Foods, DP World, Patanjali Ayurved Limited, Carl Zeiss and Sigma Electric Manufacturing.

December 9, 2021 | Business for Social Responsibility

How to Enable a Just, Fair, and Inclusive Transition to Circular Fashion by BSR

Business for Social Responsibility (BSR) organized this panel discussion to launch the report ‘Keeping Workers in the Loop.’ The conversation revolved around the opportunities around circular fashion while emphasizing its impact on the job market for garment workers, especially women. Gauri Sharma, Senior Manager, Organizational Development, spoke about the context of circular economy and how the responsibility of a manufacturer is not just limited to recycling but also includes women in circular jobs. Incorporating their traditional techniques of repair, upcycle, and the like into the circular models makes for a more collaborative model. We must endeavor to ensure good quality jobs that align with frameworks such as SLCP.

Click to watch the recording.

November 3, 2021 | Manufactured Podcast

Gauri Sharma, Senior Manager, Organizational Development, was invited to co-host a series on the fourth season of the Manufactured podcast hosted by Kim Van der Weerd. These episodes were in conversation with Matthew Wallace, CEO of DXM. Inc

DXM is a technology-driven on-demand manufacturing company co-owned by Shahi Exports, Brandix, MAS Holdings, Busana Apparel Group, and Carhartt. Gauri and Matthew speak about how building a soft relationship between various stakeholders in the industry is equally important as technological innovation in ensuring circular business models.

Episode 1: View more

Episode 2: View more

October 14, 2021 | Sankalp Global Summit

The Sankalp Global Summit was a three-day event that saw over 2521 delegates from 104 countries. Rajneesh Rai, General Manager, Environmental Sustainability, spoke on the panel ‘Getting to Net Zero – the Role of the Private Sector’ on Shahi’s tremendous progress and leading the way in being part of the solution by setting bold commitments to reducing the greenhouse gas emissions.

He highlighted some of the key achievements at Shahi, such as the Cradle to Cradle Certification for the ‘Arth Collection,’ declaring Science-Based Targets at some of our factories, among others. He also pointed out how favorable government policies and commercially viable technologies will help stakeholders transform into a sustainable ecosystem.

October 13, 2021 | Sedex South Asia 2021

SEDEX is a membership organization that provides online platforms to manage and improve the working conditions in the global supply chains. Srinivasa Rao Venkatesh, Chief Compliance Officer at Shahi spoke at the ‘Managing Supply Chain Risks in the Textile Industry,’ highlighting some of the risks faced by the industry, such as health and safety, licensing, and working hours.

These further expand to post-lockdown challenges, including job losses, and issues affecting migrant workers. He concluded by enumerating potential solutions we deployed at Shahi to enhance capacity building, monitoring, workforce empowerment, and providing a fair and respectful workplace.

September 9, 2021 | PI Apparel

PI Apparel is a membership community for apparel and footwear manufacturers that engage with the industry’s challenges and technologies. PI Apparel organized a sustainability spotlight in September where our Head of Organizational Development, Anant Ahuja, moderated the session on ‘What are the Practical Steps We Need to Take in Terms of Infrastructure, People & Technology to Underpin a More Sustainable Operation’? The session focused on the culture of sustainability among different organizations and how brands and suppliers can leverage technology to drive sustainability. The key to an impactful journey towards sustainability is collaboration at the core of business models.

September 1-2, 2021 | Thrive 2021, KGA Managers’ Conference

This year, KGA Manager’s Conference engaged with the theme ‘Lead with Empathy, Win with Agility’ to discuss the challenges and risks triggered by the pandemic. Anant Ahuja, the Head of Organizational Development at Shahi, participated in the ‘Sustainability: Imperatives & Roadblocks’ session.

He spoke about how at Shahi, collaboration with brands and research institutions supplement sustainable practices. Examples include the ZDHC Roadmap to zero programs, NIFT Chair 4.0, Cradle to Cradle Certified® Gold products, and a trial with HKRITA. He also shared a few suggestions on how KMART Group as a brand can help suppliers on their journey towards becoming sustainable. Here, sharing knowledge with suppliers, developing a capacity plan, and small interventions such as sourcing closer to the market and consolidation of shipments are a few steps that can considerably impact suppliers.

August 2, 2021 | Tamarind Chutney

A Webinar on ‘Technology and Innovation in Circular Fashion’

The webinar was co-organized by Tamarind Chutney and Chintan (Environmental Research and Action Group) with the support of Fredrik Ebert Stiftung (FES) Foundation. The panelists discussed the growing global recognition for moving from a wasteful linear supply chain to a closed-loop, a circular one.

Gauri Sharma, Senior Manager of the Organizational Development team, spoke about the need for innovations and technology to solve critical challenges and enable this transition. She described how Shahi is working on projects such as Cradle to Cradle products, HKRITA- SAP, microbial dyeing, and recycling, among others. She also spoke about suppliers’ challenges, including the price-sensitive nature of the industry, transactional and short-term relationships with brands, and lack of transparency.

Watch the webinar view more

July 15, 2021 | Walmart Global Sourcing Sustainability (Regenerative Retailer) Summit

The summit explored how the suppliers can work together with brands actively to pursue sustainability goals aimed at sourcing responsibly, eliminating waste and emissions, selling sustainable products, and protecting nature.

In the virtual session, he shared Shahi’s vision of ‘doing more with fewer resources’ along with the company’s progress in improving its impact in four distinct areas: energy, chemicals, water, and materials.

June 1-4, 2021 | United Nations Responsible Business and Human Rights Forum

The UN Human Rights Office for Southeast Asia organized five virtual sessions at the 2021 UN Responsible Business and Human Rights Forum. Anant Ahuja, Head of the Organizational Development at Shahi, spoke at ‘The Next Decade of Migration, Fashion and Human Rights’ panel, centered around the role, vulnerabilities, and experiences of migrant workers and the impact of future business trends on them, especially the female labor in the fashion supply chain.

He discussed a few practical examples of how Shahi is contributing to the wellbeing of migrant workers including implementing our skill development program since 2013, establishing the Migrant Support Centre in 2021, and our goal to provide access to vaccines to our entire workforce.

April 27-29, 2021 | Sustainable Apparel and Textiles Conference

The two-day event organized by the Innovation Forum addressed how apparel brands can adapt practices to deliver on growing stakeholder expectations and drive circularity while reducing the climate impact on the fashion supply chain. Anant Ahuja, Head of Organisational Development at Shahi spoke about the challenges, particularly the power imbalance faced in the textile industry, and how adhering to practices such as on-time payments and making long-term commitments with suppliers will help improve the buyer-supplier relationship.

April 13, 2021 | Transformer’s Foundation x Manufactured Live Event

The live panel discussion organized by Tranformer’s Foundation and Manufactured Podcast focused on consolidation and vertical integration in the fashion supply chain in a post-pandemic world, and how vertical integration supports sustainability within the suppliers. Anant Ahuja, Head of the Organizational Development at Shahi, reflected on Shahi’s journey and the values of sustainability and worker wellbeing that have been passed over generations. In the session, we discussed the several benefits of being vertically integrated including improved traceability, speed, cost, and time-saving mechanisms. Shahi hopes to bring together manufacturing expertise to further improve the vertical integration across the industry.

Watch a recording of the full panel discussion:

February 24- 26, 2021 | ReWire: Sustainability 2021

This 3-day virtual event was organized by MOTIF and The Mills Fabrica with selected disruptors in the sustainability industry. The event spotlighted emerging ecosystem standards, new materials, and a pathway towards circularity to fuel innovation across the fashion supply chain.

On the panel, “The infrastructure of sustainability” on February 24, 2021, we talked about our approach towards energy conservation and clean energy transition. In 2019-20, 77% of the electrical energy consumption across Shahi was carbon neutral. On February 25, 2021, we presented our new research project with The Hong Kong Research Institute of Textiles and Apparel. We are reclaiming textile waste to grow cotton more efficiently as a way to support cotton farmers. Register for free to access the session recordings view more.

February 23, 2021 | Manufactured Podcast, Season 3

Manufactured is a podcast started in 2020 to provide an insider perspective on sustainability in the fashion supply chain. Two members of Shahi’s Organizational Development team, Anant Ahuja and Gauri Sharma were invited to speak for the latest double-episode which is now in its third season.

We believe in the power of being transparent, sharing our experiences, and gaining valuable feedback to improve further through platforms like Manufactured. Part 1 of the podcast covers Shahi’s journey over the last 45 years, and our perspective on collaboration between buyers and suppliers to drive sustainability. Part 2 of the podcast covers how Shahi has benefitted from becoming a vertically integrated supplier, and insights on our collaboration to drive circularity in the fashion supply chain.

February 19, 2021 | Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST), MBA Session on Supply Chain Sustainability

The session organized by HKUST as a part of their MBA Program focused on sustainability considerations in the global supply chains. We were invited as a guest speaker to offer the MBA students a perspective on how Shahi, India’s largest apparel manufacturer, and exporter, embrace sustainability through focused social and environmental initiatives. The interactive session included questions from the students on the challenges of implementing a multitude of worker wellbeing programs, disseminating best practices across the industry, and managing a large workforce during the COVID-19 crisis.

Please write back to us at od@shahi.co.in for more information.

February 9, 2022
Shahi is accelerating digital operations in the apparel industry
Efforts at Shahi have taken a shift in the last year, and going digital has become the mantra. The focus is primarily on three objectives: improvement in growth, productivity, and experience. While growth and productivity are the focus of every organization globally, experience drives Shahi Exports. It means providing an excellent experience to our customers, employees, and other stakeholders. However, we cannot build this experience without a conscious effort to do it thoughtfully and sustainably.

As part of the strategy to develop this all-around quality experience, we have been engaging novel digital solutions. Using emerging technologies can help an organization unlock new opportunities, including ways to reduce our impacts on the environment.

A few of my favorite initiatives that we have been able to do this year is effectively converting physical activities to virtual ones in a short span of time due to reduced customer and employee travel in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. These have helped us save time and money and have reduced our carbon footprint due to significantly reduced fossil fuel usage. These initiatives range from virtual tours of our factories by customers using augmented reality-based solutions to leveraging blockchain-based fiber to retail traceability to ensure ethical sourcing practices.

Where the world is at

Globally, leaders aim to enhance organizational performance through digital technologies. These have become the core of every organization’s strategy these days. Boards have realized that leveraging the right technology to solve the correct problems can give them an edge over the competition. Labor-intensive companies have a big opportunity to transform themselves into tech-driven companies.

The wave of leveraging emerging technology, before the pandemic, gave the world some outstanding new companies in media, shared resource usage, gaming, education, and technology itself. These companies disrupted the existing business models making some even larger companies go out of business. The pandemic changed the context of all such disruptions. People who were shy to use digital technologies or even online meetings had to do it mandatorily now. Many of them cannot imagine going back to old ways.

We divided our digital initiatives into ‘foundational,’ ‘desirable,’ and ‘disruptive’ categories. While foundational and desirable types have precedents in the industry that we can emulate, it is the disruptive initiatives that we take the lead in to solve problems in a novel and more efficient manner.

Utilizing the RRP Mantra

Automation and intelligent solutions optimize manufacturing processes.

Anything that moves from table to table moves at a snail’s pace compared to anything that moves from system to system. To make automated decisions in augmented or virtual reality provides an experience as good as seeing the real thing and collaborating around it. Internet of things technology is also used extensively to calculate and improve productivity at shop floors and move the technology right to the network’s edge.

RRP is our mantra in process automation. First, we automated Repetitive, Rule-based, and Predictable processes and aimed to convert others into RRP processes by eliminating exceptions and process deviations. A simple example is the process of approvals. The first step will be a request, followed by a review, further discussion if needed, and then final approval. Digitalizing the process cuts down extensively on resources and time used to follow through each step.

Another example is the transfer and delivery of material. Tracking the movement of a package through a document that is manually checked at the gate of a facility exposes it to human error and forgery. We can mitigate this by adding a simple QR code to the document, making it unique, reducing human error, and ensuring that data about the movement of the package is stored on a network. This has been a practical exercise that has given us fantastic results in achieving much better productivity overall.

Exploring Ideas

Being disruptive requires a lot of experimentation and working with traditional partners. We have now started working extensively with disruptive start-ups and academia, as well as mining the massive pile of ideas that our employees generate as part of our innovation program. Our recent engagement with NASSCOM for their Manufacturing Innovation Challenge has helped us reach out to young innovators. We are now working on solutions and hope for great results.
Augmented mixed virtual reality to design a clothes in 3D fashion design software program creating virtual, true-to life garment visualization with cutting-edge simulation technologies for the fashion
Some of the experiments revolve around:

RFID-based productivity improvement.

Automatic guided vehicles,

Computer vision-based productivity improvement,

Automated measurement solutions,

Converting 2D images into 3D models with real-time collaboration,

AI-based identification of fabric composition,

Fabric inspection recording automation,

Natural Language Generation based training videos translation in vernacular languages,

RFID-based productivity improvement.
There are many more, and we are not afraid to experiment and fail, but we have seen that our success rate has outgrown our failure rate very fast and has enabled us to become a more innovative company.

Shahi has further improved its turnaround time through our interventions as an agile business. It has even helped our customers increase the accuracy of forecasts. Faster deliveries enable them to forecast their demand closer to the season. Accuracy, therefore, is significantly improved and reduces slow-moving or dead inventory. More robust forecasts act as an essential enabler of sustainable supply chains.

Track & Trace

Each fabric roll is given a barcode which tracks its movement from cutting through garmenting and packaging.

An initiative that has helped us immensely is our acclaimed ‘Track & Trace’ mega project. Track & Trace is one of our projects which has helped us immensely in reducing paper usage. Each fabric roll is assigned a barcode, and this code is used to scan it for all purposes -entry, storage, cutting, and shipping. This is leading to improved transparency in the supply chain. Additionally, it resulted in greater agility, lower cost, and higher visibility of fabric/garment movement. It also reduced manual data entry at multiple points, which is another focus area we had in our mind. This initiative’s end-to-end nature ensures that our efficiency at each stage (warehouse, cutting, sewing, packing, and shipping) is measurable and provides us with rich data for taking steps to improve it further. Before this initiative, the manual receiving from the mills and fabrics utilized our resources- time and effort inefficiently.

Track & Trace has improved the transparency along Shahi’s supply chain. Each fabric roll is assigned a barcode, and this code is used to scan it for all purposes -entry, storage, cutting, and shipping. Currently, we are working on the last phase of Track & Trace that will complete the entire chain by improving transparency at the packaging and delivery stages of the shipment to our customers.

Securing our digital assets

With more and more devices, web applications, and mobile apps connecting to the network, it becomes imperative to ensure no hindrance in business continuity. We must neutralize external threat actors before they can steal crucial data or damage the network infrastructure. Shahi Exports took considerable strides in ensuring that our data center, network, and applications on the cloud are best in class and our information security solutions and practices are of the highest possible standard.

Data is the new oil, and leveraging its value will give precious actionable insights and potentially impact business models. The future at Shahi will employ data science and analytics in our sustainability strategy, making for some fascinating possibilities for the industry. The ideas we are currently working on show a promising future of scaling up across all our operations. It all starts with encouraging ideas and taking small steps to get to a big solution.

Puneesh Lamba is the Chief Technology Officer at Shahi Exports Pvt. Ltd. He is responsible for building Shahi’s IT & Digital strategy and its execution.

Puneesh carries an experience of 28 years as a Senior IT & Digital Leader across industries in India, the USA, and Europe. He has worked for companies General Electric/Genpact and TATA Consultancy Services as well as Indian Conglomerates like Escorts Ltd., Punj Lloyd, CK Birla Group, and Ballarpur Industries.

Puneesh Lamba, Chief Technical Officer, Shahi Exports

As one of India’s pioneers to embrace disruptive technologies like Artificial Intelligence, Robotic Process Automation, Internet of Things, and Predictive Analytics, Puneesh is a proponent of digital means to enable business strategy for growth. He has won many prestigious awards like CIO100, CIO200, CIO500, Power List, and CIO 1000. He is a jury member at NASSCOM, Frost & Sullivan, and, 9Dot9 media.
January 5, 2022
Insights from speaking engagements: 2020

We love to connect with our industry peers and all other important stakeholders to share our experiences and exchange ideas. In this ongoing post, discover all the conferences and events we have spoken at in 2020.

(more…)

May 18, 2020
Insights from speaking engagements: 2019

We love sharing our work and learnings with industry and other important stakeholders. This post is an ongoing compilation of conferences and events we’ve spoken at in 2019. (more…)

December 12, 2019