The companies involved and their business relationships

A network of textile and clothing companies in Italy and Bulgaria. Main node of the network is the clothing manufacturer IN.CO Spa (Ermenegildo Zegna Group). The network includes the IN.CO fabric suppliers: Fintes (a division of Filati Drago Srl), Guabello (a division of Marzotto Group), Lanificio TG di Fabio Srl, Successori Reda Spa, Vitale Barberis Canonico Spa, Lanificio di Tollegno Spa, Fratelli Piacenza Spa and Bulsafil Ood of Bulgaria, a yarn supplier to Fratelli Piacenza. Detailed description here.

INCO Spa and the fabric and yarn suppliers are exchanging business documents and have created interfaces between their e-Business systems and their internal ERP systems

The necessary software development and installation was undertaken by Domina srl who also provide technical support to the companies.

The e-business network set up and the documents being exchanged

Order, order response, order status, despatch advice documents and a 'defects map' are exchanged to specifications compliant with the eBIZ-TCF reference architecture.
the pilot workflow: e-business network set up and the documents

Resulting benefits

Quantifiable Benefits: The overall time spent by the parties involved in managing orders has been reduced by over 60% and there has also been a substantial drop in data errors giving better control of the management of the business.

Dynamic benefits: while harder to quantify, some of the pilot partners have declared that their companies can now provide a better service in term of response time, in particular in the sampling and prototyping stage of each sales season.

Planned future activities

The initial development was started in the course of an eBIZ-TCF pilot but it has already been extended so that one of the suppliers(Tollegno) is using an BIZ-TCF compliant system with an additional clothing customer in Portugal.

INCO plans to extend the use this system to all of its fabric suppliers in the next few years and most of the fabric suppliers involved are actively campaigning with their clothing customers and yarn suppliers to participate in the network.

Lessons learnt

Dissemination of actual results and benefits of eBIZ-TCF would greatly assist users who are committed to it to extend their network

Statement by Mr. Fabio Foschi CEO of Fratelli Piacenza:
'It takes two to adopt eBIZ-TCF. We are committed to use it, however in a small companies environment, enforcing adoption by arms-length situation is not a realistic choice, in the way that it is industries dominated by large companies. We need to demonstrate the actual advantages of eBIZ-TCF to our partners before starting to exchange information with them. We found the advantage to be substantial, in term of cost, services and better services to the customers. The extension of the eBIZ-TCF network would strongly benefit from a widespread awareness of its advantages.'

Contact:

Stefano Fasana
Domina SRL
via Boglietti 1, Biella (BI) - 13900, Italy
Tel: +39 0152477061
Domina.info@dobi.it

For ICT information:
Graziana Caron
Consorzio TQR Textile Quick Response
via Lamarmora 21, Biella (BI) - 13900, Italy
tqr@dobi.it