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TELEMARA is a project directed to consolidate microcompanies working as satellite workshops for ready-to-wear SMEs as external elements of their production chain, by providing them with an easy-to-use telematic tool to manage and control their reciprocal relationship. Typically, ready-to-wear SMEs work with 10 to 15 satellites, each employing 3 or 4 persons - housewives and their female relatives in more than 90% of the cases - that produce over the 70% of the total output of their central SME. The main features of these satellite workshops are a very high percentage of female representation, a predominance of self-employed persons working at home or at microcompanies located in their vicinity, mostly unskilled labour without promotion possibilities, still some submerged work, virtually no application of management techniques and finally, rudimentary communication system between central company and satellites.
The overall general objective of TELEMARA is to consolidate microcompanies that work as satellite workshops for ready-to-wear SMEs as part of their production chain, by providing them with a professional, yet easy-to-use telematic tool to manage and control their reciprocal relationship.
The Textile industry is a truly European industrial sector. It ranks 11th in labour services expenditure, and its roughly 114.324 companies (10% of the number of industrial companies in the EU), employ an estimated 2,329,600 million persons across the EU countries(*). It is worth mentioning that 90% of these existing companies are SMEs. Within the textile sector, ready-to-wear firms represent one of its most important subsectors, in terms both of number of companies and employment provided, and its impact is illustrated by the fact that each EU family spends as an average around 3.000 Euro per year in clothes(**). Traditionally, ready-to-wear SMEs carry all the administative, commercial and marketing activities related with their business, as well as the critical product design activity. However, they are not structurally ready to host the whole production process, especially its most labour-intensive parts. So a very typical and extended symbiosis takes part, in which the initial (cutting and interlining) and final (ironing, finishing, review and quality control, labeling, packaging) parts of the process, requiring higher skills and/or having more impact in the way the product reaches the end-user, are carried in-home, while all the intermediate processes (lining, incorporation of buttons and other accessories, and sewing the final assembly) are executed externally, at satellite workshops. Initially, satellite workshops were actually the own homes of external subcontracted personnel, more especifically unemployed women that found in this activity a way to contribute to the family economy and at the same time do their daily homework. Not so many years ago, entire villages in rural areas as well as in industrial belts of bigger cities, made their living out of this type of work, usually rewarded below market prices and often forgetting niceties as social security, formal payrolls, etc... These wide submerged economy pockets contributed in some countries to the "economic miracles" of the sixties and seventies, but they have been gradually coming into light. Now, the situation has changed dramatically, and satellite workshops are, in their greatest part, legalized groups of self-employed persons, or even microcompanies. There is still, obviously, a submerged part, but it is coming to light gradually, thanks to a stronger enforcement of social and security laws and to a stronger and wider social awareness. However, certain structural characteristics remain, and now, in year 2000, satellite workshops can be characterized by the following features and problems:
The technical objective of TELEMARA is the replacement of the current manual information flow between the ready-to-wear SMEs and their satellite workshops by an automated process supported by a telematic system. An Internet server located in the office of the central SME will make available all information and share it with the satellite workshops supported by a database, which will monitor communications with the workshops. Each satellite workshop will have a very simple hardware: a personal computer, a digital modem, a printer, a smartcards reader, and two smartcards. The software will be automatically started and self-guided through the use of the smartcards to manage orders and other communications over the Internet.
The purpose of this system is to increase the productivity and quality of the ready-to-wear SMEs by improving the production process in two main aspects
This will lead to an increased competitiveness for the SME, and an increased customer satisfaction. At the same time, the performance of the satellite workshops will be greatly increased, and their rejection figures diminished, allowing their workers to make a better profit.
Satellite workshops are, by their own nature, volatile. With a highly unskilled and unstable labor force, they have very recently made the transition from the submerged economy. Telemara will professionalize the satellite workshops and its personnel (more than 90% are women, and usually members of the same family or close neighbours), and train them with the skills required to use the proposed management and communication tool. The improved information flow, the increase in profits and the strengthening of the bonds between satellites and their central SME will stabilise and then enable these microcompanies to grow and create and consolidate more jobs.
The project plans to measure its achievements, especially in the process improvement area, by a set of easy-to-control yardsticks and goals, as shown in the following table:
TELEMARA is presented to the IST Programme Key Action II, New methods of work and electronic commerce, and especifically to Action Line II.1.5, Promoting broad adoption of eCommerce and eWork in regional and sectorial settings, as a Best Practice Pilot project. The project strongly contributes to the objectives and priorities of the programme, the key action and the action line, described in the Workprogramme 2000 and subsequently stressed in the special Information Day for Action Line II.1.5 held by the European Commission in Brussels on September 13, 2000. Finally, it is worth noting the project contribution to the key objectives established by the recent eEurope initiative adopted by the member countries.
Basically, the overall production process involving satellite workshops can be described as follows:
This communication problem also surfaces in the opposite sense, where doubts/problems encountered by the external workers are not directly solved with the subsequent waste of valuable time. SMEs also encounter difficulties controlling the quality of the products delivered by the satellite workshops or steering the production chain at all times and ensuring a correct delivery time according to customers orders
TELEMARA's Best Practice will show the impact on both central SME and satellite workshops of a telematic solution to the current process. Such a solution must take into account its implementation environment - central SME and external satellite microworkshops, with 3 or 4 computer-illiterate persons working probably from their homes or makeshift facilities - and must therefore meet certain conditions:
Both the technological centres and the user SMEs involved in the project have a deep knowledge of the ready-to-wear subsector, and it is clear to them that a telematic solution to manage satellite workshops has not been previously impemented, so a generic solution easy to adapt to the subsector requirements and meeting the stated conditions was searched. Household appliances, like TVs with a set-top box were discarded. Mass experiences, like the one carried by the INFOVILLE (IADS 1008) project in Valencia (Spain), showed that, while useful as one-way information devices, their interactivity is poor. Mobile devices, like WAP phones, are still expensive, and their sophistication is not justified in the proposed environment. Moreover, WAP future does not look clear, with third generation mobiles in the horizon, and a stable solution is required. As in many occasions, "conventional" PCs are the best available device for the job, and the challenge is to find a packaged system, PC based, but without the main PC weaknesses, especially its not so friendly operation and software maintenance. This solution was found with the project technological partner, Activa Icon, established in one of the partner countries (Spain), with commercial and professional ties with other European countries and eager to expand their activities Europe-wide, Their smart card "I-card" computer security and management system will be easily adapted to support the required operations of TELEMARA. This technical solution, while fully innovative in its application, does not require on the other side any research activity within the project, being a turn-key hardware and basic software solution, that will work as a friendly interface to the current software for production management and control in the companies. TELEMARA being a Best Practice project, its technical activity will be focused in the adaptation of the companies' application to work both in the central SME and in the Satellite Workshop systems, and in the adaptation of the "I-card" technology to manage the companies' applications. The diagram in the following page illustrates the set-up of the technical solution proposed, as well as its proposed operation:
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