A common question people who are curious about Odoo ask is the above question.

The easy and quick answer to that is YES – Odoo can be used for garment manufacturing. And so much more. Thousands of independently-created modules will attest to that. There are modules for practically every business you can think of, and that includes garment manufacturing.

That said, we’re going to discuss how Odoo can be used in the textile and clothing business.

See, textile and clothing manufacturing is a multibillion dollar industry that has a robust set of aspects that require heavy fieldwork.

And it goes far beyond simply manufacturing textiles – there’s so many more aspects to it than just the manufacturing side of things. You’re looking at inventory management, channel management, quality management, sales generation, and, depending on the scope of your business, even more.

Furthermore, there are so many levels and types of target consumers brought on by the ubiquity of the basic need of clothing.

That’s why the scope of the business itself as a whole is as vast and infinite as your organization needs it to be.

From the pre-planning project phase, to the sourcing of raw materials, and to the manufacturing process of fabric, every task should be executed in a very precise manner in order to minimize the risks of running into errors while running your apparel business.

Odoo’s enterprise resource planning (ERP) suite is perfectly equipped to manage each aspect of the whole garment manufacturing process from start to finish. That much we know.

But before anything else, let’s see what Odoo is all about.

What is Odoo?

Odoo ERP is a suite of business application that runs the gamut of sales, project management, customer relationship management, warehouse management, manufacturing, financial management, human resources, and so much more modules – including modules specifically developed for the garment manufacturing industry.

Odoo is packed with over a thousand modules that are available either on the cloud or on-premise. It’s one of the most used and most well-known open source enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions in the world today. It’s dynamic, flexible, and infinitely adaptable depending on your organization’s needs, and depending on your organization’s complexity.

While some may say Odoo is best suited for small- to medium-sized enterprises, Odoo is very much equipped and suited for larger enterprises as well.

Here are some of the key reasons why Odoo ranks as one of the best ERP solutions in the industry today:

• Open source. No proprietary fee, no vendor lock-in, constantly being updated by developers to meet the needs of a changing market.
• Infinite flexibility. Odoo can be customized to suit your organization’s needs and fine-tuned to suit your requirements no matter how complex they might be.
• Excellent scalability. Regardless of your organization’s size and number of employees, Odoo can support as many users as you want to add without any hitches.
• Custom, ready-to-use apps. Odoo has thousands of readymade applications you can use from the get-go via its app store.
• Responsive, dedicated customer support. Odoo offers excellent and highly responsive customer support you can access 24/7, as well as reach via forums, chat, and distribution lists.
• Tried and tested by some of the biggest names in the business. Odoo has helped over 3 million users grow and optimize their business through its comprehensive ERP suite. Some of these include renowned names such as PCI, Hyundai, and Toyota, among many others.
• Intuitive, user-friendly interface. Odoo comes with a sleek and professional interface that boasts a user-friendly interface. There are also some great themes you can easily download depending on your tastes. Lastly, themes can easily be created to suit your organization’s branding.
• Constantly updated. Odoo is patched and updated regularly based on the latest technological developments, thanks to its open source framework.
• Modular systems. The best part of Odoo is about you don’t need to install the entire suite on your enterprise systems. Thanks to its modular system, you can download and install only the modules your business needs, and continue adding modules as your organization grows and sees fit.
• Easy third-party integration. Odoo works well with third-party services including social media, SMS, shopping sites, among many others.
• Work with specialized, industry-specific modules. It doesn’t matter what business you run. Whether you run a car detailing shop, a rental service, a hotel, clinic, spa, or, as we will discuss in a bit, garment and apparel manufacturing, you will find all the modules you need at the Odoo app store.
• Lower implementation costs and time frame. Odoo takes less time and resources to implement than the industry-leading closed source ERP systems in the market today.

Odoo’s flexibility and scalability as an ERP solution is what sets it apart from the pack, as well as its modular approach. Customization is easy with the right team and tools, but requires depth of technical skills to do it the right way. As it stands, however, Odoo’s built-in modules are robust and highly functional as they come out of the box.

Now that we have a good grasp of what Odoo is all about, let’s head to the main question – how can we utilize Odoo in the garment manufacturing sphere?

How is Odoo modules used in garment manufacturing?

We already know the wide array of modules that Odoo has to offer. For garment manufacturing, for instance, certain modules such as purchasing, sales, manufacturing, stock management, accounting, and logistics are critical.

Further customizing Odoo to suit the needs of a textile or garment manufacturing industry is what will help businesses in this sector harness its power.

Many textile and garment manufacturers and distributors use Odoo now. This is mainly because of the advantages it brings for many small to medium sized businesses in this sector.

That said, let’s have a look at some of the many ways Odoo can benefit garment and textile industries as follows:

• Improved collaboration and communication. Odoo provides a unified channel of communication between every department in your company, making the flow of communications easier. This, in turn, promotes better collaboration.
• Increased information security. Data privacy and security is one of the important aspects in the textile and garments industry. Integrating your company’s data with Odoo ensures that your business-critical data is accessible only by the right people and on an as-needed basis.
• Improve sales and revenue. Give your customers the best experience by keeping tabs on the price, order, and delivery instructions and data of your existing customers. This saves time, bother, and resources, while keeping a tight relationship with your suppliers and your customers.
• Utilize specialized modules for textile manufacturers. Odoo comes with a dye house management system for textile producers. Keep track of chemical inventory, production, distribution, and lab management with this module.
• Efficient customer management through database integration. Manage your customers in a much better way by storing all customer data in Odoo. Get your employees and maintains the complete data of the organization and makes it available to the user at any time without any hassles.

We can clearly see how Odoo ERP can play a central role in your textile and garment manufacturing business thanks to its most salient benefits.

That said, let’s take a closer look at which Odoo ERP modules and important features are going to be of interest for garment manufacturers.

Benefits of Using Odoo for Garment and Textile Manufacturing Industries

The benefits of Odoo do not end there, because there are more advantages that it brings for companies that operate in the garment, textile, and apparel manufacturing industries.

There’s so much you can do with Odoo, such as the following:

• Performing quality control on the raw materials you need for production.
• Systematic, organized production and inventory of stock.
• Efficient disposal of products that do not pass quality control standards or are otherwise damaged.
• No overflows, no underflows, just straight production.
• Inspection of each product.
• Systematic and planned stock removal.
• Increase competitiveness through the use of analytics and business intelligence.
• Increased customer satisfaction from running more efficient day-to-day processes.
• Improved management reporting thanks to a variety of reports.

Raw material quality control and inspection

All textile and garment manufacturers are only as good as the quality of their raw materials. Poor raw materials equal a poor product, and using such poor-quality materials will impact your entire production process, as well as sales. Odoo can help you ensure you have the desired quality by setting criteria. Raw materials will then be subjected to a quality control inspection. Once cleared, it will be approved, and then selected as a finished product.

You can also perform a quality check every step of the way in each production stage of your product. For instance, once your raw materials have gone through stitching, dyeing, printing, labeling, and then packaging, you can opt to do quality control every time you complete one step. This way, you can guarantee that only products that achieve your desired standards will make it to your customers.

Organized production and inventory processes

You can preset your production according to the structure using Odoo. You can choose to arrange each stage of production from stitching, dyeing, and packaging with it. An organized inventory is always a plus for any manufacturing business, including garments and textiles. Odoo is well-equipped to carry out a strong inventory management strategy. You can ensure that your deliveries, stock transfers, and everything pertaining to running your inventory are performed in an efficient manner.

You can also track each of your products’ barcodes with Odoo. Stock movement modules are available in Odoo, which will help guarantee that your product moves in the right manner. Odoo’s negative inventory function can help you plan your next production phase before the raw materials you need are available – which is always a plus.

These are just some of the many ways Odoo can help garment manufacturing businesses achieve their goals. It’s clear that it has a place in the industry, and the modules and the ERP system itself has proven thusly.

Conclusion

There is no doubt that the latest enterprise resource planning systems have changed the way companies do business. It doesn’t matter whether you own a mom-and-pop shop or a Fortune 500 conglomerate – we can all bear witness to the fact that ERP systems are part and parcel of the modern business environment. They save time, resources, improve communication, productivity, and efficiency.

And Odoo is becoming increasingly in demand due to its modular approach that allows it to be customized freely depending on business requirements. It’s definitely a key ERP player in the retail sector for organizations that deal with a variety of suppliers. That includes, for the purposes of our discussion, garment manufacturing.

Odoo Retail, for instance, covers a whole slew of features that garment manufacturers will find useful: point of sales, accounting, human resources, customer relationship management, inventory, and procurement management.

It’s especially useful for garment manufacturers due to how its dashboard unifies all data points into one intuitive interface that is suited for mobile and desktop devices.

With the variety on offer in the clothing industry, and the many types, shapes, and sizes of products that are sold across borders and cultures, Odoo makes it easy for small to medium size retailers to manage costs, revenues, taxes, and invoicing in an easy, efficient way.