We offer industry's fastest report turnaround time
Hong Kong-based Qima is a leading provider of supply chain compliance solutions that partners with brands, retailers and importers to secure, manage and optimise their global supply network. Sebastien Breteau, chief executive officer (CEO) of Qima, speaks to Paulami Chatterjee on how brands are digitising and automating their supply chains amid the crisis to better future proof their operations.
How did Qima happen? Who are the founders of the company?
I founded Qima, a quality control and compliance service providing organisation that partners with brands, retailers and importers to secure and manage their global supply chain in 85 countries. I have more than 20 years of entrepreneurial experience in supply chain management.
Right after completing business school, I moved to Hong Kong where I launched my first venture sourcing Tamagotchis, the hand-held digital pets that boomed in the late nineties. This venture started my interest in aligning the disruptions of technology and trade expansion. The intersectionality of these industries gave birth to Qima in 2005, aimed at making product quality and supplier compliance management easier and more effective across global supply chains.
In 2020, the company launched QIMAone, the only open software platform built by quality and compliance experts to empower brands, retailers and manufacturers with real-time collaboration and actionable data for quality and compliance management.
What are the advantages of a digital platform compared to traditional supply chain platforms?
Legacy supply chain strategies traditionally take a 'comply or die' approach, with brands largely focused on managing factory suppliers through a top-down, one-way communication framework. Within this model, penalties for product defects are reconciled following final inspections. Defects are often documented manually, by pen and paper, or on disparate spreadsheets and then communicated via email three days after the inspection takes place.
While this model is designed to minimise costs, reduce inventories and maximise resources, the time of reckoning-the moment of truth as to whether or not a supplier has met standards-is occurring too far down on the supply chain lifecycle. The result is a limited, one-dimensional view of the supply chain, compromised visibility, reduced resilience and restricted flexibility-along with missed opportunities to resolve brand defects before they took place.?When a problem is finally detected, it is usually too late to rectify without additional expenditures.
A high-quality centralised digital platform, such as QIMAone, empowers brands with the consolidated and actionable data and analytics they need to track the individual performance of each supplier and inspectors on the ground. This leads to decisions on where and when to send in-person inspectors or deploy factory self-inspections. Fundamentally, it lets them know if they should keep or cut suppliers and improves quality standards in a more efficient way, including early defect detection and prevention.
An integrated, holistic data view essentially lays the framework for brands to overhaul how they onboard suppliers and train those within their networks. By developing standardised and customised workflows and checklists for inspections and audits, brands can better energise their suppliers and ensure industry standards and best practices are followed across their supply chain footprint, including factories, raw materials suppliers and vendors. Digital platforms also collect data more efficiently, enabling brands to dispatch corrective action plans through real-time communications as soon as the issue is detected, rather than after the production order has been finalised.
What was your growth story before the pandemic, and now that it continues to rage for almost a year now?
Qima has been a disruptor in the quality and control industry for more than 15 years. Known for putting technology at the centre of the supply chain, Qima was the first provider to offer customers a completely digital quality compliance environment through online management, mobile client account and more-all built internally with a global technology team of engineers, product managers, UX designers and data scientists.
Prior to the pandemic, the audit and inspection services of Qima proved to be instrumental in helping brands assert supply chain diversification against the US-China trade war. Working with Qima allows brands to engage suppliers in new geographies with ease and confidence. Now with the disruptions of the COVID-19 pandemic, supply chain management is once again being put under the microscope and brands are seeing the need to further diversify. Diversification capabilities allow brands to assert resiliency against volatile consumer demands, travel restrictions, evolving regulations and trade tensions.
But diversification in today's shifting landscape is no easy feat. QIMAone is playing a key role in our growth story because it offers a full-circle, 360-degree view of a brand's supply chain ecosystem. Notably, against the headwinds of the COVID-19 pandemic, we are helping brands further diversify, build greater trust with suppliers and future-proof supply chains.
Where is Qima headquartered at? In which countries are your labs based at?
Qima is headquartered in Hong Kong. We have on-the-ground presence at factories in 85 countries, combining industry-leading experts for onsite inspections, supplier audits and lab testing. To service our clients in 120 countries who use the Qima platform, we have more than 35 labs and offices globally and our laboratories are accredited by and in accordance with several regulatory bodies and international standards.
What kind of supply chain intelligence does Qima offer to brands?
Like our company tagline says, Qima is your eyes in the supply chain. As global trade continues to increase and supply chains become increasingly complex, buyers from brands, retailers and importers need increased visibility and control over their global manufacturing operations. At Qima, we provide that visibility and data-driven intelligence.
In terms of supplier audits, we help brands ensure their suppliers adhere to local and international standards and, of course, their own requirements. This includes ethical audits, structural audits, environmental audits, sanitation audits, manufacturing audits, Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism (C-TPAT) audits, factory improvement, supplier training and food certification audits. For quality measures, we work with brands to ensure their products meet all specifications and quality standards. This area includes pre-shipment inspection (PSI), production monitoring (PM), during production check (DUPRO), initial production check (IPC), container loading check (CLC), pre-custom clearing (PEO) and remote guided inspections. Our testing and certification capabilities confirm that a brand's products and processes are in compliance with international regulations.
QIMAone, launched in 2020, provides brands and all stakeholders involved in their supply chain - from raw material factories to retail stores -with the insights, tools and infrastructure needed to fully digitise their supply chains. Delivered as a cloud-based platform that can be accessed from any device, QIMAone provides real-time visibility of a brand's full supply ecosystem and a shared view of quality performance in a single platform. Brands can manage everything from onboarding and training their suppliers to customising workflows for inspections and audits using Qima's library of checklists. This increases collaboration and ensures standards are followed across their entire footprint. QIMAone's features include an inspector mobile app, actionable insights, supply chain mapping, risk mitigation tools, custom workflows, automated booking and interactive reporting.
What new have you introduced since the pandemic struck?
We launched QIMAone in 2020 as a centralised digital platform to help brands advance their supply chain management and embark on a journey of digital transformation. As a collaborative platform, QIMAone digitises quality management processes for global brands, retailer and manufacturers. Fundamentally, it connects buyers to their supply network to monitor and improve product quality, increase supply chain visibility and reduce operational inefficiencies. QIMAone is ideal for helping brands navigate the impending uncertainty, travel restrictions and mass virtualisation we've seen since the COVID-19 pandemic struck.
Is the pandemic making more brands jump the bandwagon of digitising their supply chains? If yes, how are brands automating their supply chains to better future proof operations?
As the COVID-19 pandemic, global trade tensions and a fast-evolving regulatory environment push supply chains into uncharted waters, the only way for brands to control their own destiny is to enhance real-time interconnectivity between all players in their supply chain ecosystem.
To maintain a competitive advantage, many enterprises are looking to digitise their supply chain networks as much as possible so they can maintain a full-circle, real-time 360-degree view of where all of their suppliers stand in terms of production, quality, social and environmental compliance measures. In a July 2020 survey of over 200 brands conducted by Qima, two-thirds of respondents reported that the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated their company's resolve to digitise their supply chain, including the use of new digital inspection and audit solutions. The capabilities that brands are looking for include centralised dashboard, apps accessible by all supply chain players, data automation tools, standardised processes, API integration and reporting that is both interactive and simplified.
What is usually the turnaround time for your audits, testing and inspections?
Within 48 hours of booking, Qima will deploy an inspector or auditor to a brand's factory premises. A compiled, fully-detailed report will become available online on the same day as the inspection, clocking in at the fastest turnaround in the industry. Part of why we are able to offer this swift dispatch is because we engage an expansive, expert network of over 2,500 inspectors and auditors across a diverse product range, while our team of dedicated account managers speak over 20 languages.
What role does data analytics have on supply chain management?
The importance of data analytics on supply chain management cannot be overstated. Simply put, being data savvy now makes the difference between supply chain triumph and supply chain disaster. In fact, the need for smarter data collection is playing a key role in prompting brands to digitise their supply chains. After all, supply chain networks are complex operations that engage hundreds and sometimes even thousands of people, ranging from suppliers, factory owners, labourers and inspectors. A strong digital supply chain platform automates the data entry needed across business operations, automatically collecting and updating data points from all the relevant sources within a brand's supply chain ecosystem.
When data sets are automated and centralised, workflows are streamlined, hours of effort can be saved. Saved time and resources can then be reallocated to other more valuable efforts. This could mean automating risk-based in line inspections at factories found to be at risk or automatically approving reports to ensure fast-pace shipments. Essentially, data automation allows managers to spend more on other activities that help grow the business, such as negotiating better vendor prices and building stronger supplier relationships.
Being data savvy also increases speed to market, builds trust with suppliers, alleviates pain points of manual processes and allows brands to respond with agility to inevitable geopolitical tensions and supply chain disruptions, such as what we've seen amid the US-China trade war and the COVID-19 pandemic.
What are the emerging trends that are likely to impact the knitting industry in the short- and long-term?
Diversification is the order of the day, now and for years to come. If the US-China trade war didn't already shake up a brand's supply chain, they have likely faced unavoidable difficulties amid the factory shutdowns, quarantines and travel restrictions of the current COVID-19 pandemic. Notably, these landmark events have not reversed trends or upended supply chain management strategies. Rather, they have accelerated the already existing trend toward supplier diversification, which was already happening in recent years thanks to rising labour costs in low-cost manufacturing countries and the trade war. The COVID-19 pandemic is putting diversification into overdrive.
Starting with cost-effectiveness, supplier diversification has naturally emerged as a top priority in the short-term. But, of course, switching suppliers is far from a simple flip of a switch, especially in a volatile landscape rife with rising compliance hurdles, increased quality scrutiny and unstable consumer demand. As brands take the leap into new sourcing frontiers, it often comes at the expense of consumer safety and supply chain ethics. At Qima, we observed falling ethical and quality indicators in the wake of the trade war and are now observing similar trends during COVID-19.
In the short-term, brands must practice due diligence to protect their supply chains when they shift to suppliers in new geographies, ensuring they are conducting the appropriate audits and inspections. But in an environment laden with long-term volatility, enterprises in the knitting industry must accept that global trade tensions and continued COVID-19-related woes will continue to steer their supply chains for years to come. To account for this, knitting brands should look to adopt an overall nomadic sourcing model, which will boost their ability to shift production and sourcing to the lowest cost and highest value geographies with more speed, agility and efficiency.
As brands diversify their sourcing, supplier relations become increasingly crucial for success. Digitising supply chain managements using a platform like QIMAone fundamentally transforms and reinforces the relationships businesses have with their entire network of suppliers. The relationships brands build with their suppliers are no longer a standard client-vendor contract, but rather one built on continuous partnership and ongoing teamwork. Such an open and collaborative framework empowers businesses to future-proof their sourcing and better engage the right suppliers they can trust and grow with.
What new technologies are you working on at present? What are Qima's future plans?
At the moment, Qima is focused on enhancing its QIMAone platform to increase capabilities. Upcoming developments include adding in more automation functionality, enhancing traceability mapping and widening the scope of data collection. New technologies are also being worked on to enhance QIMAone's onboarding features and have a team of data scientists working on machine learning and data modeling to enhance our predictive analytics capabilities.
Our future plans are to engage more apparel and textile brands across the industry, fostering digitisation and raising the bar for best practices in innovation, quality and compliance. (PC)
Are the audits made by you kept open or published somewhere for the end consumer to see it?
Qima keeps audit and inspection reports on its clients private and confidential, except where sharing is legally mandated. The end user always has access to its audits and inspections via our platform. It also publishes a quarterly barometer report, which tracks trends and measurements across our global footprint so business leaders can stay ahead of emerging changes in the marketplace.
What is the USP of your audits?
In today's global marketplace, brands have options in the marketplace when it comes to audits and inspections. But when brands partner with Qima, they not only enjoy a full suite of supply chain management solutions but are also greeted with a unique corporate culture built on excellence, passion, accountability simplification and innovation. QIMAone now drives our USP into the digital space, allowing brands to future proof their supply chains and stay ahead of the evolving supply chain landscape. Overall, the Qima difference lies in our top-rated customer service with 24X7 chat support 365 days a year, unmatched expertise, flexibility, customisation and reactivity. We can be onsite within 48 hours and offer the industry's fastest report turnaround time. Additionally, we have a team of customer success managers who work closely with clients to ensure their success in using the QIMAone platform and can provide local, individualised support almost anywhere in the world, thanks to our global presence.
How many companies are tied up with you at present?
We have a client base of 14,000 brands, retailers and manufacturers.
Which countries fair on top in performing the most audits in their textile/apparel supply chains?
Qima receives the most audit requests for the textile/apparel industry in China, Bangladesh, Pakistan and India.
How are brands faring in supply chain management and whatever is the root cause for the same?
An MIT Pulse Survey conducted last year found that 38 per cent of respondents had not mapped their supply chains. But even more alarming, 65 per cent had not mapped their supplier's suppliers. Why not? They simply lacked the tools to do so.
This disturbing trend suggests that a considerable number of brands are being left in the dark when it comes to supplier relations. They lack actionable data and do not have real-time visibility into what's happening on the ground in their factories. Without these critical insights, it becomes nearly impossible for brands to respond to the rapidly evolving, unprecedented changes we are seeing today. Such cracks and kinks in the supply chain leave brands helplessly vulnerable to external risks, particularly when it comes to supplier relations. Subsequently, brands can face challenges in quality, compliance, environmental, ethics and efficiency.
