Goodwill South Florida Apparel Division Goes Digital
Most people know Goodwill from its thrift stores, but Goodwill South Florida offers much more than that. It is a social enterprise that operates like a business but re-invests its earnings into job training programs for people with disabilities and other barriers to work. Now, Goodwill South Florida has re-invested in its people working in the apparel manufacturing division department by implementing a Real-Time Shop Floor Control and Incentive Payroll system called EXENTA. This system will help improve productivity, efficiency, visibility, control, throughput time, cost, quality, absenteeism, turnover and off-standard time.
This project aims to deliver increased profitability, leading to a return on investment in less than one year. The Apparel Division will now have a fully integrated end-to-end digital solution to help elevate its performance as the contractor of choice for the U.S. Military and other Made in America apparel lines of businesses.
"If you've ever visited the Goodwill headquarters in Miami, you get a sense of optimism with a workforce who's happy and grateful to have a job, growth opportunity and a place to belong," said Lourdes De la Mata-Little, Chief Marketing Officer at Goodwill South Florida. "Aside from greater exposure to tablets and technology, investing in this new digital software will allow our employees to learn more about the quality of their work. It will help them work as a team, focus on areas for improvement and measure their successes to improve their overall performance, allowing them to meet individual and team goals."
From a management and supervisory perspective, it will eliminate non-value-added activities such as manually gathering production and quality data. Supervisors and other support staff can use that time to quickly analyze data from their tablets or laptops to make immediate decisions and avoid problems before they occur and or spot them early enough in the day so that we can recover by the end of the day. It will also allow management to develop incentive payment programs that wouldn't be possible manually.
From a direct labor perspective, employees will feel engaged, have ownership of their performance and be motivated by Goodwill's unique incentive payment plans that will promote teamwork and recognize individual performance.
"The implementation of this system goes hand in hand with our mission to create hope, opportunities and a place to belong for people with disabilities and other barriers to employment by quickly transforming the working environment and improving culture into one that feels objective, fair, collaborative and rewarding to our employees," said De la Mata-Little.
