How a Vision of Automating Inspections is Revolutionizing Apparel Manufacturing

Bottom line

Inspectorio’s vision is to revolutionize apparel manufacturing by combining AI, predictive analytics, machine learning and mobile technologies into a single cloud-based inspection platform that delivers prescriptive insights anywhere in the world instantly.

Bridging Apparel Manufacturing’s Knowledge Gaps

Understanding the frustrations your prospects feel is the foundation of all great startups. Carlos Moncayo Castillo, Co-founder of Inspectorio with his brothers, Fernando Moncayo Castillo and Luis Moncayo Castillo, knew the many pains of managing production networks well. Prior to founding Inspectorio, Carlos founded ASIAM, an apparel sourcing firm specializing in responsible sourcing solutions for small and mid-size retailers. ASIAM also enables Asian and Latin American businesses to benefit from each other’s expertise. He and his brothers had first-hand experience in solving the many problems brands, retailers, suppliers, vendors, and factories face when trying to improve product quality.

Lack of real-time visibility into inspection results was leading to inaccuracies and quality errors across supply chains and production networks. The majority of inspections were being done manually at the time, with the results captured in Microsoft Excel, Word, or PDF files. With thousands of inspection reports shared for a single factory over e-mail, keeping track of them and seeing trends in the inspection data was very difficult. With no centralized system to share inspection and quality data, factories were becoming less efficient, and suppliers started missing more of their quality goals. Brands and retailers relying on these key parts of their supply chains lacked the data necessary to track their compliance and inspection quality goals. Knowledge gaps started with incomplete inspection data and progressed across the supply chain. If the situation didn’t improve, corruption would become an even greater roadblock to improving product quality.

Carlos began building the Inspectorio platform based on his work with apparel manufacturers throughout Asia and the frustration of not having the immediate inspection, compliance, and quality data that he needed. “There was no platform to enable collaboration across factories and to share inspection results that were needed for driving a higher level of quality,” Carlos recently said. “Solving this problem gives me the chance to connect the dots of my life and serve those in need.” Carlos became passionate about building a platform that could easily share inspection results instantly with brands, retailers, suppliers, vendors, and inspection agencies anywhere in the world, anytime.

The Inspectorio Platform Takes Shape

The compelling vision of creating a cloud-based platform that enables brands, retailers, suppliers, and vendors to collaborate in real-time and see inbound inspection reports is the catalyst that drove the company’s first development efforts. To capture immediate compliance survey and inspection data, Inspectorio integrated mobile technologies within their platform. Inspection data is uploaded instantly, and the Inspectorio platform tracks compliance, production and quality metrics, and KPIs based on inbound inspection reports. For the first time, brands, retailers, suppliers, vendors, and inspectors would be able to see all inspection reports for a given apparel or accessory product in one place.

The Inspectorio Platform Goes Real-Time, Providing A Wealth Of Inspection Data

The vision of creating a real-time digital ecosystem capable of scaling across tens of thousands of brands, retailers, suppliers, vendors, and inspectors was getting closer to becoming a reality. Inspectorio’s vision of having a platform that could deliver immediate inspection data and monitoring was within reach. Advances in mobile technology integration on the Inspectorio platform also enabled live GPS tracking of each individual inspection. For the first time, brands, retailers, suppliers, and third party inspection service providers could monitor their inspections as they were taking place.

Achieving The Vision With AI, Machine Learning & Predictive Analytics 

In 2016, Inspectorio participated in the Target + Techstars Retail Accelerator Program, a pivotal event in the company’s ability to turn its platform vision into reality. Inspectorio was the only startup Target invested in the following year, with the retailer providing an initial seed investment of $3.7M. Target also agreed to rollout the Inspectorio platform with 50 of its vendors in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Thailand. Inspectorio’s platform vision of revolutionizing apparel manufacturing by combining AI, predictive analytics, machine learning and mobile technologies on a cloud-based inspection platform was getting support from a national retailer.

The goal of providing prescriptive insights based on AI and machine learning was now within reach. With seed capital and new customers, Inspectorio had the resources it needed to build out the full vision of its platform. What makes every phase of the platform’s roadmap succeed is how customer-centric every decision is.

The following platform design goals, each entirely focused on the customer experience and delivering value, are enabling Inspectorio to innovate its platform quickly:

• To enable real-time transparency and visibility across supply chains and production networks, reducing risks and ensuring responsible sourcing is achieved. This platform’s design goal is a cornerstone of all platform development and one of the primary factors that motivated Carlos to launch the company. Accomplishing this goal from a platform standpoint translates into designing configurable and customizable inspector workflows, analytics to track which areas of a supply chain or factories need the greatest improvement, and enabling more precise traceability deeper into the supply chain – which is a key requirement for responsible sourcing.

• To enable brands, retailers, suppliers, vendors and inspectors to all have immediate visibility of inspection and quality analytics, metrics and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) across entire production networks. Carlos recounted in a recent conversation the frustration of not having visibility into the inspection and quality results across factories earlier in his career. That frustration was one of the primary catalysts that led him to define the vision for the Inspectorio platform. Inspectorio’s vision of this dimension of its platform is to provide increasingly data-rich analysis of real-time CAPA (Corrective Actions Preventative Actions) events. Real-time monitoring of factory and product quality performance, material quality and the use of advanced technologies to spot anomalies or variances in materials are all areas that the platform will support to achieve this goal.

• To create and continually strengthen positive Network Effects across brands, retailers, suppliers, vendors and inspection service providers through instantaneous knowledge sharing. A positive Network Effect occurs when every new organization in a network adds value by the data, insights, intelligence, knowledge and perspective it has. The most powerful Network Effects lead to exponential productivity gains across a network. Achieving a positive Network Effect across brands, retailers, factories, suppliers, vendors and inspection agencies is a major strategic goal the Inspectorio platform is designed to achieve. To accomplish this, the platform is role-based by design, providing secure, confidential workflows and workspaces for the main users of the platform: brands, retailers, factories, suppliers and vendors. 

• To provide prescriptive insights into how inspections, compliance, and quality can be improved using Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning. A foundational goal of the Inspectorio platform is to provide every member of a supply chain with the data, insights, and intelligence they need to excel at their work. AI and machine learning are used in the platform to provide real-time analytics and monitoring to automate predictions down the line. Machine learning relies on a series of constraint-based algorithms that “learn” patterns in data over time, yielding insights unavailable with standard analytics techniques. The Inspectorio platform also relies on machine learning to streamline every supply chain participants’ efforts to improve quality. Also, the Inspectorio platform can analyze the performance of all inspectors to automatically recommend the best candidate to inspect a specific product being manufactured in a specific factory. It also features a Defect Recommender that can make predictions on what will yield the most and least defects, based on a combination of supplier materials, factory location, production shift, and design. With AI and machine learning at the center of the Inspectorio platform, it will be able to flex and change over time based on what supply chains need now and in the future.

Conclusion

Authenticity, transparency and trust are the cornerstones of any brand or retailer’s growth strategy today. Being completely transparent about every aspect of sourcing, supply chain quality, labor practices, inspections and even the location of factories producing specific products is the new normal. The current digital age has created an era of instant feedback on every aspect of a brand or retailer’s commitment to responsible sourcing, quality and service. The Inspectorio platform is specifically designed to confront these challenges by providing prescriptive, real-time insights across supply chains. With predictive analytics and immediate insights, every member of a supply chain has the data and intelligence they need to improve their product quality and contribute to revenue growth.

Inspectorio SIGHT is an end-to-end quality control platform that digitizes and optimizes pre-production, inline, final, warehouse, and remote inspections across the global production chain. SIGHT leverages advanced data analytics and machine learning to assess risk and recommend predictive actions to drive continuous improvements. With a fully configurable platform, you can standardize and automate quality operations for increased visibility and collaboration across your supply chain. Shift your quality operations from reactive to preventive.