I had a fantastic day at the Asda Food Suppliers Technical conference. It’s always interesting to see how other industries manage Quality and to understand the challenges they face in terms of regulation and delivering the Quality/Value equation which I talked about in one of my recent blogs.

There was a truly inspirational talk from British Paralympian Derek Ana Derenalagi and I also had the opportunity to share with our food suppliers some of the industry leading initiatives that we are working on at George.

And never one to miss an opportunity to demonstrate the great quality we have at George we gave away goody bags to delegates that included our famous men’s and ladies black sock.

Pardon the pun its fair to say that the socks went like hot cakes (At a food conference).

We have done a lot of quality benchmarking against our competitors and we believe that we have one of the best black socks in the market. I asked all the delegates to give me feedback on my blog.

1. So did we delight you with our quality?
2. How do our socks compare to other retailers on quality and price?
3. And have we converted you to a George customer.

If you were one of the unlucky one’s that missed out our socks are available at George.com and in most Asda stores.

Looking forward to your feedback!

We recently took Doug Miller, Emeritus Professor in Worker Rights in Fashion (Northumbria University), to see some of the factories we work with in Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, and show him the work we’re doing on our Lean manufacturing programme.

As part of our commitment to doing the right thing, we’re engaging suppliers and pioneering the concept of the Standard Minute Value. This will help establish the true open cost of manufacturing a garment which is fundamental in our approach to ensuring workers earn a fairer wage.

Together with Doug, we are keen to explore how standard minute values can be used to develop a sustainable labour costing approach which we think has the potential to be industry-leading.

In 2011, Jen Creevy from Retail Week joined the team in Bangladesh as we launched our Doing the Right Thing document. Since then, we have made some really important and exciting developments in our projects – we have taken steps to further look after the interests of the people who make our clothes, and helping our suppliers to increase clothing quality and productivity in the supply chain.

To read more about the work we’re doing with the George supply chain, read our Doing the Right Thing update here.

Our studies have shown that style changes can take production lines 3 working days to recover back to there normal efficiency and productivity rates. So if a line has to change styles too many times this can have a massive impact on the profitability of a factory.

Take for example our £5 jean. The volumes that we sell at Asda mean that we run our production lines continuously all year round.

Economies of scale and long production runs allow our suppliers to invest in some of the latest technologies in the textile industry and by automating our production lines we can offer our customer consistent quality at great prices.

The supplier benefits because the line efficiency increases, they don’t have to stop the line to change styles and more importantly the skill levels of the operator increase.

Volume production is a fantastic opportunity to unlock unbeatable quality.

I’m pleased to announce that George have recently joined the British Quality Foundation.

This is a natural progression for George following the award of ISO 9001 and our short listing for a BQF award in 2010.

We are constantly looking at new and innovative ways to improve our Quality and Membership of the BQF will enable George to work with and network liked minded organisation and people. We will be looking at how other industries approach Quality and integrate their supply chain and additionally share our experiences of managing Quality in the fast moving environment of the fashion world.

To find out more please read the attached article on George that the BQF run in their monthly magazine or go to www.bqf.org.uk