Supply chain Management in

apparel Manufacturing Industry

 supply chain management:
• If we denote supply chain as, it is a system of organizations,
people, activities, information, and resources involved in
moving a product or service from supplier to customer.
• A supply chain is actually a complex and dynamic supply
and demand network.
• Main purpose of supply chain is to satisfy customer needs
and generate business profits.
Supply Chain Management is the integration of key
business processes from end user to original suppliers that
provides products, services, and information that add value
for customers and other stakeholders.
• In apparel supply chain every organization starting from
initial fiber supplier to consumer purchasing apparel
products for final consumption.
• The apparel industry stands out as one of the most
globalized industries in the world and it is a supply driven
commodity chain led by a combination of retailers,
• contractors,
• subcontractors,
• merchandisers,
• buyers, and suppliers
• Each plays an important role in a network of supply chains
that spans from
• fibers to yarn,
• to fabrics,
• to accessories,
• to garments,
• to trading, and to marketing.
• Moreover in today’s competitive environment,
markets are becoming more global, dynamic, and
customer driven, where customers are
demanding more variety, better quality, and
service, including reliability and faster delivery.
• Therefore, to ensure growth, it has become
mandatory for the apparel industry to be more
participative and adaptive.
• Traditional, supply chains are viewed as a flow
line, where input enters at one end and
transforms to output at the other end.
• This is quite static and is applicable for products
that are changing less frequently.
 Responsiveness of supply chain:
• In a rapidly changing competitive world, there is a need to
develop organizations and supply chains that are
significantly more responsive than the existing ones.
• The responsiveness of the supply chain system can be
defined as the ability of the supply chain to respond
purposefully and within an appropriate time frame to
customer requests or changes in the marketplace.
• Apparel markets are synonymous with rapid change and as
a result, commercial success or failure is largely determined
by the organization’s responsiveness.
• Across industry sectors, such as fashion products, personal
computers, consumer electronics, and automobiles,
companies are contemplating strategies to increase
their responsiveness to meet consumer needs by offering
high product variety with short lead times.
 Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)
• In order to enhance the responsiveness of the
whole supply chain, time management and the
use of technology become crucial topics in the
industry.
• The enterprise resource planning (ERP) system
has been employed to deal with this issue by re-
engineering the supply chain within and beyond
an organization.
• ERP is a method of effective planning of all the
resources in an organization.
 Analysis of Apparel Supply Chain:
• In maximum case apparel manufacturing organization is harassed
to make the downy supply chain in order to deliver garments to the
buyer on time as well as gain the profit margin by reducing
unnecessary waste or muda from chain.
Root cause analysis of three stages of the apparel supply chain:
•
Cutting: Manual laying
• Manual pattern making
• Finished item arrangement without visual display
• Manual material movement
• Manual ticketing
• Excess manpower
• Excess time consumption
• Excess cost
• Sewing: Unavailability of storing system
• Unnecessary overtime
• Unnecessary manpower
• Unnecessary waste (spare parts, fabric,
thread, etc.)
• Rework
• Overproduction
• Inappropriate processing
• Finishing: Manual goods handling
• Ancient machine utilization
• Excess WIP (work in progress)
• Unavailability of finishing materials
• Ordinary quality of garments
• Irregular machine repairing system
• Stacking goods without proper arranging
• shows the real state of the supply chain
network in the apparel manufacturing
industry.