BUS606: Operations and Supply Chain Management

Textile and apparel processing consists of a number of activities prior to stitching task which is usually more focused when parley about the apparel product. The process of an apparel product production is quite long and the process continues like in a pipeline. The traditional pipeline system starts with an idea about a product, often generated from a forecasted fabric or color, pushes that idea through a lengthy product development period as well as through extensive business-to-business market and production processes, and concludes with a push type sale to a final consumer. Cao et al. mention textile-apparel SC is relatively complex because it encompasses several chunks of manufacturing processes such as fibre and yarn processing, fabric manufacturing/finishing, garment manufacturing and retailing. They have found a such SC to be similar to conventional forms of SC, i.e. the vertical integration process in which steps of production and/or distribution of a product are controlled by a single company or functional entities of an enterprise, in order to increase that company's or entity's power, mainly in terms of cost or time efficiency, in the marketplace. Although Cao et al. state that vertical integration is not so common nowadays and even such integration exists, it is only part of the company's business. This section aims to provide a supply side overview of textile-apparel manufacturing operations where the minor or side-line operations are not presented elaborately.