Supply Chain management Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words - 1

Supply Chain management - Essay Example Switching costs are moderately high for manufacturers and hence lot sizes drive costs. Visibility is lacking in supply chain regarding down stream activities with consequent vague projections on deliveries. Capacity is determined by external factors such as time limited quotas with no information available about delivery by competitors for the same quota. This arduous process takes 6 to 12 months, which is excruciatingly long compared with the value added cycle time of only 6-12 weeks. The brand owners therefore begin their work on the product more than a year before the selling season. The players in the industry have responded to the troubled times with the initiatives such as Quick Response Time, Collaborative efforts among the participants and concurrent engineering necessitating the deployment of contemporary web enabled information technology in the supply chain management. The global apparel industry is typically with a number of complexities. Fluctuating and uncertain demand, short product lifecycle, wide variety not always amenable to the economies of scale and supply chain transcending geographic boundaries, time zones, cultures and languages. To win in this industry, efficient supply chain management is a major base for sustainable competitive advantage. The search for comparative advantage has led many apparel industry players to globalise their operations in the recent times. This is borne out by the penetration of imports. For instance, in UK, the degree of import penetration in this industry is 92% (Jones 2006). The vertically integrated local model gave way to multi-tier globally distributed model. This model hinged on availability of skills, specialised process technology, international trade relations and regulatory milieu present in host countries for outsourcing. The made to order nature of the product and the needed skill intensity in