Supply chain decision areas in textile industry

 

Hi everyone. I’m Arun R from final year Amrita School of Business. This blog is about the insights I got from supply chain decision at textile industries.

Supply chain management is the centralized management of flow of materials, information, and finances as we move from supplier to manufacturer to wholesaler to retailer and then to the consumers. There are three main flows in supply chain management and In textile industry also there are three main flows. The product flow which includes the movement of textiles from supplier to customer or the customer returns the product back to the supplier. In information flow the transmitting of orders and updating the status of the delivery is included and in financial flow consists of credit term, payment schedule etc.

There are 4 major decision areas in textile supply chain management.

·       Location decision: this is the first step in creating a supply chain. Geographic location for production facilities, stocking point and sourcing points are important. Once the size, location is determined then the product flows through to the final customer. These decisions are very important for textile industry as they represent the basic strategy for accessing the customers and have an impact on revenue.

·       Production decisions: these decisions include what type of textiles to produce and in which plant it should be produced and also the places at which these should be allocated. Different textiles should be given to different locations according to the taste of the customers and hence it is very important. Also, the capacity of the manufacturing facility should be considered as an important factor. Workload management and quality control measures are also important in production facilities.

·       Inventory decisions: these decisions are related to the management of inventory in textile industry. Inventory is an unavoidable one in every supply chain. They exist at every stage. They can be raw materials, or processed textile materials etc. They can also be in process materials. Holding of inventory is costly an effective management is needed for this in the supply chain operations.

·       Transportation decisions: the mode of transporting textile materials to different locations are very important and they are closely related to the inventory decisions. Transportation through sea and railway is chelated but air transportation means the product reaches at the destination quickly. Customer service level and geographical location plays an important role in transportation decisions. This is cost is high and therefore much care should be taken for this.

All these decisions should be made in such a way that the profitability of the textile industry should not be affected and all the decisions should be considered an important one.