Operations Management in Fashion Industry

Manisha Beniwal
Department of Textiles (Fashion Technology)
DKTE’S Textile & Engineering Institute, Ichalkaranji, India
Intern at Textile Learner
Email: [email protected]

Operations Management in Fashion Industry:
A crucial part of any force chain is the operations management (OM) is the exertion of managing coffers that are devoted to the product and delivery of products and services. It embodies the association’s capabilities, which determine its unborn options. As Slack etal. (2010) state, currently the focus of utmost operations directors has moved from planning and control to enhancement. Also, according to the same authors, associations operating in numerous diligences need to ameliorate their operations simply to retain their position relative to their challengers.

In the retail assiduity, and specifically in fashion, OM involves assaying, understanding, and potentially perfecting the processes in each part of the chain, from distribution centers to stores, including transportation and other distribution conditioning. While assaying the literature the focus was put on the Store Operations (SO), since over the last 15 times, academic exploration has shown the substantiation that retail store prosecution and operations constitute as the most substantial challenges of the retail force chain according to, indeed correct planning may end with undesirable results due to the poor SO prosecution. Also, according to Andersen (1997), optimization of SO is an essential element of achieving success in the retail sector. Despite that, there’s a deficit of publications concentrated on operations at the store position, and therefore, a gap in the literature can be set up in relation to this content.

Operations management refers to the administration of business practices to produce the loftiest position of effectiveness possible within an association. It’s concerned with converting accoutrements and labor into goods and services as efficiently as possible to maximize the profit of an association. Operations operation brigades essay to balance costs with profit to achieve the loftiest net operating profit possible.

Operations management in fashion Industry is done by:

1. Design of product: This strategic decision area deals with the design of any fashion product. The operation ideal is to insure that product design aligns with organizational capabilities and business pretensions. In this case, any brand focuses on designs grounded on advanced technology and current request preferences.

2. Quality Management: Any brand should emphasize quality in its processes and products. The ideal in this strategic decision area is to satisfy consumers’ prospects about product quality. The company’s operations operation addresses this concern through high quality norms and the operation of total quality management (TQM) in the product of sports shoes, outfit and vesture.

3. Process and Capacity Design: This strategic decision area requires that operations must prioritize streamlining and effectiveness of product. The idea is to insure acceptable, effective, and effective product. In fashion operations directors apply nonstop enhancement strategies to support the company’s product pretensions and requirements grounded on request dynamics.

4. Supply Chain Management: Any brand should have excellent force chain operation, which facilitates effective product to support the global sports shoes, vesture and outfit business. The ideal in this strategic decision area of operations operation is to align the force chain with the company’s overall strategic points. It satisfies this ideal through force chain robotization and optimization of transport distances among suppliers, product installations, distributors and retailers.

5. Inventory Management: The objective in this strategic decision area is to maintain operations management that minimizes inventory costs while maximizing its effectiveness and efficiency. Managers apply the perpetual method of inventory management, which involves continuous monitoring and movement of inventory from the supply chain to the distributors and retailers.

6. Scheduling: It approach is primarily concerned with corporate operations and the coordination of the supply chain with distribution and retail operations. In this strategic decision area of operations management, the aim is to maximize resource utilization.

7. Design decisions: This needs a good understanding of how consumers choose among products within a collection. Retailers like Zara harness this chance by researching what sells, instead of sticking solely to ‘safe’ bets. Being conscious of trends set when they happen rather than being tied to traditional seasonal spring and autumn collections.

8. Purchasing/sourcing decisions: This needs managing the risks of over-ordering and under-ordering compared to demand. Caro and Martínez-de-Albéniz suggest that a multi-purchase model is apt for companies where lead times are shorter, and it’s possible to use early demand information to produce more when demand becomes high.

9. Distribution decisions: Once designs and their quantities are decided, distribution decisions have to be made in order to properly distribute inventory across a network of stores. Here, again, the instance of Zara is relevant; Zara’s distribution model is at the level of store display. If a product is unavailable in major sizes, it removes the merchandise from the shop floor. This needs that distribution decisions take into account the shipping scarce stock to other stores in the network, in order that the right combination of sizes is always on display. Consistent with Caro and Martínez-de-Albéniz, doing this will boost sales by as much as 4%.

10. Strategies for Reducing High Production Costs: Production costs are often reduced through proper production planning and operations scheduling, which optimizes the resources available within the production facilities. For this, it’s recommended to perform an adequate aggregate production planning process in order to minimize total costs associated with labor and inventory levels in a medium-term horizon. For the short term, scheduling techniques must be applied to assign jobs to resources in clothing manufacturing plants reducing the time lost in assembly modules and setup operations. Regarding the design process of the required resources such as manufacturing modules, setup staff, floor area, machinery, equipment, among others, the utilization of simulation techniques has been proved to allow the minimization of total production costs under different operating scenarios.

Likewise, technologies like RFID and cloud computing can capture and monitor real-time information to provide production scheduling solutions based on intelligent optimization techniques such as heuristics and metaheuristics. Production systems supported lean manufacturing are also a great alternative to reduce costs and increase product quality, promoting the implementation of tools and methods like 5S, DEMAIC, Kaizen, SMED, and TPM, also as Six Sigma approaches. On the opposite hand, under a worldwide supply chain approach, it’s necessary to consider global sourcing for materials and production services in order to get products and services with the flexibility and speed required by the market. Thus, textile-clothing companies can specialize in performing own processes that add value and outsourcing those for which the companies do not have sufficient competitiveness. For the case during which textile clothing companies need to acquire materials from suppliers, it’s recommended to implement material requirements planning (MRP) systems to reduce excessive raw materials and provide on-time inventory, avoiding cost overruns and production delays.

Conclusion:
Therefore Operations management helps addressing problems related to low levels of sales and low turnover, over inventory and high manufacturing costs in fashion industry in order to improve productivity and competitiveness. Operations management provides strategies that promote the supply chain integration, adequate demand forecasting methods, S&OP methodologies, and lean manufacturing principles, implementation of information technologies, and production planning techniques for the long, medium and short term.

References:

1. Nike Inc. Operations Management: 10 Decisions, Productivity. Retrieved July 17, from https://panmore.com/nike-inc-operations-management-10-decisions-areas-productivity
2. Operation Management | Supply Chain Management. Retrieved July 17, from https://textilestudycenter.com/operation-management-supply-chain-management/
3. Operations Management Strategies for the Textile Clothing Sector in Colombia. Retrieved July 17, from https://lupinepublishers.com/fashion-technology-textile-engineering/fulltext/operations-management-strategies-for-the-textileclothing-sector-in-colombia.ID.000162.php
4. Fast fashion Retailing – Transforming Operations Management. Retrieved July 17, from https://www.ideasforleaders.com/ideas/fast-fashion-retailing-%E2%80%93-transforming-operations-management

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Founder & Editor of Textile Learner. He is a Textile Consultant, Blogger & Entrepreneur. He is working as a textile consultant in several local and international companies. He is also a contributor of Wikipedia.

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