Managing the Customer Driven Supply Chain in High Fashion

Summary

The speech is built around a case study, describing how a manufacturing company wanted to position itself as a key supplier in the high fashion sector.
The speech covers the main topics that the management had to consider while lining up the new business management system solution that was going to be applied. After reaching a good enough competence in the core business of the company in manufacturing a good quality knitted article with a fashion input, it was seen essential to follow the example set by its customers and try and match better the product supply with market demand.
Information management was seen as the key element in this process. The main driver in this challenge is the time factor. The information flows that relate to the business activities must be accessible in real-time and to all the players involved in the supply and demand chain. We must have a clear idea of what is our core business strength, and position ourselves accordingly. We must find suitable partners to work with and try to form strong links to reach, meet and supply the fashion consumer with a garment that matches her expectations and the values that our core competence represents. In this case the matching is perfect, and revenue potential best.
Forecasting becomes less critical in this environment as the customer information on actual consumption is used for interactive planning through Web-enabled members of the value chain. Extranet is used as a privileged network linking companies together to address specific market opportunities. The brand names with high profile in the fashion business work with very big margins today due to several reasons. If better efficiency is reached along the demand chain management, it will lead to substantial growth in profits. Further study is planned in assessing the potential to divide this net worth between the networking participants in the demand chain, and try to evaluate the total savings that can be reached, and thus establish

This paper was first published on the earlier Egytex website. The text above is the summary that was published there.