Importance of an Effective Supply Chain in Textile Industry

With the tag of world’s largest population holding country, it is more than just obvious for India’s textile industry to have a significant contribution in the nation’s GDP. With a stature that big this industry has also come to have a celebrated presence world-over. This being said, the textile industry of India, however, is not as organized as one would assume it to be. Though the presence of intensely structured entities in the market cannot be denied, but the fact of the matter is that the better part of this industry is still ruled by small-scale enterprises, which are either consumed in creating handicrafts or engaged in manufacturing of apparels. Needless to state, it is this nature of textile industry that somehow cripples the existence of an effective supply chain.
In order to understand the same, we first need to acknowledge the fact that the garment supply chain comprises of five major stages, which are

1. Fiber Production
2. Fabrication
3. Garmenting
4. Distribution
5. Retailing

As elementary as it may sound, the reality is that this process is complex, especially pertaining to the vastness of the domestic market of India. Therefore, textile companies, small and big, are now coming to a point where they are swiftly moving towards an efficient supply chain management, by exterminating the following limitations that are widespread in the current model.

• Cursory life-span of textiles, especially in case of clothing and apparel, which results in redundancy thus giving way to overstocking and markdowns in pricing.
• Higher lead time based on forecasts which usually doesn’t match up with the ever changing customer behavior.
• Little or no access to real time information sharing between the provider or manufacturer and the retailer.
• Lack in trust with respect to partnerships and collaboration in terms of profit earning as well as risk sharing.
• Unorganized logical infrastructure

Once this is all taken care of, eventually, a more efficient and effective supply chain management will come in place which will help the textile industry in achieving tremendous amounts of benefits. The first of these benefits being, the ability to streamline the flow of inventory so that persistent issues like overstocking and down-pricing may be avoided. Secondly, a system which is technologically equipped will enable Quick Response (QR), which is of crucial importance in light of minimizing the lead time. This in turn helps strengthen the collaborative practice between the manufacturer, distributor and the retailer. Here the benefits can be reaped optimally, by assistance from the supplier at various levels of the chain, along with relaying of information at every stage of the process of product development.

In fact, it is almost safe to state, that an efficient supply chain management can and will, eventually lead to increased profitability and reduced waste, given that innovative channels such as the online medium have now come into play.