Structures of Textile-apparel Supply Chain： Concepts and Cases

In recent years, supply chain management （SCM） has been in popularity as a new management philosophy for all industries, including textile and apparel industries. The textile-apparel supply chain is relatively complex because it encompasses many participants such as yarn manufacturers, fabric manufacturers, garment manufacturers and retailers. Although many scholars are engaged in researching SCM in textile and apparel industries, a systematic classification of textile-apparel chain does not exist. The paper proposes three types of textile-apparel chain, nominated vertical integration chain, traditional sourcing chain and 3P-hub （third party as the hub） chain. Different coordinators exist in different types of chain. Three Hong Kong headquartered companies, Esquel Group, TAL Apparel Ltd., and Li ＆ Fang （Trading） Ltd. are used as cases responding to each type of the structures respectively.     

Design of Multi-agent Supply Chain System to Support Quick Response in Textile-Apparel Industry

Owing to the fast growth of global market, textileand apparel industries which are a typical seasonal businessare facing crucial challenges from both competitors andconsumers. In order to get survived, forming supply chainand utilizing the emerged technology to establish a quickresponse system become an important common practice forenterprises in terms of cost reduction and efficiencyimprovement. This paper presents a multi-ageat-basedintegrated framework for quick response in textile andapparel supply chain. By sharing information andcollaborating among chain partner, the multi-agent systemprovides a promising computing paradigm for quick responsebusiness processes. A prototype based on the proposedframework is implemented using ZEUS toolkit. It presentshow the proposed architecture is being designed to establishcollaborative business environment by providing dynamicquick response processes.