Enhancement of Textile Supply Chain Performance through Optimal Capacity Planning

Manufacturing companies in the textile and apparel field face stiff competition due to the globalization of trade between suppliers, producers and customers. To meet this challenge, they need to be efficient by adopting new lean manufacturing approaches and new analysis and management tools leading to more flexible and agile production and distribution processes. For the textile and apparel industry, where products’ life cycle is short due to fashion changes, a new integrated approach of production and distribution planning is needed. Based on linear programming techniques and integrating subcontracting activities, our approach takes into account the characteristics of demand, including its short life cycle, seasonality and fashion effect. For these reasons, a sequential approach is adopted, combining tactical and operational decision levels for production and distribution activities, in order to satisfy customer needs at lower cost by reacting quickly to changes and delivering on time. The deployed approach is structured according to the DMAIC lean tool. Validated on real instances, this approach proves its efficiency by achieving cost reduction when internal production capacity is adequately and efficiently planned.