Global And Local Production And Quality Control Processes

Quality Control or (QC) for short, is a set of strictly enforced procedures that have been designed to ensure that a product meets the qualtiy requirements of a client on a ongoing basis. Therefore, to ensure that you provide your clients with consitentcy as far as qualiity goes, as the potential manufacters about the specifics surrodung the procedures they implement to enure qualitiy

All products possess ‘life cycles.’ A product 's life cycle, abbreviated PLC, consists of a series of stages, beginning with its introduction to the market and ending with its decline and eventual withdrawal from the market.  As a product progresses through its life cycle, its sales and profitability change as it faces changing environmental pressures.   Knowledge of the product’s life cycle can provide valuable insights into ways the product can be managed to enhance sales and profitability.

Gildan Activewear is a manufacture and marketer of branded clothing with their headquarters located in Montreal, Québec. They were founded in 1984 but have become one of the most well known t-shirt manufactures in the world, with revenue reaching $1.95 billion in 2012. Along with their t-shirts, they also make socks and underwear, and have licensing agreements with Under Armor and New balance. The have an extensive quality management process to make sure that only quality products reach their customers. This paper will focus on their quality management processes at the national distribution center in Eden, North Carolina, which is the last stop before the product reaches the retailers.

According to Christopher et al. (2004), the main features of fashion industry include very short product life cycle, high volatility, low predictability, and high impulse purchasing. As a result, it is crucial that how a fashion company could quickly respond to market demand and incorporate consumers’ preference into its products (Christopher et al., 2004). In order to maintain its leadership position in the market, the Company’s strategies focuses on these parts (Tokyo Fashion Corporation Official Website: http://www.tokichoi.com.tw/subTP.aspx?p=about):

‘Fashion industry is characterised by short product life cycles, volatile and unpredictable demand, tremendous product variety, long and inflexible supply processes and a complex supply chain.’

One of the main quality control processes used is the Statistical Process Control (SPC), which is a quality method that helps with engineering details in manufacturing plants. From start to finish, the SPC’s main job is to build efficient design into each of the manufacturing processes that goes on in the plant. Man-Machine Interfaces (MMIs) also allow manufacturing plants to correct problems as they occur. This allows a machine to tell a person if a product is defective (so that the product can be removed immediately), or whether or not a machine is malfunctioning. This allows workers to keep the manufacturing plant running by stopping problems early on. Another way manufacturers can ensure quality in products is to stay up to date with technology. Advanced technology creates better machines, and a better machine yields better efficiency when making

The world has become fascinated towards the fashion. The first thing need to be considered is Fashion; it can be behavior, implementing new ideas on clothing’s, hairstyle, decorations and so on which are automatically linked to our day to day activities. In today’s context, fast fashion has become a trend to a fashion industry patterns yet delivered utilizing less costly materials to guarantee a low cost tag. Many companies have been successful and unsuccessful to earn a trust from their customer. For the matter of success level it depends on how innovativeness they are and also applies the principle of supply chain and logistic management activities for the growth of their

Unlike half a century ago, due to the increasing degree of international production fragmentation, the cross-border dispersion of component production/assembly within vertically integrated production processes, with each country specialising in a particular stage of the production sequence (Athukorala and Yamashita, 2006), a product actually comprises joint efforts from various countries.

In recent years, the rapid changes in the fast fashion industry, a highly concerned about environmental issues as well as the sustainability for the company. Thus, it is a big challenge for the company 's global operations to think about how to use the market intelligence, sensitive response and do more eco-friendly produce to stand out in a competitive market. In contradiction of fast fashion strategy, their supply chain must have the capabilities of fashionable design, quick response, and affordable costs. Therefore the operation decisions of supply

Global companies source their raw materials and outsource manufacturing of their products to many countries to take advantage of lower costs or high quality production, and/or lower costs of

The continually increasing globalization in the world has linked many countries together and the borders have become inconspicuous. Many firms cooperate in a global market, which leads to an increased amount of transnational corporations acting in a global surrounding (Douglas & Wind, 1987). In the fashion industry, the business environment is especially competitive and firms have to adjust their business practices rapidly such as products and launching time of each collection on the basis of the demand of current market (Lowson, King & Hunter, 1999). Companies in the fashion industry like ZARA, Topshop and H&M have emerged a new trend — “fast fashion” that combines two main characteristics: short lead times and trendy design products (Passariello,2008 ; Rohwedder & Johnson, 2008). However, fast fashion leaves behind some issues, which are not beneficial to environmental protection and human costs. In fast fashion industries, it requires companies to complete missions in a short time, some fast fashion companies use unethical acts in order to complete producing on time which may result in environmental issue and appears unfair labour practices. In addition, Luz (2007) pointed out that globalization provided fast fashion industries a chance to produce clothes at lower prices so that they can sell clothes with a cheaper price. This result in many customers considers fast fashion clothes to be disposable. Therefore, this essay will first explain what is fast

Introduction - Total quality management (TQM) has been defined as ‘continuous improvement of every production output whether it be a product or a service, by removing inefficient variations and by improving the backbone of the work process’. International managers like their domestic counterparts have found that incorporating the notion of total quality management into their management process and style can give the competitive advantage.

In order to have higher profit margin, one of the most effective ways is to cut down production costs. In view of the low labor cost in developing countries, global sourcing seems to be a good choice to reduce costs. With the development of global production networks and the increasing competition, fast all fashion clothing firms have shifted their manufacturing operations to low lost locations over the past decades.

Supply Chain Management (SCM) management is the success factor in fast fashion business. SCM deals with suppliers, with supplier’s suppliers, with customers and even customer’s customers (Galin, Zhelyazkov, 2011). Zara’s process focuses from raw materials basis to customer consumption. The supply chain productivities are a physical product, a combination of time, place, form and function of a product and service proposition. In the fashion world, where companies are competing on time the need of new abilities are rising.

Firstly, fashion design thinking is a framework for making products aesthetically attractive by adopting new innovative approaches. But I was intrigued by seeing the disparity between conceptual fashion design thinking of designers and its industrial production viability. Questions like what type of fabric is best for what type of printing process and which process is more cost-effective with less limitation, are still some burning issues in the fashion world. Many times fashion designers demand very critical development like reactive printing on polyester-cotton blend fabric or discharge printing on double part dyed cotton-polyester fabric. But unfortunately, considering current technological aspects in Bangladeshi industrial sector,