Contributions for improving textile supply chain management in Pakistan

Abstract

In the last decades, trade liberalization and communication innovations have increased the opportunities for retailers and brands to buy their products from producers worldwide. These are transformed into global sourcing companies, which outsource the production of goods they sell, to suppliers and producers worldwide through complex international networks or global supply chains. They control the supply chains (SCs) and determine price, quality levels, delivery times, and labour conditions for the suppliers and producers. Under this transformation, the global textile and clothing SC activities are divided into high and low profit steps. Retailers and brands keep high profit steps such as innovation, marketing and retailing. Low profit steps, such as sourcing raw materials, production and assembly, finishing and packing, are outsourced to mid-chain suppliers and low-cost producers worldwide. This has created labour-intensive exports from low-cost locations especially Asia and Far East. The migration of textile and clothing industry has unlocked the potential of new markets including China, South Asia, Brazil and Middle East. In the global restructuring of the textile and clothing, competitive capabilities including design, innovativeness and time-based performance emerged as the main factors of profitability. Now, the capabilities on quality, value-addition and customer service are utilized to maintain the overall strategic position of the SCs. There are many textile and fashion brands which are manufactured now in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Pakistan is an important textile producer with proper resources, which are required for this industry including manufacturing setup, raw material availability and cheap labour. Meanwhile, it is producing standard products, directed to low profit markets. Many countries have successfully increased their export shares in textile and clothing after the elimination of the world quotas. Unfortunately, Pakistan was unable to increase its export share in its non-traditional markets like fashion clothing because of not developing relevant strategies and not upgrading its domestic textile and clothing industry. It is obvious that the industry is not prepared for this scenario and it has difficulties in meeting short lead times and higher responsiveness which are expected now a day by most customers. This research is focused on the textile and clothing SC system of Pakistan. The structure and the characteristics of the system were studied and the growth patterns were identified in the sectors, especially, for the activities in the cotton value chain which are in the formal setup. The informal setup is beyond the scope of this research. There is very low research at this scale for the supply chain system, which restricts the global view of the system and makes it difficult to adopt relevant strategic directions when working on the overall system improvement. Therefore, the intention was to identify the strategic environment of the system and the relevant strategic directions. The motivation behind this research is that the industry needs a proper restructuring to improve its overall competitiveness in the areas which can bring higher profits and for this a detailed study of the textile and clothing system was needed. The strengths of this research are based on its multidimensional approach; strategic insight is produced on the overall system which is supported with tactical view of an advance supply chain. We believe this will provide a better understanding on the issues which are now faced in the global textile and clothing supply chains.

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