Abstract:
Expectations of apparel retailers in international are high quality apparel in
low cost align with the fashion trend of the season in narrower lead time.
With its aim, the buyers tend to defer buying decision to align with frequent
changes in fashion trend and related colour aesthetic to maximize the retail
while maintaining the lower inventory levels.
With this situation, the garment manufactures required to re-visit garment
manufacturing process and implemented new manufacturing systems such as
lean manufacturing practices and other operating systems to shorten the
production life cycle.
Color approval process is one of the key activities and it is identified as
nonproductive activity consume considerable time period in the total buying
cycle. The objective of the study is to discover a methodology to eliminate
color approval process and related timelines by implementing modem
technology available. The research is carried out with a statistical analysis to
find a numerical value which able to transform through the electronic media
by replacing a visual judgment instantly to a decision maker. After a
comprehensive literature review, the color difference (the symbol of DE) is
identified as the numerical value to transform the decision of accepting the
color, which is 0.806 for main raw material used for intimate apparels selected
in this study. Further study is recommended to discover DE of various other
components used in the industry enabling to eliminate the nonproductive
timeline in the color approval process and reduce total buying cycle time.
