Supply Chain
In the scenario, Miliken Textiles is a large fabric manufacturer that manufactures clothes for sales in major retail stores. There are six ‘style seasons’ during a year but Miliken has an 18 week lead time and that prevents it from timely resupplying the more popular designs at the retail stores. This would not do because by the time Miliken is able to resupply the more popular designs, two or more style seasons would have already gone by and the supplies manufactured would be out of season. The company would have also missed the two or three style seasons that have already gone by. The only way to resolve this issue is to reduce the lead time by 15 weeks to being only 3 weeks lead time. To the left is a chart of the flows of product, information, and financial settlements between Miliken, apparel shops design & manufacture apparel, department store chain headquarters & distribution centers, and the retail stores. As you can see, there is two way communication between each part of the supply chain that is next to one another but not up or down the chain, for example; the retails stores and the department headquarters communicate but the retail stores do not communicate with Miliken or the apparel shops design and manufacturing apparel centers. Customers make purchases at the retail stores and when the retail stores are out of stock, they communicate that information to the headquarters & distribution centers, which then communicate the information to the apparel shops design & manufacturing apparel centers, and then lastly, that gets communicated to Miliken so it can produce more of the popular items. Thus, the 18 week long lead time for resupplying a popular item. The thing that comes to mind when looking at the current flows of product, information, and financial settlements is the lack of communication. By the time that Miliken gets the information about resupplying the popular items in the retail stores, the style season would almost be over. The initial