Improving the supply chain agility of a fashion accessories company
Rosenlund, Kristian (2015)
Metropolia Ammattikorkeakoulu
2015
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Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-201503133110
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-201503133110
Tiivistelmä
This thesis aims to improve the supply chain agility of a case company that is engaged in the design, development and worldwide marketing and selling of fashion accessories and design services. This thesis explores agility in context of supply chain management and in fashion industry where the typical challenges are that demand is highly volatile and hard to predict, the number of products per sales season is large and products have a fairly short life-cycles.
In this study, the research approach is action research due to the iterative and collaborative nature of the research. Collected data is then studied by using qualitative research methods.
The outcome of this thesis is a holistic set of improvement proposals for making the supply chain of the case company more agile. This is presented as a defined set of agility capabilities and agility providers for the case company and a list of improvement suggestions for taking the agility providers to a new level of performance. In this study, business capabilities are what a company needs for executing its strategy, and agility capabilities are those specifically linked to supply chain agility. Agility providers comprise business practices, methods and tools that could increase the performance of agility capabilities.
When implementing the proposed improvement suggestions and actions, the case company could become more information-driven, improve its market sensitivity and establish more flexible, faster and accurate ways to response to changes in demand. This will improve its ability to serve customers and therefore increase the customer satisfaction. The case company would also benefit from better collaboration among the supply chain partners, and by better internal and external process and information alignment. These improvements will also benefit the search of profitable opportunities in a volatile market place and therefore improve the whole corporate performance. A further benefit lies in improved adaptability; when change and fast response are built into the supply chain the system does not get disrupted as easily.
In this study, the research approach is action research due to the iterative and collaborative nature of the research. Collected data is then studied by using qualitative research methods.
The outcome of this thesis is a holistic set of improvement proposals for making the supply chain of the case company more agile. This is presented as a defined set of agility capabilities and agility providers for the case company and a list of improvement suggestions for taking the agility providers to a new level of performance. In this study, business capabilities are what a company needs for executing its strategy, and agility capabilities are those specifically linked to supply chain agility. Agility providers comprise business practices, methods and tools that could increase the performance of agility capabilities.
When implementing the proposed improvement suggestions and actions, the case company could become more information-driven, improve its market sensitivity and establish more flexible, faster and accurate ways to response to changes in demand. This will improve its ability to serve customers and therefore increase the customer satisfaction. The case company would also benefit from better collaboration among the supply chain partners, and by better internal and external process and information alignment. These improvements will also benefit the search of profitable opportunities in a volatile market place and therefore improve the whole corporate performance. A further benefit lies in improved adaptability; when change and fast response are built into the supply chain the system does not get disrupted as easily.