An Empirical Study on Lead Time of Readymade Garments in Bangladesh

Research Article

Adv Res Text Eng. 2021; 6(1): 1059.

An Empirical Study on Lead Time of Readymade Garments in Bangladesh

Khan A*

Department of Textile Engineering, National Institute of Textile Engineering and Research (NITER), Bangladesh

*Corresponding author: Abir Khan, Department of Textile Engineering, National Institute of Textile Engineering and Research (NITER), Bangladesh

Received: December 30, 2020; Accepted: January 21, 2021; Published: January 28, 2021

Abstract

This paper addressed the issues that lead up to the higher lead-time in readymade garment industries of Bangladesh. Lead-time involve the time required to deliver any good to the specified destination since receiving the order. For Bangladesh, usual lead time is 90-120 days which is very high compared to competing countries like China, Vietnam etc. This time span is prolonged by issues such as worker unrest, political instability, poor productivity, poor production planning etc. The aim of this paper was to pin point these factors and explain exactly how these issues increases the lead-time. Another objective of this study was to propose realistic solutions to the stated lead time problem. This study was conducted with a combination of quantitative and qualitative approaches. The factors working behind higher lead time and the proposed solutions are being suggested by industry experts working in the supply chain management sector. This study was conducted with hope to help the supply chain professionals working in the readymade garment industries in reducing lead-time by various SCM strategies.

Keywords: Readymade garment industry; Supply chain management (SCM); Problems; Solutions

Introduction

Since the advent of the concept of fast fashion, the readymade garment industry has become very much concerned about lesser lead time. Fashion taste of the consumers’ changes rapidly in this era of fast communication. The fashion seasons are becoming shorter and shorter. The clothing retailers want to put new products on the shelf every other week. In addition, the manufacturers are pressurized to deliver products within a very strict time frame. A little bit of deviation from the scheduled delivery date might be a huge consequence on the future business opportunity. So reducing the lead-time has become a requisite in the fashion industry [1]. Easier said than done, reducing the lead-time is not only difficult but also requires all the drivers of supply chain to be prompt. Sometimes the drivers are not in control of the manufacturers. Hence bottlenecks are created in the supply chain which ultimately affect the lead time. Now-a-days Bangladesh has become one of the global leaders in manufacturing readymade garments. Many famous clothing retail brands such as Zara, H&M, Uniqlo, M&S, Walmart, Gap etc. are regularly buying clothes from Bangladesh. Although the success story of Bangladesh’s readymade garment industry is ever increasing, this country faces hindrances in the way of becoming the one stop source for the clothing retail brands. One such hindrance is the inability to response quickly to the fast fashion industry [2]. The strength of Bangladesh’s readymade garment industry is the ability to sell products at cheaper rates due to availability of cheap labor. But the industries fail to keep pace with the fast changes of the customer’s demands. In the 90’s lead-time was 120- 150 days [3]. Now it has reduced to 90 to 100 days [4]. Still this not satisfactory as other competitor such as China can deliver products within 30-35 days. In case of Vietnam it is 60 days. These countries have optimized supply chain network for faster response to market changes. But Bangladesh is way behind the top two competitors in the race of becoming the top of the list. So lead time reduction is of prime importance in supply chain management for readymade garment industries in Bangladesh. All the previous study conducted on the supply chain of readymade garment industry of Bangladesh shows little or no affiliation with the lead time reduction strategies. So there are some research gaps in this area. In this study the sole focus is kept on the factors that increases lead time and the strategies to reduce the lead time. The aim of this study is to help the different supply chain analysts of the garment industries and other stakeholders so that they can find out the factors creating bottlenecks in the supply chain network. Also to provide realistic approaches to reduce the lead-time.

Literature Review

Li [5] defined lead time as the time duration that is between the act of receiving an order from buyer and delivering the ordered goods. The idea of lead time is further explained by Marc [6]. He discussed about customer lead time and manufacturing lead time. There is distinction between these two concepts. Customer lead time is the time span between the order placement by customer and received of the ordered goods. Whereas manufacturing lead time is the total time duration of raw materials input to production process and the final operation to deliver the output. In case of supply chain management, the highly acclaimed JIT production concept first popularized the idea of lead-time reduction although the sole focus of JIT was waste reduction [7]. But JIT principle is mainly suitable for repetitive manufacturing which is not completely analogous to garment manufacturing system. Garment manufacturing system is more comparable to batch flow environment. Lead time reduction is discussed in case of a batch flow environment in study conducted by Goldratt and Cox [8]. They also discussed effect of bottleneck and size of lot on lead-time. Nuruzzaman and Ahasanul [9] explained the lead time management concept in case of the Bangladeshi readymade garment industries. They also discussed the importance of lead time reduction to increase business profit and its necessity for survival and business growth. Kader and Akter [2] discussed the fundamental concept of lead-time and its importance from the perspective of garment manufacturing. They discussed the reasons associated with the increase of lead-time and provided some solutions. But the identified factors require enhanced explanation and other views should be incorporated. So This study will be helpful to explore the horizon. Garment manufacturers desire reduced lead-time for better market control and better response to the customers. In this era of fast fashion, to be able to stay ahead in market competition reduction of lead-time is requisite. Fast response to market demand and changes requires modernized business model. The competitive advantage enjoyed by responsive business model is discussed by Cachon and Swinney [10]. All the studies previously done discussed more about the fundamental concept of lead time and lead time from the global context. In this paper we discussed solely from the perspective of Bangladesh.

Methodology

This research has been completed using a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods. For the quantitative part secondary data have been collected from various published research articles and trusted government published statistical reports. For the qualitative part personal interviews were taken from leading corporate personnel who have been working for years in the top management of different readymade garments industries & sourcing offices. Then these two sets of data are combined together and descriptive analysis technique is used to generate results. A flow chart of the methodology may be shown as follows (Figure 1).

Citation: Khan A. An Empirical Study on Lead Time of Readymade Garments in Bangladesh. Adv Res Text Eng. 2021; 6(1): 1059.