New Innovation of Textile Technology for Fashion and Design

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New Innovation of Textile Technology for Fashion and Design

Introduction

The textile industry accounts for 7.5% of manufacturing in the world and 5.6% of total world trade. Being labor intensive with low barriers to entry, according to Gunasekaran (2004), the industry has long played a prominent role as the cornerstone of economic growth in developing and established countries in the world economy. After the U.S. economy matured and became more technology oriented, the textile industry started incorporating technology in its business operations. The advancement of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) has led to changes in the global economy by bringing about an increase in knowledge of production (Biehl 2007 53). The types of markets, competition, and comparative advantages are also changing due to ICT. Haag and McCubbrey (2005) looked at information technologies and systems and declared them as revolutionizing the operation of firms, industries, and markets.

The innovations of information technology (IT) combined with domestic and global business environmental changes have shown how IT has become more important for most managers (Haag and McCubbrey 2005 89). This year 2010 for example, a great number of firms in many countries do business using Internet technology. Internet technology has become significant for businesses and will continue to be so in this century (Gunasekaran 2004 269). Gunasekaran (2004) added that the Internet revolution is a great technical leap forward. According to Biehl (2007), local access to the regional telephone network is an essential component to get connected to the Internet and is, by definition, an internationally, non-traded factor of production which must be provided locally. However, as the authors explained, the Internet is, by its very nature, a global industry, where global backbone connectivity is an essential internationally traded input.

Problem Statement

The U.S. textile mill sector has undergone significant changes for more than two decades, including a steady decline in the relative scale of domestic production, employment reduction, and increased competition from imported products (Biehl 2007 53). The gradual phasing out of protective barriers has increased competition for the textile imports, and the 2005 Multi-Fiber Agreement (MFA) further challenges the competitive strengths of this sector (Gunasekaran 2004 269). In order for the U.S. textile firms to regain a global competitive advantage, they must develop their IT resources such that the system can first quickly identify their retail vendors' needs regarding products and services. Armed with such marketing demand information, their system-driven global production and distribution network can then quickly supply the products with the value demanded by the retail customers. McKinsey Consulting (2007) and Berger (2005), Director of the MIT Industrial Performance Center, have demonstrated that this development is possible and has occurred numerous times in other industries operating in a global environment.

The overarching research question proposed through this research study was whether the exploration of effective demand-driven supply chain systems in other industries would harvest general factors that could be successfully transferred to textile-based retail supply systems in order to improve productivity. This question was explored in the ...