Development of a sustainable QA model to support direct sourcing for clothing in a region

Abstract

Due to the ever changing dynamics in the supply chain management, relocation of garment industry is inevitable. Unlike fifty years ago where some of the well known retailers emphasized the buy British policy in today's context it is no longer a sustainable slogan. Particularly an industry like garment manufacturing that is labor intensive becomes footloose due to cost of production being low in developing countries. Therefore the no of clothing retailers who had gone out on direct sourcing and out of their traditional manufacturing homelands is more in the last two years than the whole of last ten years. However the discerning consumers who patronized these brands do not want any compromise on quality. Therefore various retailers have adopted various quality assurance models to ensure the faulty merchandise do not reach the consumer. The dissertation unravels the study into various QA models in existence and their pitfalls and propose a cost effective, improvement breeding sustainable QA model that will support direct sourcing. The proposed system a drives improvement eliminates non value adding inspection and does not impeded the speed to market as a result of the QA model.