Designing Pre-Reaction Production Mechanism for Traditional and Postponed Dyeing in Apparel Supply Chain

In the popular clothing market, the garment color is often an important factor in the customer’s determination of purchase. In the fast-changing fashion market, uncertain demand, low predictability and other factors may cause panic buying. Hence, the postponement of clothing dyeing in supply chain management is an important production method for success in the modern clothing fashion market. This study used simulation software to build two virtual clothing supply chain models of cloth dyeing and postponement of clothing dyeing of clothing industry. Moreover, it imported the data of actual factories into the two models for simulation; different situations of output, productivity and delivery date are simulated in multi-color clothing throughput using the same equipment. The postponement of clothing dyeing is applicable to clothing products with changing colors and with slight change in clothing style, whereas the cloth dyeing is applicable to clothing products with uncertain clothing style and slight change in color. The postponement of clothing dyeing is better than the cloth dyeing production mode in the situation of diversified colors and inaccurate forecasting of production. In terms of multi-color inventory carrying cost, the production inventory and carrying cost of postponement of clothing dyeing are lower than cloth dyeing. Therefore, for the changing market, the postponement of clothing dyeing is characterized by low inventory, low carrying cost and low risk. This study provides the forecast management situation for the clothing industries to use capable production modes for clothing manufacturing supply chain.