The Effects of Rescheduling Frequency on Supply Chain Performance in an Apparel Supply Chain

Abstract

Apparel and textile industries are fashionable. The product lifecycle is short and fast changing. Theaccuracy of forecasts on customer demands is low. The supply chains have to reduce lead time across thechains in order to satisfy customer satisfaction. As there are uncertainties existing in supply chain activities,quick response is necessary to react and control to achieve on time performance. Rescheduling frequencypolicy across the supply chains is an important factor that directly affects lead time. If rescheduling periodis too short or high frequent, it could lead to working difficulty. On the other hand, rescheduling period istoo wide or low frequent. Inefficiency could occur and lead to late delivery. This research studied in anapparel supply chain consisting of knitting factory and garment factory. It showed the effects of reschedulingfrequency of purchase planning and production planning activities on supply chain performance basedon Supply Chain Operations Reference model (SCOR). Discrete event simulation and statistical techniqueshad been utilized to discover an optimal rescheduling frequency of the supply chain. It was found that highrescheduling frequency can significantly improve the supply chain performance. The rescheduling activitiesat each factory in the supply chain significantly affected on the supply chain performance. The reschedulingof the upstream factory directly affected the downstream factory. Therefore, rescheduling frequencyof the production planning at the knitting factory contributed the highest effect on the supply chain performance.

Keywords : Apparel / Simulation / Rescheduling / Supply Chain