Activity interdependence among textile buying houses

The issues of effective process modelling for developing global textiles and clothing products are addresed. Changes implemented by design, manufacturing and marketing teams without efficient scheduling and co-ordination can lead to conflicts within the organisation, loss of customer focus and undesirable processing failures. The studies were based on Asian textile/clothing buying companies supplying US, Australian and European retail stores. The research approach is explained. Product development processes are identified and five goals listed for optimum effectiveness in global supply lines. A key problem related to intractable information interchange among many interdependent activities making communication difficult to manage. The investigation methodology is explained. The cycle time of product development can be reduced by decoupling the interdependence between activities - this is explored. The five major issues concerning the achievement of better performance of modelling globally dispersed activity processes are summarised.