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Agenda-setting intelligence, analysis and advice for the global fashion community.

The Limits of a Lean Supply Chain

The pandemic exposed the weakness of the global manufacturing and distribution networks adopted by most big fashion brands. Executives need to change how they think and talk about supply chains to replace a culture of cost.

Brendan Smialowski/AFP. — Closed factories, clogged ports, no truck drivers -- up and down the global supply chain there are problems. (Brendan Smialowski/AFP)

By

John Thorbeck

16 December 2021

BoF PROFESSIONAL

Supply chain language in our industry is designed to make the unglamorous, hidden world of making and shipping fashion sound benign, neutral and efficient. Anyone who has worked in the business of fashion long enough is familiar with phrases like just-in-time, lean manufacturing, outsourcing, compliance and enterprise systems. What do these terms have in common? All betray embedded bias to control, reduce and enforce costs. Lean management, for all of its claims to virtues of efficiency, is at its heart about producing and moving goods at the lowest possible cost.

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Retail

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First Mile

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Supply Chain

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