An Empirical Study of Cloud Computing: Managing Garment Supply Chains

Members of the apparel and manufacturing supply chain need to look at strategies besides reducing labor costs to improve margins. The key area is collaboration which is an opportunity to reduce costs in the supply chain in the areas of product development, inventory holding, and manufacturing. Apparel and garment industry is highly changeable and are characterized by short life cycles, unpredictable demand, multiple trading partners and stagnating economic conditions. Cloud computing enabled option for delivering on-demand, self-service computing resources with unique network access, location-independent resource, and high elasticity. Retailers should prefer to form partnerships with suppliers who have gone ahead and implemented processes and systems which facilitate collaboration. In this paper, the study of adaptability of Cloud computing model for apparel and garment manufacturers to achieve collaboration among the supply chain partners to manage the Supply Chain is presented.