Seminar

Abstract: In apparel supply chains, manufacturers usually request a short lead time for fabric supplies. However, a short supply lead time would create environmental problems such as insufficient time for proper control of chemicals and material processing operations, and lead to a lower production yield of good quality supplies. Motivated by this observed industrial practice in fabric sourcing and apparel production, we build a stylized analytical model to investigate how lead time reduction in fabric sourcing affects performances of the fabric supplier and apparel manufacturer as well as the environment. To be specific, we first derive the optimal ordering quantity for the apparel manufacturer and find that it is a production yield scaled newsvendor fractile quantity. We then explore the expected values of lead time reduction and derive the respective analytical conditions for the apparel manufacturer, fabric supplier and whole supply chain to be benefited by lead time reduction. From the conditions, we reveal that the prior demand mean (which also implies the relative prior demand uncertainty) plays a critical role in determining whether lead time reduction is beneficial. We illustrate how a win-win situation in the supply chain can be achieved by a properly designed deposit payment scheme. For the environment, we show that when the fabric supplier’s profit is improved under lead time reduction, the environment must be hurt. We explore the use of an environment tax and prove that lead time reduction can improve the environment if the environment tax is appropriately set.

Short bio: Tsan-Ming Choi (Jason) is currently Professor of Fashion Business at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU). Over the past decade, he has actively participated in a variety of research projects on supply chain management and applied optimization for fashion business operations. He has authored/edited sixteen research handbooks, guest-edited many special issues for various well-established journals, and published over 150 papers in Web of Science listed citation journals such as Automatica, Decision Sciences, European Journal of Operational Research, IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, IEEE Transactions on Automation Science and Engineering, IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management, IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics, Naval Research Logistics, Production and Operations Management, etc. He is now serving as a senior editor of Production and Operations Management, and Decision Support Systems, an associate editor of IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics - Systems, Information Sciences, and Transportation Research - Part E, and an editorial board member of INFORMS Service Science, and International Journal of Production Research, etc. He is the founding editor of Springer's Book Series in Fashion Business. In the past, he was an executive committee member/officer of professional organizations such as IEEE-SMC(HK) and POMS(HK). He received the PolyU’s President’s Award of Outstanding Performance in 2008, the Best Associate Editor Award of IEEE Systems, Man, and Cybernetics Society in two consecutive years (2013 and 2014), and the Distinguished Alumnus Award of Faculty of Engineering, The Chinese University of Hong Kong in 2017.