USING SIMULATION MODELING TO INVESTIGATE THE EFFECT OF UNCERTAINTIES IN OEM TEXTILE COMPANY'S SPORT SHIRT SUPPLY CHAIN

The pressures for free trade in 2005 will urge all of Thailand’s textile manufacturers to improve their competitiveness. The benchmarking survey depicts Thailand’s On Time Performance index (OTP) as a problem and that it lags behind Asian leaders such as Singapore and Indonesia. Supply Chain Management, as a new industrial-wide management strategy, has become a solution for improving competitiveness as well as reduce lead time. Our pilot study in supply chain implementation project under the Thailand Textile Institute, it has shown that there are three major uncertainties- demand, supplier, process and control uncertainties- affecting customer lead time. Apart from that, information sharing within an organization and between supply chain echelons, particularly in order processing, raw material sourcing and production planning process are significant in managing efficient supply chain. In this paper, a simulation model has been developed. The model represents key supply chain operations namely fabrication, dyeing and garment. The purpose of the simulation here is to investigate those uncertainties and the significant factors affecting operational and customer performance. The simulation results show the major impact from synchronized sourcing and production plan. Interestingly, the importance of decoupling point and postponement concept are evidenced.