How industry 4.0 may impact relationship between brands and manufacturers in the fashion and luxury industry

The fashion industry is characterized by its labor-intense nature, short product life cycles, volatile and unpredictable demand, tremendous product variety, long and inflexible supply processes, and a complex and fragmented supply chain (Sen, 2008). With increasingly demanding consumers’ needs for more variety, better quality and services, the fashion industry value chain faces challenges, such as siloed product data, poor communication across teams, inability to juggle multiple product categories, styles and seasons, and bottlenecks resulting from poor planning. Agile supply chain, flexible systems, and quick response are necessary to respond to these challenges (Lemieux, Pellerin, Lamouri, & Carbone, 2012). Industry 4.0 brings new communication, production and design technologies that could provide such agility and responsiveness.

Click here to read the article