Part 1This casestudy was written by Terry Hill and R. Lilly and is about Fabritex, asubsidiary of Wardman group. Fabritex manufactures a variety of textiles for different fashion and industrialapplications alongside with some interest in engineering,furniture and finishing. The major area of focus for Fabritex is knittingfabrics mainly for lingeries and they areselling these products as branded and non-branded. Currently,they are supplying products of different segments to a lot of customers but they want to increase their shareof supplying products to Pearlwear business especially in the UK lingerie warp knit. The biggest threat forFabritex as a supplier of Pearlwearbusiness is not meeting actual delivery dates with promised delivery dateswhich result in losing market share and customer loyaltyas well. There are several reasons for not delivering products on time i-eUnpredictable pattern of orders, inconsistent demand and changeovertime losses. Furthermore, their plants are located in two different locations for knitting and dying which is truly a time-consuming process in terms of logistics.

Moreover, Fabritex unable to providecustomer desired designs to remain competitivein the industry.According to the data provided in the casestudy, Fabritex managed only 16 orders out of 56 at 28.5 % (marked with blueand yellow shade on the table) to delivered on promised delivery date whereas Pearlwear received only 6 orders out of56 at 10.7% (marked with green and yellow shade onthe table) as per their required delivery date. This data depicts the clearimage of Fabritex promised date delivery problems.          Order # Quality Shade Quantity (meters) Order Value (£s) Date order received Customer required delivery Fabritex Promised delivery Fabritex actual delivery Item/order Type Winner / Qualifier in terms of delivery Winner/Qualifier in terms of share Week # Day # Week # Day # Week # Day # Week # Day # 44212 SA12 Black 1 300 1482 16 4 23 2 26 4 25 4 Regular Qualifier Winner 44214 SK24 Black 1 750 3555 22 2 31 2 35 3 35 1 Regular Qualifier Qualifier 44224 SA9 Black 1 300 1482 36 3 42 1 44 2 45 5 Irregular Qualifier Winner 44650 SK51 White 0 709 1900 23 2 30 1 30 1 29 4 Regular Winner Winner 44663 SK33 White 0 140 375 28 3 32 1 34 4 34 3 Irregular Qualifier Winner 44754 PN704 White 0 1200 4284 13 2 23 1 23 1 22 1 Regular Winner Winner 44755 PN704 Black 1 100 368 18 2 28 1 28 1 27 1 Regular Winner Winner 44827 SA9 Black 1 500 2470 30 4 34 2 38 3 37 1 Irregular Qualifier Winner 44832 SA12 Black 1 400 1976 34 3 38 1 42 2 40 5 Regular Qualifier Winner 44849 SK24 White 0 900 4140 14 4 20 2 24 3 24 1 Regular Qualifier Qualifier 44935 SA12 Champagne 73 500 2470 31 5 35 3 35 3 33 5 Regular Winner Winner 44976 SA12 Champagne 73 300 1482 32 5 40 1 42 4 40 3 Regular Qualifier Winner 45060 TD468 Black 1 150 1116 35 1 39 1 38 4 38 4 Regular Winner Qualifier 45175 SK24 White 0 400 1840 34 4 41 1 40 4 40 2 Regular Winner Qualifier 2669 SK33 White 0 1400 3752 15 2 19 4 25 2 23 1 Irregular Qualifier Winner 44784 /1 TD468 White 0 700 5054 28 3 35 1 36 5 35 5 Regular Qualifier Qualifier            Part 2·      Currently, Pearlwear businesshave two manufacturing plants in Europe and Southeast Asia which means thatthey are saving a lot of cost in terms of Labour, Transportation and taxes etcbecause labour is much cheaper in Southeast Asia as compared to Europe so thatthey don’t have to supply end-userproducts from European plants to Southeast Asian consumers.

·      Perlwear business order product from three or four suppliers and somefabrics allocated to only one supplier for the life of the fabric which helpsthem in the form of low prices, Consistent quality, lower purchasing workload,managed supplier performance and quite a time-saving process.·      If Fabritex provide productswith good enough quality and according to the specification of the Perlwear business,then Fabritex will get orders veryquickly otherwise Pearlwear will take itsbusiness elsewhere. ·      Customer-supplier relationshipplays a significant role to understandthe required demands of both parties, Cooperation in changes about the specification of the products or orders andconflict management in between customer and supplier.  ·      If Fabritex management uses proactive approaches to satisfy the needsand demands of the Peralwear business whenever they mentioned some sort ofdevelopment changes then it could be helpful for Pearlwear to keep Fabritex astheir core supplier of a variety ofproducts.·      Short lead times for orderscould be beneficial for the Pearlwear business only in case if they order onpredictable demand pattern so that they can receive products from Fabritex on apromised delivery date and at the sametime, Fabritex can save the expenses ofraw material inventory.·      If Pearlwear business predictsits demand from final consumer and orders product from their suppliers in apredictable demand pattern then they can get their products from suppliers oncurrent prices because, in this way, the supplier can stock raw material inventoryaccording to the requirements of the customers. ·      Suppliers that deliver item toPearlwear business on promised delivery dates, according to the desired specification and provide new designsas per market demand are getting lion’s share from Peralwear business whichincreases productivity and efficiency of the outsourcing, better preparation for the market challenges and Peralwear business don’t have to invest much inresearch and development department.

        Apart from productivity and efficiency, indirectly customer is alsoone of the major part to concern during operations performance because they arethe only reason behind the existence of the firms. Companies can’t afford newcustomers every time since it’s an expensive task and requires more marketingcost, time and effort that’s why companies focus more on customer retention (Ennew, 2003). Operations performance is the directdeterminant of the customer loyalty and satisfaction (Stank et al.

1999), Howeverwaiting time has an influence on service satisfaction whereas unsatisfiedservice may affect customer loyalty badly (Bielen and Demoulin, 2007). Accordingto Bielen and Demoulin (2007), The imbalance in between the demand of thecustomer and capacity of the plant may increase waiting time which results inlower customer retention.