Insights into the Role of Quality in Sourcing Decisions in the Textile and Apparel Industry

Companies have been forced by increasing global competition to pursue international sourcing strategies that emphasize lower prices and delivery performance. Consequently they are focused on identification of opportunities to improve quality or gain efficiencies on a worldwide or regional basis. Global sourcing requires additional skills and knowledge to deal with international suppliers, logistics, communication, the political environment, and other issues. As a result, companies that have failed to pursue successful sourcing strategies have struggled to survive.;This study conducted a detailed technical survey and complementary personal interviews to provide an in-depth understanding of sourcing decisions of US textile and apparel companies. This research is primarily focused on sourcing decisions of US textile and apparel companies with an emphasis on quality, and includes significant contributions to the literature not only in terms of the new approaches to view the related subject but also in terms of the statistical applications to analyze the data. The factors of sourcing decisions of US companies are analyzed from very different perspectives. The factors originating from the buyer side such as different company types and marketing strategies, the factors resulting from suppliers side such as the issues encountered during sourcing efforts from different regions of the world are all investigated. This exploratory study provides an insight into the current state of the supplier quality and the role of quality in sourcing decisions of US companies including reshore/relocation. It also provides a broad comparison of quality issues arising from domestic and international suppliers. Moreover, it identifies the most effective quality improvement strategies and their impact on sourcing decisions. It also determines to what extent the buyer companies provide support to their suppliers, and it examines the challenges and barriers encountered during supplier improvement efforts including implementation of quality practices in suppliers.;The analyses revealed that cost is the main driver for larger companies as well as retailers and private brands as opposed to manufacturer companies in their sourcing decisions. In addition, different marketing strategies, especially pursuing made-in-USA, speed-to-market, and green/sustainable strategies have considerable impact on reshoring decisions of US companies. Companies that are cost oriented tend to switch their suppliers. Moreover, detailed world maps are provided to depict the intensity of the issues that are encountered during sourcing from different regions. Product quality and supply chain quality are found as the most important factors in outsourcing decisions of all buyer companies, whereas, indirect qualities are less important in their outsourcing decisions.;The analyses also revealed that overall international supplier quality is worse as compared to those of domestic suppliers while the larger differences exist in management and process qualities. However, it is shown that these worse quality conditions, starting with product quality, can be improved significantly by the means of implementing Lean and Six Sigma within international suppliers while TQM and ISO implementations are not as effective. In addition to these findings, this study shows US companies provide quality and technical help to their suppliers in order to improve their quality instead of bearing supplier switching costs. On the other hand, it is found that time cost and expense to visit suppliers, information exchange, and management style all raise higher barriers for providing help to international suppliers compared to domestic ones.