The Harvard Center for Textile and Apparel Research originally focused on the competitive dynamics of the retail-apparel-textile channel—in particular, how technological innovations and information technology are transforming the way retailers plan and order apparel merchandise, and in turn, the way manufacturers forecast demand, plan production, and manufacture and distribute apparel products.
A book based on this research, A Stitch in Time, Lean Retailing & the Transformation of Manufacturing: Lessons from the Apparel and Textile Industries incorporates predictive and prescriptive insights about information-integrated channels in a variety of consumer product industries. Published in 1999, the book predicted many of the changes in supply chain dynamics and challenges facing producers that arose in subsequent years.
Researchers at the Center have created models for evaluating the impact of manufacturing lead times on channel profitability, critical to the development of new planning and sourcing strategies. In addition, they have developed advanced computing techniques to increase the efficiency of existing apparel pattern layouts for automatically making these markers.
The Center has expanded its area of research to include the competitive dynamics of large-scale builders of residential homes. As with the retail-apparel-textile channel—the focus is how technological innovations and information technology are improving the efficiency of homebuilders.
The Center has also examined public policy implications, including how international trade policies affect the future location and growth of the global apparel and textile industries and how conditions for apparel workers might be improved through regulation and monitoring.
Funded since 1990 by the Alfred P. Sloan foundation, the Center draws its members from Arts and Sciences, the Business School, and other faculties of Harvard University, Boston University, and the University of Miami.
RECENT RESEARCH
Labor Regulations
David Weil has been leading a research project on how industry structure influences compliance with workplace regulations. Building on work on labor standard enforcement in the garment industry, Weil and a research team are undertaking studies of other industry-based approaches to workplace regulation. These studies look at opportunities for improving regulatory performance at a national and international level at a time when government resources for improving conditions are very limited.
An article by Weil entitled "A Strategic Approach to Labour Inspection" appeared in a recent International Labour Review. More information and a free download may be found here.
Textiles Apparel & Retailing
Using Flexible Supply Options offers retailers a new and innovative way to reduce their financial risk with fashion apparel. HCTAR has made presentations of FSOs to [TC]2, and many other organizations. A recent PowerPoint presentation made to Unite Here! and a leading apparel firm is in the publications list along with the Dr. Anthony P. Volpe’s Ph.D. thesis that gives a full development of the idea and its theoretical basis.
A new book The Market Makers: How Retailers are Reshaping the Global Economy edited by Gary Hamilton of the University of Washington is in final stages of publication. A Chapter of the book titled Technology, Public Policy, and Retailing written by HCTAR authors Abernathy and Volpe can be found here.
The Residential Construction Industry
The U.S. home building industry has seen tremendous consolidation in recent years, but new research finds limited evidence that larger builders adopted significantly more innovative practices than their smaller competitors in terms of improved buying power, greater IT investment, changes in subcontractor relationships, and streamlining the supply chain. Instead, builder practice and performance were impacted much more by local housing market characteristics such that builders in lower appreciation markets were more efficient and innovative because they faced far greater pressure to hold down costs, while builders in higher appreciation markets had better financial performance even with lower efficiencies and far less attention placed on innovations.
A forthcoming book Re-Engineering the Home Building Industry will include this research as well as a discussion of what home builders can learn from other industries that have successfully adopted many of the IT, supply chain, production, and management practices that have been slow to arrive to the home building industry. A full abstract and table of contents for the book can be found here.
