Dynamic and collaborative business networks in the fashion industry

Abstract

In order to stay competitive and avoid being smashed by large companies, small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) need to establish and manage dynamic and non-hierarchical networks to respond to market opportunities, ensuring a quick response, unique products with competitive prices and high product quality. This article proposes an innovative methodological approach and ICT platform to support non-hierarchical collaboration between SMEs for customised product design and manufacturing. The ICT services are based on mapping a methodology on an open source platform in order to apply low cost solutions to SMEs. Two case studies in the fashion industry have been analysed and used to test the proposed approach for network management.

Keywords:

• non-hierarchical collaboration
• fashion industry
• virtual organisation
• case study

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to acknowledge that the European Commission co-funded this research as part of the NMP priority of the Seventh RTD Framework Programme (2007–2013) for the Net-Challenge project (Innovative Networks of SMEs for Complex Products Manufacturing), Ref. CP-FP 229287-2. The authors also acknowledge the valuable comments from reviewers and the collaboration from the project team during this research.