The Indian textile industry needs efficient supply chain management. One area that needs more emphasis for global competitiveness of the entire supply chain is the interface between textiles and clothing. A shift is taking place from the traditional textile supply chain to garment supply chain. The author discusses the changing trends in the textile supply chain in India and the need for an interface between textile and clothing for efficient supply chain management in textile industry.

It is interesting to observe that while modern technology is accelerating the trend towards `slicing of the value chain' and fragmentation of manufacturing as well as services, modern management practices are goading the business towards integration of the value chain and development of a holistic perspective, that spans from the retail customers at the teeth-end to the primary raw material manufacturer at the tail-end. And the best way to reconcile these seemingly divergent trends is to view them in an `enabler-executor' framework. Technology advances have enabled fragmentation and delocalization of different stages in the value chain. And precisely this trend have strengthened the need to look at the complete value chain in a holistic manner. In other words, the stronger the enabler (technology development), the stronger would be the need to `bind them all together', so as to draw upon the synergistic benefits.

Functional excellence does not necessarily mean excellence in business; firms can achieve the latter through superior business co-ordination. According to Paul Lawrence and Jay Lorsch's2 theory, it is best for firms to organize for functional excellence in a stable environment whose characteristics are demand certainty, low seasonality, longer product life cycles, and low competitive intensity. However, in a dynamic environment where demand is uncertain and significantly seasonal, where the product life cycles are short and where the competitive intensity is high it is better to organize for functional integration. Experience shows that in a dynamic environment, companies that organize functional integration tend to outperform those that are organized for functional excellence. Supply chain management indeed is all about functional integration. Moreover, the business environment in India has acquired the characteristics of a dynamic environment following the 1991 economic reforms in the Indian economy.

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