Fashion Supply Chain Optimization: A Linear Programming Model

Fashion supply chain management is challenging due to demand uncertainty, short product life, fierce global competition, and increasing expectations such as product diversity and keeping pace with the current and emerging trends. In this paper, a brief review of the published works in the field of fashion and clothing supply chain is given and an integrated linear model is presented to minimize a fashion brand’s costs, including production and logistics costs, enabling the firm to make better decisions with regard to its production and replenishment policies and responding in a reasonable time to customers demands for various designed items. We show that our model can successfully account for complex structure of the supply chain consisting of designer, manufacturers, distributors, and stores. The model is validated using the General Algebraic Modelling System (GAMS) with the data collected from an Iranian fashion brand.

Branding Through Online Social Networks

The hurdles to entering a foreign market have been dismantled by greater internet connectivity. As a result, there is virtually endless potential to expand a company abroad. In growing abroad, it's crucial to keep the brand at the forefront of the approach. When enterprises enter foreign markets, they confront several problems such as a lack of market intelligence, buyer expectations, severe rivalry from global brands, and a lack of trending awareness. Most exporters focus on the short product-focused and sales-driven methods, such as producing that which is simple to create, finding a contract, fulfilling the request, and closing sales. This method just forces an exporter into a pricing competition in a globalized world, leaving the limited possibility to continuous production, product innovation, and credibility. Every company that wishes to export should aim towards market-driven, long-term, and sustainable exporting.

Generation of Dystrophin Short Product-Specific Tag-Insertion Mouse: Distinct Dp71 Glycoprotein Complexes at Inhibitory Postsynapse and Glia Limitans

Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD), the most severe form of dystrophinopathies, is a fatal X-linked recessive neuromuscular disorder characterized by progressive muscle degeneration and various extents of intellectual disabilities. Physiological and pathological roles of the responsible gene, dystrophin, in the brain remain elusive due to the presence of multiple dystrophin products, mainly full-length dystrophin, Dp427, and the short product, Dp71. In this study, we generated a Dp71-specific hemagglutinin (HA) peptide tag-insertion mice to enable specific detection of intrinsic Dp71 expression by anti-HA tag antibodies. Immunohistochemical detections in the transgenic mice demonstrated Dp71 expression not only at the blood-brain barrier, where astrocytic endfeet surround the microvessels, but also at the inhibitory postsynapse of hippocampal dentate granule neurons. Interestingly, hippocampal cornu ammonis (CA)1 pyramidal neurons were negative for Dp71 although Dp427 detected by anti-dystrophin antibody was clearly present at the inhibitory postsynapse, suggesting cell-type dependent dystrophin expressions. Precise examination using the primary hippocampal culture validated exclusive localization of Dp71 at the inhibitory postsynaptic compartment but not at the excitatory synapse in neurons. We further performed interactome analysis and found that Dp71 formed distinct molecular complexes, i.e. synapse-associated Dp71 interacted with dystroglycan (Dg) and dystrobrevinb (Dtnb) whereas glia-associated Dp71 did with Dg and dystrobrevina (Dtna). Thus, our data indicates that Dp71 and its binding partners are relevant to the inhibitory postsynaptic function of hippocampal granule neurons and the novel Dp71-transgenic mouse provides a valuable tool to understand precise physiological expressions and functions of Dp71 and its interaction proteins in vivo and in vitro.

Problems of sustainable development and challenges related to production

Due to the changes taking place in the environment of enterprises, many problems arise in their strategic and operational activities. The basis of the emerging problems is primarily the overproduction associated with short product life cycles. It contributes to the excessive use of various types of natural resources, often in a predatory manner. On the one hand, such an approach increases waste, and on the other, contributes to the destructive degradation of the environment. The result is a lack of food and water in some countries, climate change and related extreme weather phenomena, as well as various types of disasters, such as pandemics, fires, floods, droughts, etc. Water, air and land pollution as well as global warming are reflected in deteriorating quality of life. Despite many threats, more and more enterprises perceive the danger and undertake various types of adaptive projects. It should also be emphasized that the environmental awareness of both micro-enterprises and large corporations is growing. The purpose of this chapter is to introduce the reader to the basic problems that companies may encounter in their operations activity. First, changes in the environment are discussed, with particular emphasis on the depletion of natural resources, pollution of a destructive nature, as well as waste and its causes. The next part deals with the topic of globalization, pointing to both positive and negative aspects. Technical progress and related aspects such as new technologies, new processes and materials are discussed in the next part. In this part, particular attention is paid to improving productivity, thanks to the implementation of new technical solutions. Technical progress is directly related to the innovations presented in the next section. This section describes the types of innovation according to various criteria as well as factors that are conducive to increments in the level of innovation in the enterprise. The last part is devoted to the most important factor in operational activity—human esources. Competences, qualifications and the importance of human resources in the production process were discussed.

Demand Shaping Through Bundling and Product Configuration: A Dynamic Multiproduct Inventory-Pricing Model

In today’s digital age with advanced information technology and analytic tools, such as the internet and data mining, many companies use dynamic bundling to influence demand to match up with the operational status, especially in industries with short product life cycles. In “Demand Shaping through Bundling and Product Configuration: A Dynamic Multiproduct Inventory-Pricing Model,” Jing-Sheng Song and Zhengliang Xue present a novel dynamic model to analyze how exactly the inventory dynamics impact the bundling strategy and, in turn, how the bundling strategy affects the firm's inventory decisions. They also characterize how the optimal bundling decision depends on item complementarity, cost structure, inventory levels, demand uncertainty, and supply responsiveness.

A Preliminary Study on the Compliant Stretcher Mechanism of Canopy

The design of the canopy utilizes the conventional rigid body mechanisms which is vulnerable to the presence of backlash, friction of joints or wearing of mechanical parts which lead to short product life. Compliant mechanisms are employed to reduce these mechanical problems, owing to their zero-joint and monolithic structure. A reference design for the conventional canopy was chosen and modified through reviewing different patent designs. Six different configurations of the pseudo-rigid-body model (PRBM) were constructed, and the best configuration was selected. Kinematic synthesis with function generation was performed for the chosen PRBM using MATLAB. The obtained results from the kinematic synthesis were then used to calculate the dimensions and stresses of the flexural pivots for the compliant stretcher mechanism. Finite Element Analysis (FEA) simulation was then performed on each of the models and the obtained flexural pivot stresses were compared with that of the PRBM. This research successfully replaces all the rigid joints and links of the stretcher mechanism of the conventional canopy to form a monolithic structure of compliant stretcher mechanism.

The Gauss product and Raabe’s integral for k-gamma functions

We obtain an extension of the famous Gauss product formula to the case of k-gamma functions. The Sándor–Tóth short product formula [16] is also attended to these functions. An asymptotic formula and Raabe’s integral analogue are also considered.

Dystroglycan regulates proper expression, submembranous localization and subsequent phosphorylation of Dp71 through physical interaction

Dystrophin–dystroglycan complex (DGC) plays important roles for structural integrity and cell signaling, and its defects cause progressive muscular degeneration and intellectual disability. Dystrophin short product, Dp71, is abundantly expressed in multiple tissues other than muscle and is suspected of contributing to cognitive functions; however, its molecular characteristics and relation to dystroglycan (DG) remain unknown. Here, we report that DG physically interacts with Dp71 in cultured cells. Intriguingly, DG expression positively and DG knockdown negatively affected the steady-state expression, submembranous localization and subsequent phosphorylation of Dp71. Mechanistically, two EF-hand regions along with a ZZ motif of Dp71 mediate its association with the transmembrane proximal region, amino acid residues 788–806, of DG cytoplasmic domain. Most importantly, the pathogenic point mutations of Dp71, C272Y in the ZZ motif or L170del in the second EF-hand region, impaired its binding to DG, submembranous localization and phosphorylation of Dp71, indicating the relevance of DG-dependent Dp71 regulatory mechanism to pathophysiological conditions. Since Dp140, another dystrophin product, was also regulated by DG in the same manner as Dp71, our results uncovered a tight molecular relation between DG and dystrophin, which has broad implications for understanding the DGC-related cellular physiology and pathophysiology.

Thermal, Biodegradability and Water Barrier Properties of Bio-Nanocomposites Based on Plasticised Sugar Palm Starch and Nanofibrillated Celluloses from Sugar Palm Fibres

Sugar palm (Arenga pinnata) starch and fibre are considered as a waste product of the agroindustry. The purpose of the current study is to determine the thermal, water barrier, and soil degradation properties of biodegradable plasticised sugar palm starch (PSPS) that contains sugar palm nanofibrillated celluloses (SP-NFCs) derived from sugar palm fibre. The bio-nanocomposites were fabricated by using the solution-casting method with the nanocellulose contents in the range of 0.1 wt.%–1.0 wt.%. The thermal stability, water resistance and degradation behaviour improved with increase in SP-NFCs content, due to high compatibility and strong inter-molecular hydrogen bonds formed between PSPS and SP-NFCs. PSPS/SP-NFCs bio-nanocomposites with 1.0 wt.% SP-NFCs content displayed the highest mechanical and thermal stability. Residue that was left during the TGA analysis increased as the SP-NFCs content was increased. Soil burial tests showed biodegradability resistance of the bio-nanocomposites. The following conclusions can be drawn from the present reinforcement study of SP-NFCs enhanced biodegradability, water barrier as well as thermal properties of starch polymer which extended the prospective application of environmentally-friendly polymer material. Potential applications for this eco-material are short product life cycles (plastic packaging and food container).

Port-related conflict at port of Gothenburg – consequences from a fashion retailer’s perspective

Previous research have distinguished the risks of supply chain disruptions and the negative effect of supply chain disruption on operational performance in terms of sales, costs and inventory. However, few researchers have studied supply chain risk management and strategies in relation to port conflicts. The 2016 port conflict at a major logistics port in Scandinavia, the Port of Gothenburg, posed an opportunity to study risk management and strategies in the context of major port disruptions, in this case, a labour conflict. The fashion retail industry was affected especially hard due to the short product life cycles and this paper, by means of case study method and analysis, investigates five cases in order to understand how they were affected and what mitigation strategies was used. Results illustrates that during the port conflict, the percentage of increase in logistics cost ranged between 15% and 70%, greatly affected by what mitigation strategy was used by the case company.