PurposeThis paper aims to review the concept of supply chain management. The typical problems facing with textile and apparel supply chain are short product cycle for fashion articles, long production lead‐time and forecasting errors for fashion items. The Hong Kong textile and apparel supply chain faces additional problems of distance from customers in the US and European markets, long production lead‐times and minimum batch sizes for production, and, recently, elimination of quota restriction in the US market, all of which force them to improve efficiency and enhance competitiveness through supply chain management. Seeks also to provide a selective bibliography for industrial practitioners with sources which can help them develop their supply chain strategies for the fashion market in Hong Kong.Design/methodology/approachA range of recent published (1993‐2005) works, which aim to provide practical advice are critiqued to aid the individual practitioner to manage its supply chain strategies in Hong Kong. These sources are sorted into sections: supply chain management in Hong Kong, textile and apparel supply chain management in Hong Kong, and problems faced by small and medium‐sized enterprises for textile and apparel supply chain.FindingsThe differentiation of product demands into functional and innovative products helps the supply chain company to employ different supply chain strategies for different products, namely responsive supply chain strategy for innovative products and efficiency supply chain strategy for functional products. These two supply chain strategies are focused on the downstream supply chain aiming at shortening the time to research the market and also to reduce the stock levels in the retailing industry.Research limitations/implicationsThis is not an exhaustive list and cases are mainly from the Hong Kong textile and apparel industry, which perhaps limits its usefulness elsewhere.Practical implicationsA very useful source of information and impartial advice for industrial practitioners to develop their own supply chain strategies for the fashion market in Hong Kong. Especially recently with the elimination of quota to the US market, the management of the supply chain is critical.Originality/valueThis paper fulfils an identified information/resources need and offers practical help to industrial practitioners on then supply chain management for the Hong Kong textile and apparel industry.
The alarming increase of incidence of skin cancer has hastened development of ultraviolet (UV) protective clothing and research on UV protection of apparel. Although various fabric parameters that affect ultraviolet radiation (UVR) transmission were studied by researches, most of them focused on woven fabrics and chemical approach in enhancing UV protection. There were few studies concerning knitted fabrics, in particular the influence of fabric constructions on ultraviolet protection factor (UPF) and structural properties. The magnitude of transmission and scattering of UVR through a fabric is decided by fabric construction or knit structure, which is classified by geometrical arrangement of yarns and fibers of the fabric. This paper aimed at studying the influence of different knit structures upon the UPF with the three main knit stitches incorporated in the knitted fabric constructions, namely the knit, tuck and miss stitches. The UPF and structural characteristics, including thickness, weight, stitch density and porosity of greige and bleached knitted fabrics with different knit structures, are compared by adopting factorial analysis of variance. The results show that fabrics with miss stitches possess a higher UPF than fabrics with tuck stitches. The double-knitted fabrics have better UV protection than the single-knitted fabrics overall, but bleaching has different impacts on the UPF of single- and double-knitted fabrics. The study reveals that fabric thickness or weight cannot be used solely in explaining the UV protective performance of knitted fabrics. However, fabric porosity can be a good indicator for UV protection when comparing fabrics with similar fabric weight and thickness but different structures or fiber contents.
There is a significant Poisson effect for knitted fabric under tensile deformation. It is an important parameter for practical pattern design, numerical simulation of garment pressure distribution and garment dressing system. However, it is still difficult to measure the fabric Poisson ratio quickly and accurately. In this paper, a method for testing the elastic knitted fabric Poisson ratio and modulus was proposed based on orthotropic theory and strip biaxial tensile test. The fabric’s Poisson ratio and Young’s modulus are identified by linear regression, while the obtained values are validated by uniaxial tensile tests.
Negative Poisson's ratio (NPR) materials are different from most conventional materials. They exhibit the very unusual property of becoming wider when stretched and narrower when compressed [1]. This counterintuitive behavior gives NPR materials various beneficial effects, such as enhanced shear stiffness, increased plane strain fracture toughness, increased indentation resistance, and improved energy absorption properties [2,3].The NPR effect of a material normally comes from its special structural arrangement. As the Poisson's ratio is a physical parameter that is independent of the material scales, the NPR effect can be achieved at any material level [4]. To date, a variety of special geometrical structures have been discovered or invented for making NPR materials from the macroscopic level down to the molecular level. Among the most important classes of these NPR structures, it is possible to cite re-entrant structures [5], chiral structures [6], rotating units [7], angle-ply laminates [8], hard molecules [9], microporous polymers [10], and freerod liquid crystalline polymers [11]. Using these NPR structures, different forms of NPR polymeric materials, such as foam, fiber, membrane, or even composite [2, 3, 12], have been developed. Meanwhile, other kinds of NPR materials, based on metals, ceramics, and other inorganic materials, have also been discovered or fabricated [2, 3].The use of textile structures to achieve the NPR effect has attracted some attention in the recent years. Some special methods have been developed by Auxetix Ltd. to make NPR threads and fabrics for a wide range of applications, such as Abstract This paper presents a study of using weft-knitting technology to fabricate negative Poisson's ratio (NPR) knitted fabrics, which exhibit the unusual property of becoming wider when stretched. Based on a geometrical analysis of a three-dimensional NPR structure constructed with parallelogram planes of the same shape and size, a new kind of NPR weft-knitted fabric was firstly designed and fabricated on a computerized flat-knitting machine. Then the NPR values of these fabrics were evaluated and compared with those from the theoretical calculations. The results show that all knitted fabrics have the NPR effect, which decreases with increased strain in the course direction. This variation trend is consistent with the theoretical prediction. The results also show that the main structure parameter affecting the NPR effect of a fabric is the opening angle at its initial state. Fabric with a smaller opening angle will have higher NPR values. This paper demonstrates the feasibility of fabricating NPR-knitted fabrics by using weft-knitting technology if a suitable structure and parameters are selected.
The influence of coloration on ultraviolet (UV) protection of cotton knitted fabrics with different knit structures incorporated with the three major stitch types, namely knit, tuck and miss stitches, are studied in four approaches. The effects of color depth and knit structures on the ultraviolet protection factor (UPF) of fabrics are investigated. The influences of hue and color depth on the UPF of fabrics are also compared. Since UV protection offered by dyes mainly depends on their chemical structures, the UPF and color strength of fabrics colored by reactive dyes that varied in reactive groups, such as mono-functional and bi-functional reactive dyes, are examined. The correlations between UPF and the CIELAB color coordinates, color strength (K/S sum ), are analyzed. The results show that light-colored fabrics with compact structures achieve similar or even better UV protection than the dark-colored fabrics with loose structures. This implies that color property might not be a reliable indicator for UV protection of knitted fabrics and the effect of coloration on UV protection is affected by fabric construction. The results also denote that the chemical structure of reactive dyes affects the UV protection of fabrics in a qualitative approach that depends on the unique ultraviolet radiation blocking ability of the chemical constituents. Among the color coordinates investigated, only lightness (L*) and K/S sum are found to be correlated with the UPF of the fabrics, but the strength of correlations is not very strong. This is because the fabric characteristics that have significant impacts of UV protection are mostly not involved in the measurement of color properties.
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