American Apparel Manufacturers Association

AAMA, 1993. Technical Advisory Committee Report. American Apparel Manufacturers Associations, Arhngton, VA. 

With the increase in competition, the apparel industry s focus on measures to monitor the PD process has increased. These measures can be used to benchmark with competitors or to adopt best practices. The Measures for Excellence report by the Quick Response Leadership Committee of the American Apparel and Footwear Association, formerly called the American Apparel and Manufacturer s Association (AAMA, 1991), discussed some of these measures. The number of measures used by companies over the time period has increased (Little and Heinje, 1998 Jang et al., 2005). The next sections outline a few first-level measures related to apparel PD that can be used to measure PD performance. The reader is encouraged to refer to the manuscript entitled Measures for New Product Development (Senanayake and Little, 2001), by the author, which discusses a wide range of measures in relation to apparel PD. 

Warbttrton and Stratton (2002) present a case of a North American apparel manufactirrer, in which a dual sourcing model was developed where 20% of the production was kept in the USA and the rest was manufactured offshore. The case study concluded that even if the labour cost was dramatically less expensive offshore, a dttal sourcing solution made sense. First, a ntrmber of hidden costs were associated with the offshore production, making it less attractive than it... 

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