The design of XML application to support production information exchange in garment industry

Many enterprises in the garment industry involved in supply chain management use isolated computer systems, while still exchanging information in their business operations by paper. This leads to inefficiency of collaboration and reentry of data creates problems in the system of supply chain management in the industry. One information technology application which can facilitate the communication and improvement of the collaboration within and between enterprises is Extensible Markup Language (XML). This research demonstrates a role of XML in managing the supply chain both inside and outside enterprises. A sample development process of garment manufacturer was constructed by interview and the business process was mapped using an IDEF0 and IDEF3 diagram in order to analyze the problems and develop solutions. The application was developed according to the current business model. Results revealed that the developed applications can communicate with each other properly. Also the XML converter application can convert an XML purchase order document to a production order which can reduce the document conversion time and mistakes from re-typing. Moreover, the XML tracking order application can also generate an XML order status so that a salesperson can be aware of the current order status, which helps the communication with the customer more accurate and more comfortable.