Alessandro Brun

The luxury sector is characterised by several critical success factors, including 'premium quality'. Although quality management (QM) has been deeply studied in recent years, few authors explicitly addressed QM with regard to luxury industry as a whole, let alone the idiosyncrasies of Italian approach to luxury. The contribution of the present study is twofold: 1) first of all, it introduces a novel and rigorous research protocol to study the QM organisation, system and practices of companies in the luxury sector; 2) secondly, the protocol is applied to cashmere, worldwide synonymous with luxury, and a symbol of Italian excellence, to understand how Italian producers of cashmere garments are implementing QM. The research demonstrates that the cashmere luxury sector is characterised by an extremely high commitment towards quality both inside and along the supply chain, yet to some extent excellence is pursued through an informal approach to quality improvement. Managers in different fields could learn from the lessons learned in this sector and apply the best practices to their companies.

Purpose: Despite menswear is gaining a significant relevance in terms of retail sales, it represents a neglected topic within the academic literature. Therefore, this paper aims at providing a better understanding of the formal menswear market by developing a tailor-made classification model for the identification of retailers' clusters and at discovering the critical success factors (CSFs).Design/methodology/approach: This research looked at most formal high-end menswear retailers in Italy adopting a methodology based on the Analytic Hierarchy Process and multiple case studies. Thirty interviews were conducted with experts, managers and shopkeepers from case studies.Findings: The study develops for the first time a classification framework of formal high-end menswear retailers and a matching matrix to jointly analyse retailers' clusters and customer profiles in Italy. The results identify the CSFs pursued by menswear retailers and highlight the existence of four clusters of retailers (Differentiated Fashion Firms; Formal Menswear Leaders; Tailoring Firms and Luxury Brands) and seven customer profiles (Habitual Professionals, Special Events, Young People, Occasional Professionals, Foreigners, VIPs and Fashionistas).Originality/value: The formal high-end menswear represents one of the most traditional Italian heritage markets while being almost ignored in the academic literature. Thus, the value of this research lays in deepening our understanding of this market from the retailers' perspective, by providing for the first time a taxonomy of its players and contributing to identifying the CSFs and the main customer profiles.

From an interdisciplinary theoretical perspective, this study uncovers how and to what extent building supply chain relations impacts supply chain transparency in an industrial context characterized by mistrust, complexity and privacy. By conducting a case study involving a multinational fashion group and an influential NGO, this study investigates how a fashion group forms supply chain relations that eventually influence their transparency performance. The fashion group under investigation initially started disclosing information about their supply chain actions in order to ensure legitimacy and protect the brand image. Nevertheless, the group started sharing more information about their supply chains, changing the perspective from a legitimacy driven reactive approach toward an ethics driven proactive approach. Particularly, supplier engagement, commitment and leadership appear to be antecedents to supply chain transparency. The study also reveals the novel influence of NGOs on supply chain transparency. Fashion Revolution has been substantial to drive fashion companies to obtain and disclose information about their supply chains. Supply chain visibility and stronger partnerships are required to overcome problems relating to supply chain complexity on the way toward transparency. Results suggest that supply chain engagement is fundamental for supply chain transparency, and that NGOs play a pivotal role to enhance transparency through knowledge sharing and awareness increasing. The results provide numerous implications that can help industrial practice and research improve the status quo.

The research aims at exploring Millennials’ opinions about sustainability in luxury fashion and its scope is threefold. First, it evaluates the perceived coherence between luxury fashion and sustainability at a conceptual level, assesses the centrality of sustainable principles, and clarifies the role of luxury fashion brands within the green trend. The second purpose adopts a higher level of detail, testing young adults’ awareness and perceived relevance of specific sustainability elements within the luxury fashion industry. Eventually, the study explores the causes of the discrepancy between a pro-environmental attitude and actual sustainable purchasing in luxury fashion, as well as the post-purchase justifications for unsustainability. The topics are explored through focus group discussions involving the Millennials and results include a strong coherence between luxury fashion and sustainability, accompanied by consumers’ challenging expectations from companies. The predominance of social sustainability and the attention to basilar unsustainable practices emerge, together with the relevance of supply chain monitoring. The research also provides an overview of the causal relationships between the barriers that contribute to an attitude-behaviour gap, and an indication of the justifications that facilitates it. JEL codes: M30, M31

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is threefold: first, to analyse the current state of the literature on the relationship between quality management (QM) and productivity as a performance indicator; second, to identify the key constructs of QM practices related to productivity; and, finally, to reveal whether QM can actually be regarded as a determinant of productivity.Design/methodology/approach: This research was carried out through a systematic literature review, considering 150 papers that studied this relationship between 1997 and 2017 and another 37 papers on the internal determinants of productivity.Findings: The findings revealed that human resource management, top management and process management were the more relevant constructs of QM practices related to productivity. In addition, 89 per cent of the internal determinants of productivity were related to the proposed constructs of QM practices, which suggest that QM is a determinant factor of productivity.Originality/value: This review analysed the literature on the relationship between QM and productivity, as few studies have done before, generating original, interesting and useful findings that can guide future research and that also represent a useful tool for researchers, practitioners, managers and policy makers.

Purpose: Failure mode and effect analysis (FMEA) is an analysis technique for identifying and eliminating known and/or potential failures and problems from products, processes or systems. Notwithstanding its diffusion, traditional FMEA has several limitations. Lately, scientific research has been focused on improving said limitations, yet the process is still ongoing. The purpose of this paper is to support developments in this area. Design/methodology/approach: The paper improves the conventional FMEA by using the method of pairwise comparison to establish the relative importance of the input factors in risk priority number calculation, and Markov chains to calculate risk distributions in the long term. Findings: The functioning and usefulness of the proposed methodology is demonstrated through an application to the construction industry, one of the world’s biggest industrial sectors, dogged by a high rate of work-related injuries and casualties. Originality/value: Having demonstrated the applicability of the novel methodology to a real domain, the paper contributes to the process of overcoming traditional FMEA limitations.

Purpose: Customers influence companies’ operational strategies and supply chain (SC) processes. In this vein, signals coming from the market must be translated into proper strategies in terms of production and supply. The purpose of this paper is to provide an understanding on how to transform customers’ expectations into SC decisions. The yacht industry, encompassing both technical and emotional peculiarities, becomes this study’s driven focus to interrogate the interrelationship between supply and demand.Design/methodology/approach: The study explores the luxury yacht industry through exploratory case studies conducted with eight companies operating in Italy.Findings: It was found that a wide range of factors influenced customers. That is to say, brand reputation, other brands’ involvement in the final product and emotional appeal were the most distinguishing characteristics identifying emotion-oriented customers. In this sense, companies serving such customers adjusted their SC strategies to channel a direct emotional impact. It was noticed that personalization was pivotal and companies were increasingly required to customize and create unique products to attract and further satisfy the customers. Thus, multiple sourcing strategies were often employed with an increasing number of suppliers to ensure that increasing material supply need would be met. As for performance-oriented companies, cost, quality and innovation capabilities emerged as key signals to be embedded in operations management. Companies serving performance-oriented customers were characterized by low product value and medium level of customization, and kept their core activities, including design and architecture, vertically integrated. In order to generate cost advantages without compromising product quality, single sourcing strategy was largely implemented. What the findings suggested is that the customization level and the product value were positively correlated. To illustrate, companies having more exclusive products were found allowing their customization and customer involvement in higher degrees.Originality/value: Due to a relatively unexplored nature of the phenomenon, this study opted for a method by which individual and collective reconstructions were explored in a not well-investigated area, that is, the luxury yacht industry.

The recent introduction of new disruptive technologies aimed at monitoring, controlling, optimizing, and automating production systems is shifting the manufacturing landscape towards a fourth industrial revolution. In this new industrial paradigm, manufacturing companies face complex challenges requiring the development of new organizational and technological capabilities. With this context in mind, this chapter is intended to provide a maturity assessment framework to understand the transformation process in manufacturing companies transitioning to Industry 4.0. The proposed framework is applied to 10 in-depth industrial case studies in Canada and Italy, two countries with increasing awareness of the Industry 4.0 revolution. A comparative case analysis revealed four different standards, or archetypes, for Industry 4.0 adoption, which are discussed and analyzed, highlighting a relationship between a company's manufacturing configuration and its path towards Industry 4.0 adoption.

Purpose: Globalization and advanced manufacturing capabilities changed industrial dynamics. To this end, not only were new retail concepts developed to broaden the distribution toward larger consumer bases, but alternative ways were also sought to reorganize supply networks for a balance between local and global production. Yet, the choice of supply network configurations must be coherent with a fashion companies’ critical success factors. Hence, it is pivotal to understand how such large brand portfolios and global supply networks could be effectively managed in a united way. In this vein, the purpose of this paper is to explain how the triplet of product, brand, and retail channel could affect SC performance, and how the positioning of a luxury company could depend on managerial attitudes. Design/methodology/approach: Subsequent to an extensive literature review, 30 most frequently quoted key performance indicators (KPIs) were derived. A Delphi study was then employed to reach a consensus and 17 key KPIs were derived considering the key SC performance areas and marketing dimensions. Survey technique was deployed to examine the impact of strategic combinations of product, brand, and retail channel on SC strategy. Survey results were analyzed through factor analysis where five principal components emerged to represent performance areas. ANOVA technique was then employed to explore the dependence between product-brand-retail channel and key performance areas. Findings: Brand, retail channel, and product directly affect operational performance. The positioning of a fashion company would depend on its management attitude toward strategy segmentation and considered stage of the SC. The respondents’ profile analysis further showed a preference to segment the SC based on products. Interestingly, this finding is not aligned with earlier research (Brun and Castelli, 2008) suggesting that the brand was to become the most relevant driver for SC segmentation. Originality/value: Academic development and empirical testing is rather rare in the luxury fashion context. Undeniably, SC strategies represent a very relevant issue for fashion companies, and the present study could be considered a first statistical step toward SC segmentation for luxury fashion companies.