Mobile application as an innovative supply chain concept and the impact of social capital

Abstract

EU textile industry with its inability to compete with mass-produced and less expensive imported items, mono-perspective business processes, no solutions for trustful interorganisational collaboration and hardly integration of end-customer in design and production processes conflict trends of technological developments, the rise of individual customer requirements and the success of innovative, flexible and heterarchical environments. Offering a web-based product-centric collaboration space for dynamic and flexible information exchange between multiple companies including the end-customer can provide a new dimension of efficiency. For the establishment and effective functioning of such environment referred as virtual factory, intense communication and spontaneous sociability are clearly required and are affected by the connecting element that in modern social sciences - in the context of economic efficiency - is referred to as social capital. With this paper the virtual factory simulation shows the possible development of mobile applications for supply chain management, while promoting and using social capital in a decentralised production process oriented to innovative, custom-made products for the textile industry in Slovenia.