Hi,

I think , first of all you should understand lean in a service-commercialisation it's not the same in industrial area, you speak more about lean management, so I think yours question s will be about time of delivery(relation with costumers), shipping, if they use a performance sheets or not, relation with suppliers (quality items, time).... before making a list of questions, it s better to seek for a model to adopt in your field of study that will help you a lot.

Definitely an interesting topic.

Similar to the answer above are you looking at Lean Manufacturing in terms of the manufacturing organisations supplying the online fashion retailers or are you looking at Lean in terms of waste and the reduction of waste in the online fashion retail sector and how are they utilising lean principles?

I think its a really interesting topic with lots of things to investigate. Just off the top of my head:

Do the retailers use a JIT process i.e. only buying what they need when ordered online or do they buy in bulk and store it in warehouse's. If you could work JIT and supply direct from the supplier to the customer you say transport and holding costs. I would imagine they buy in bulk and store, base the inventory levels on previous customer engagement for products then order more if required. But they may all have different methods.

Would be interesting to understand what do they do with obsolete clothing? Can they re-sell?, re-cycle, this is important in this day and age.

What's their strategy with returns i.e. there's a lot of waste in that in my opinion. In a retail outlet you can try items on and if they fit you buy them. If you don't like the fit you leave them. But with online purchases I watched a programme that said there is a big problem with returns when it comes to fast fashion items. Think of all the additional logistics costs and complicated processes.

Within the operations do they utilise any lean processes. Do they have a Kaizen process to formally document and implement improvements. Do they have a formal problem solving process to track and resolve issues. Do they have standard documented processes, who are they audited by? What are their sustainability strategies, etc.

Hope this helps and doesn't muddy the water further.

Best Regards

Martin

You can collect the data before Lean manufacturing on how the organization delivers products to customers and, after implementing lean manufacturing,

the delivery time.

Before implementation of Lean manufacturing, what is the inventory level, and after implementing the lean practice, what is the inventory level?