For a while now, there’s been a ‘buzz’ in the evening and entertainment news programs about social media channels such as Twitter, Facebook and, for business people, LinkedIn. By ‘buzz,’ I mean how we’ve chortled and guffawed at celebrities and athletes getting themselves into hot water with their inane and ignorant posts and brain-droppings on their social-media websites. Still, I wondered, can this means of real-time communication be utilized as a worthwhile conduit between vendor and customer? 

One of the biggest advantages of using heat printing in the form of transfers or cut letters, shapes, and numbers is you do not have to commit shirts prior to ordering.

In practice, production scheduling is part of a complex flow of information and decision making that forms a manufacturing operation’s planning and control systems. Global competition and rapidly changing customer requirements are making efficient production scheduling increasingly more and more important for today’s production and manufacturing environments. The decorated-apparel industry is no exception.

We would define production scheduling as the scheduling of individual customer needs and the control of their flow through the production process, which is defined by resource requirements and capacity constraints.

Bringing reality to theory

MYRTLE BEACH, S.C.—A broad-based group of market leaders met in Myrtle Beach at Special Markets Dialogues to assess the state of the market and identify key opportunities for 2010. Special Markets Dialogues brings together executives from a wide variety of organizations with a common purpose: The delivery of reward, recognition and corporate-identity solutions to corporate end users. It is facilitated by Pete Mitchell, director of business-to-business sales for Samsonite Corporation.

Among the main conference takeaways were that all stakeholders in the market, from suppliers and distributors to trade associations, must speak with a common voice to address challenges from current legislative and regulatory environments. In particular, the group endorsed the ongoing efforts of trade groups and the Incentive Federation with members of congress. Visit www.incentivefederation.org.