  Relatively little is known about mobile phone use in a Supply Chain
Management (SCM) context, especially in the Bangladeshi Ready-Made Garment
(RMG) industry. RMG is a very important industry for the Bangladeshi economy
but is criticized for long product supply times due to poor SCM. RMG requires
obtaining real-time information and enhanced dynamic control, through utilizing
information sharing and connecting stakeholders in garment manufacturing.
However, a lack of IT support in the Bangladeshi RMG sector, the high price of
computers and the low level of adoption of the computer-based internet are
obstacles to providing sophisticated computer-aided SCM. Alternatively, the
explosive adoption of mobile phones and continuous improvement of this
technology is an opportunity to provide mobile-based SCM for the RMG sector.
This research presents a mobile phone-based SCM framework for the Bangladeshi
RMG sector. The proposed framework shows that mobile phone-based SCM can
positively impact communication, information exchange, information retrieval
and flow, coordination and management, which represent the main processes of
effective SCM. However, to capitalize on these benefits, it is also important
to discover the critical success factors and barriers to mobile SCM systems.
