The mediation role of product and process innovation in the effect of agile manufacturing on the sustainability performance: A research on the garment sector in Türkiye

Technological developments and increasing competition in recent years have affected customer preferences and expectations. Customers want more, faster and at less cost day by day. This situation manifests itself especially in sectors that produce fashion-based products such as garment industry. Product life cycles have shortened and demand has become unstable. As a result, delivering new products to customers faster by using new processes provide a competitive advantage. The aim of this study is to analyze the mediating effect of product innovation and process innovation in the effect of agile manufacturing on the sustainability performance in garment industry. On the other hand, the sub-purpose of the study is to reveal the importance of agility and innovation in ensuring sustainability. For this purpose, the hypotheses of the research were developed. Based on the hypotheses, a research model was created. In addition, a confirmatory factor analysis model consisting of economic, environmental and social indicators was developed in order to measure the sustainability performance in the research model. In order to analyze the developed models, a survey was created with the help of the literature. The created survey was applied to 125 garment company managers operating in Türkiye. The obtained data were analyzed with the Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling. As a result of the analyzes, it has been determined that analyzing sustainability using economic, environmental and social indicators is not a statistical obstacle. In addition, it has been concluded that product and process innovation have intermediary effects separately and together in the impact of agile production on sustainability performance. Thus, agile strategies increase the sustainability of Garment companies. This increase is more pronounced in the companies, that have managed to integrate the ability to produce innovative products by using innovative production processes, integrated with agile strategies.