RECYCLED TEXTILES: EVOLVING DESIGN-DRIVEN PRACTICES FOR CHANGING THE CIRCULAR FUTURE OF THE FASHION SECTOR

In recent times, waste materials such as deadstock or used clothing have captured the fashion industry's attention. These materials have been the subject of studies to design sustainable production systems and new manufacturing techniques, intending to approach a circular economy model. In this context, the fashion industry has implemented strategic, design-led actions to prevent waste and promote recycling and recovery actions. Recycled textiles are fertile ground for fashion experimentation that, starting from the circular economy concept, can involve the entire textile supply chain: all the different actors working together proactively to encourage the establishment of industrial symbiosis systems between the districts. An excursion among the ideas and techniques applied to this field can show the possibilities of sustainable material-led approaches that can make a more positive future thrive.

Multi-Layer Fuzzy Sustainable Decision Approach for Outsourcing Manufacturer Selection in Apparel and Textile Supply Chain

The apparel and textile industry are known as a key sector in the structure of many economies around the world. In particular, the influence of foreign outsourcing manufacturers on textile supply chains has been recognized for decades. The outsourcing manufacturers are multi-criteria selected and changed by supply chain managers from time to time in search of the most efficient state for the entire supply chain. This is a known concern with the community and there is large interest in studying the apparel and textile outsourcing manufacturer problems. Aiming at reinforcing the selection methods, this study develops a three-layer fuzzy multiple criteria decision-making approach that leverages the strengths from the original methods. In turn through the layers, the hierarchy and weights of criteria and sub-criteria, which includes sustainability factors, are determined by the fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (FAHP) method. Next, the results from the fuzzy technique for order of preference by similarity to ideal solution (FTOPSIS) process determine the outsourcing manufacturer’s performance via expert linguistics judgments. Then, data envelopment analysis (DEA) models are applied for the purpose of evaluating the outsourcing manufacturer’s overall performance along with other quantitative effectiveness. This approach is applied to the problem of selecting the apparel and textile outsourcing manufacturers in Vietnam, one of the places that makes the necessity of this problem grow. The third position in the world apparel and textile export ranking, as well as the trend of shifting labor-intensive production systems to Southeast Asia make the necessity of Vietnam outsourcing manufacturer selection problem grow. The results of this study also classified manufacturers into groups as a support for selection decisions. Analysis of quantitative uncertainties using simulation tools and forecasting techniques can strengthen the solutions in future related studies.

Interrelationship among CE Adoption Obstacles of Supply Chain in the Textile Sector: Based on the DEMATEL-ISM Approach

Globally, in the innovative and distributional circular textiles, the textile sector of Taiwan has a prominent place. Within the textile industry, the circular economy (CE) obstacles adopted have been studied by several scholars. However, the interrelationships among these obstacles are easily ignored. The present study aimed to identify CE adoption obstacles from the supply chain (SC) perspective in Taiwan’s textile sector by analyzing the interrelationships among the CE adoption obstacles and establishing a hierarchical network and the causal inter relationships of the identified obstacles. Furthermore, the CE adoption obstacles and interrelationships were analyzed using interpretative structural modeling and the decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory (ISM-DEMATEL). The common results of the two methods demonstrated that two obstacles, consumers not having sufficient knowledge and awareness of reuse/recycling (B1) and a lack of successful business models and frameworks for CE implementation (B3), were the significant obstacles influencing adopting CE in the textile supply chain, while the obstacle making the most efficient way (B12) of the right decision to implement CE was minor. Thus, the government should formulate friendly laws and regulations that encourage CE adoption, while textile firms should monitor and control recycling and efficiency approaches handling the CE adoption problems. Our results could offer first-hand knowledge to textile firms or managers to effetely achieve CE implementation objectives.

Textile supply chain management considering carbon emissions and apparel demand fuzziness: a fuzzy mathematical programming approach

PurposeThis paper studies the textile supply chain tactical planning under demand fuzziness through considering environmentally friendly and social responsibility. Hence, carbon emission in textile production and transportation is considered along with supply chain profitability.Design/methodology/approachThe authors present a fuzzy multi-objective mathematical optimization model with credibilistic chance constraints to determine the fabric procurement quantities and production plan under uncertainty. The solution procedure makes use of credibility measure and fuzzy aggregation operator to attain compromise solutions.FindingsA trade-off among carbon emissions, social performance and supply chain total profit is conducted. The analyses indicate the importance of transportation costs and carbon emission while determining the supply chain's tactical plan.Originality/valueThe textile supply chain's social sustainability alongside carbon emissions of textile operations is contemplated to provide apparel production and distribution logistics planning under uncertainty. In doing so, the authors propose a hybrid credibility-possibility mathematical optimization model to determine a compromise solution for textile managers.

Modeling Supply Chain Sustainability-Related Risks and Vulnerability: Insights from the Textile Sector of Pakistan

Sustainability-related risk and vulnerability management have attained significant attention from academia and industry. Manufacturing industries in developing countries such as Pakistan are under severe economic pressure and striving to boost sustainable supply chain practices for achieving business excellence. In this context, the objectives of the present research are to examine the critical supply chain risks associated with sustainable development goals, namely social, economic, and environmental factors. The failure mode and effect analysis (FMEA) technique is employed for categorizing the risk factors and Pareto analysis for highlighting the more crucial and risky factors. For this purpose, a large-scale survey was carried out in the textile industries of Pakistan to develop a risk mitigation model for sustainability-related risks and vulnerability in a textile supply chain (TSC). It captures the input expressions of experts for risk factors, namely severity (s), occurrence (o), and detection (d) for calculating the risk priority numbers (RPNs) of identified alternatives. The results depict that endogenous environmental risks categorize as the most significant for the textile manufacturing industries, and the interfaces between the various risks associated with sustainability-related are also found very high. This study would be a toolkit for the industrial managers and policy-makers for creating sustainable manufacturing culture on organizational premises.

Enhancement of Textile Supply Chain Performance through Optimal Capacity Planning

Manufacturing companies in the textile and apparel field face stiff competition due to the globalization of trade between suppliers, producers and customers. To meet this challenge, they need to be efficient by adopting new lean manufacturing approaches and new analysis and management tools leading to more flexible and agile production and distribution processes. For the textile and apparel industry, where products’ life cycle is short due to fashion changes, a new integrated approach of production and distribution planning is needed. Based on linear programming techniques and integrating subcontracting activities, our approach takes into account the characteristics of demand, including its short life cycle, seasonality and fashion effect. For these reasons, a sequential approach is adopted, combining tactical and operational decision levels for production and distribution activities, in order to satisfy customer needs at lower cost by reacting quickly to changes and delivering on time. The deployed approach is structured according to the DMAIC lean tool. Validated on real instances, this approach proves its efficiency by achieving cost reduction when internal production capacity is adequately and efficiently planned.