Supply Chain Management and Logistics in the Global Fashion Sector

The Sustainability Challenge

Rajkishore Nayak, Rajkishore Nayak

• Editorial: Routledge
• Año: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000206821
• Edición: 1
• Categoría: Business
• Categoría: Business General

The ways in which we design, make, transport and then discard clothes has a huge social and environmental impact. This book covers responsible business practices and sustainability in the fashion industry from the raw fibre stage, through production, to the point of customer consumption. The concepts of responsibility and sustainability are fast becoming essential factors in business decisions and Supply Chain Management and Logistics in the Global Fashion Sector leads the reader through the multiple stages in the supply chain that can impact on business strategy.

A perfect resource for students studying fashion and for those working in the sector who wish to identify the latest thinking as they plan sustainability strategies, the book is divided into four clear sections. Part I of the book examines sustainability in the supply chain by identifying the three pillars of sustainability (social, economic and environmental) and considers how fashion brands are innovating in this area. Part II looks at fashion logistics and supply chain operations by assessing fibre, yarn and fabric considerations, logistical issues for both garment production, and service delivery, stock control, transportation, barriers and risks. Part III develops the logistics theme further by identifying recent trends and case studies that highlight agility and lean management structures, and the application of transparency enhancing radio frequency identification (RFID). This section further applies modelling and simulation techniques from the automotive and pharmaceutical industries to the fashion sector. Part IV considers how sustainability can be embedded into the multi-tiered fashion supply chain and its selling environment.

Part I

Introduction to sustainable fashion supply chain

1 Sustainable supply chain management

Challenges from a fashion perspective

Rajkishore Nayak, Long TV Nguyen, Tarun Panwar, Majo George and Irfan Ulhaq

Introduction

Supply chain management (SCM) deals with the management of the supply or flow of goods and services. SCM involves the procurement, storage and flow of raw materials, semi-finished and finished goods from the point of origin (manufacturing) to the point of usage (consumers) (Ross, 2015). A network of upstream and downstream players is interconnected to produce the products and services required by the consumers. SCM is the management of flow of goods and services that is required to convert raw materials to finished goods for the consumers. The main objective of SCM is streamlining the supply of goods and services to maximize customer satisfaction with the right type of products or services (Christopher, 2016). SCM can be defined as the “design, planning, execution, control and monitoring of supply-chain activities with the objective of creating net value, building a competitive infrastructure, leveraging worldwide logistics, synchronizing supply with demand and measuring performance globally” (Tiwari and Jain, 2013). SCM can relate to the distribution activities in many sectors such as automotive, medicine, construction, hotel, hospital, engineering, information technology, plastics, fashion and textiles.

The supply chain activities in fashion and textiles is rather complex and involves many role players, as shown in Figure 1.1, which starts with the fibre producers. Textile fibres can be classified into two groups: (a) natural and (b) synthetic. As the name suggests, natural fibres are derived from natural resources, which includes cotton, wool, silk, hemp and jute (Nayak et al., 2012). On the other hand, synthetic fibres, such as nylon and polyester are derived from petroleum resources, whereas synthetic fibres such as viscose, modal and lyocell are derived from plant resources. Therefore, the synthetic fibres derived from plant resources are known as semi-synthetic fibres or regenerated fibres.

The next level of mid-stream players includes processes such as spinning and weaving industries, who produce yarns and fabrics, respectively. The yarn manufacturing process uses various fibres as the input material and produces different types of natural and synthetic yarns. The yarn manufacturing process can use different spinning systems such as ring, rotor and airjet to produce a range of yarn counts (Goyal and Nayak, 2020). Ring spinning is the most versatile system and produces the strongest yarn among all the systems. However, the energy consumption is highest in the ring spinning system. Other spinning systems (rotor and airjet) consume less energy, however there are some limitations in producing a range of yarn counts and the yarn strength. When sustainability is considered, ring spinning may be considered at odds. However, one must consider factors such as end use application, cost, type of product and downstream processes when selecting a yarn from various spinning systems.

Figure 1.1 Sequence of operations for garment manufacturing.

Fabric manufacturing follows the spinning process and can be broadly categorized as: weaving, knitting and non-woven (Patnaik and Patnaik, 2019). Weaving is the most widely used process for manufacturing fabrics, which involves the interlacing of two sets of threads perpendicular to each other. The next most widely used process is knitting, which involves the intermeshing of consecutive rows of connected loops with the next and previous rows. Non-woven fabrics are rather weaker structures directly produced from the textile fibres (staple and filament) bonding them together by means such as mechanical, thermal, chemical or solvent treatment. Woven fabrics vary in their structure and can be classified as plain, twill, satin, sateen and many other structures. Knitted fabrics can be classified as single jersey, purl, rib and interlock, all of which have different structures and, hence, vary in their properties. Non-woven fabrics can be of various types such as spun-laced, dry-spun, melt-blown, air-laid and heat-bonded non-woven fabrics, which also differ in their structure and properties.

Each type of fabric has its merits and demerits and the selection of a fabric depends on the type of product and the end use applications. For example, woven fabrics are used for apparel clothing (such as shirts, trousers, ladies dresses and activewear), home decorations (such as curtains, bedsheets, draperies, bed towels and table cloths), uniforms (such as security, police and army) and industrial applications; knitted fabrics are used for apparel clothing (such as tees, jackets, coats, jumpers and pants), innerwear (such as camisoles, undies, girdles, sleepwear and vests), sportswear (such as sock, sports shoes, track suits and vests), home furnishings (such as cleaning wipes, laundry bags and mosquito nets) and automotive textiles (such as headrest lining, cushioning material and lining for motorbike helmets); non-wovens are used for medical textiles (such as surgical masks, surgical gowns, gloves, wipes, caps, plasters and wound dressing), filtration (such as vacuum bags, filter membranes for gas and liquid, and allergen membranes), geotextiles (such as erosion control, canal liners, soil stabilizer and drainage systems) (Sinclair, 2014).

The fabrics manufactured by various processes (as discussed above) are in griege state and are not ready to be converted into garments. Greige fabrics are in an unfinished state, directly coming out of a loom or a knitting machine, which contains impurities such as wax, oil, gums, soluble impurities and dirt in addition to the sizing materials. These impurities make it hard for textile coloration by dyeing and printing. Hence, these impurities need to be removed by various chemical processing steps before they are ready for garment making. The chemical processing steps include desizing, scouring, bleaching, dyeing, printing and finishing. Among all the upstream and downstream processes of garment construction, the textile chemical processing is the most polluting step (Muthu, 2018). Therefore, any sustainability drive in the fashion supply chain should place emphasis on textile chemical processing.

Fabric chemical processing makes the fabrics ready to be converted into garments. The next process is garment manufacturing, where the two-dimensional fabrics (2D fabrics) are converted into three-dimensional garments (3D garments). The garment manufacturing process involves activities such as fabric inspection, spreading, cutting, bundling, fusing, sewing, ironing, inspection and packaging (Nayak and Padhye, 2015). The global trend in garment manufacturing has undergone many changes since the beginning of the twenty-first century. The global demand for apparel textiles is being fulfilled by only some developing countries, such as Bangladesh, Cambodia, China, Laos, India and Vietnam, and some countries in the European Union (EU). The manufacturing of garments at cheaper prices in developed countries such as the US or Australia or Canada is not viable due to high labour costs and energy charges. Therefore, they rely on the developing countries to fulfill their demand for fashion and textiles.

With the concept of globalized fashion and textiles, the financial condition of developing countries becomes stronger and people enjoy better infrastructure. In order to keep the product cost low, many fashion brands exploit the rules and regulations in developing countries. In the past there is much evidence of breaching of rules and regulations by the fashion and textile manufacturers. The worst consequence is the environmental pollution caused by the discharge of wastewater into the water systems and discharge of gaseous emissions to the atmosphere. People in developing countries work for longer hours without extra pay and work in unsafe conditions. Hence, there are many pros and cons to this approach to the globalization of fashion and textile manufacturing, which are discussed in the following section.

Pros of globalized fashion and textile manufacturing:

• Employment is created in developing countries.

• There is a greater share of wealth throughout the world.

• Manufacturing and exporting countries are benefited.

• Developed infrastructure as a result of globalization.

• Availability of cheap products and services in developed countries.

Cons of globalized fashion and textile manufacturing:

• People work long hours for low wages in developing countries.

• Working conditions, safety and work ethics are neglected in developing countries.

• People in developed countries lose jobs.

• Sustainability aspects are neglected and there is increased environmental pollution in developing counters.

• Local producers face stiff competition due to globalization. Sometimes, they shut down their businesses as they are unable to meet the competition.

This chapter discusses the basics of the fashion and textile supply chain with a special emphasis on sustainability requirements. This chapter also highlights various approaches to becoming sustainable in the fashion and textile supply chain process.

Sustainable fashion supply chain

The fashion supply chain has undergone several changes from the traditional supply chain to the new concept where sustainability plays a major role. The following section discusses the concept of sustainability in the supply chain.

Sustainability

After the release of the Brundtland Report in 1987, sustainability has been included in many corporate strategy and governmental policies. Sustainability became the basic framework in the United Nations’ (UN) agenda 21 during 1991. Based on the agenda, several actions have been taken to adopt the sustainability concepts in the manufacturing and supply chain. One such approach is the Kyoto Protocol on climate change, which emphasized developing policies and metrices for measuring the performance of organizations in different aspects of sustainability.

The term sustainability refers to the responsibilities of organizations in meeting environmental, social and economic requirements (Allwood et al., 2008). Sustainability focuses on creating a balanced environment, where the consumption of resources, adoption of technological advancements and organizational policies are harmonized to meet current and future human needs. The sustainability framework involves balancing local and global efforts to meet basic human needs without destroying or degrading the natural environment. The question then becomes how to represent the relationship between those needs and the environment.

Increasing pressure from international governing bodies and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) has created the impetus in many manufacturing sectors including fashion to adopt the concept of sustainability (Hall et al., 2010). Fashion entrepreneurs have realized that the adoption of sustainable practices is essential in order to reduce the environmental impacts of fashion manufacturing along with corporate socially responsible practices to gain competitive advantage to ensure that any negative impact of the industry on society is reduced.

The term sustainability has gained much attention from fashion scholars in the last five years or so (Jang et al., 2012; Sinkovics et al., 2016). In the Brundtland Report sustainability is described as “Development that meets the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (Keeble, 1988). To many fashion entrepreneurs, sustainability includes “planet (environmental)”, “people (social)” and “profit (economic)”, commonly known as the triple bottom line (TBL) (Hacking and Guthrie, 2008). May et al. (2007) states that of the triple bottom line (TBL) mentioned above, the two aspects of sustainability, “planet (environmental)” and “people (social)”, which related to green management and corporate citizenship, are more significant than the third aspect, which is “profit (economic)”.

The environmental aspect of sustainability refers to the pollution of the eco-system by the activities in the fashion supply chain processes. Clothing production starts from fibre production, through yarn and fabric to garment manufacturing (Nayak and Padhye, 2015). The textile fibres can be classified into two groups: synthetic and natural fibres. The manufacturing of synthetic and natural fibres pollutes the eco-system in varying degrees. Synthetic fibres such as polyester and nylon are manufactured from petroleum resources, which consumes a large amount of energy. Natural fibres, such as cotton, consume large amounts of water and toxic chemicals. Hence, both natural and synthetic fibre manufacturing has a negative impact on the environment. Similarly, yarn manufacturing, fabric manufacturing and garment manufacturing also have negative impacts on the environment.

In addition to fibre, yarn and fabrics, other industries that produce trims and accessories for garments, as well as leather processing industries and the fashion accessories’ industries, are also considered to be part of the global fashion supply chain process (Nayak et al., 2015). The supply chain management of fashion and textile industries, retail stores and the stores dealing with the recycling of end-of-life clothes are also considered to be part of the fashion production and supply chain process. All these manufacturing and supply chain activities have a negative impact on the environment.

Apparel manufacturin...