Improving sustainability in the value chain of the apparel industry empowered with social manufacturing

Abstract

One of the major contributions of social manufacturing is in the realm of sustainability. The apparel industry is a good example to assess contribution of social manufacturing to improve sustainability in practice. Value chains in the apparel industry are faced with various challenges regarding sustainability issues. Apparel companies pay higher attention to economic sustainability issues, and environmental and social sustainability issues of the apparel industry are often underrated. We realize that the apparel brand owners have the highest impact on improving the sustainability of the apparel industry. Thus, we design a collaborative business model empowered with social manufacturing to join the forces among the brand owners for improving sustainability of the apparel industry throughout the value chain. We chose a case study of shifting from conventional screen-printing to more environmentally sustainable digital textile printing. We suggest that this shift can be accelerated if the brand owners join their forces together to shift from conventional printing to digital printing technology in the apparel industry.