Knitwear as ‘other’: Costume and identity in Good Will Hunting (1997)

PurposeUsing the moral responsibility theory of corporate sustainability (MRCS) framework , the study examined Chinese textile and apparel (T&A) manufacturers' moral duty positions, goals and structures toward sustainability, with a goal of creating a spectrum of corporate sustainability (CS) performance.Design/methodology/approachAn online survey method was employed to investigate participants' views on their companies' perceptions, goals and structures toward each of the listed sustainability-related activities.FindingsThe results showed that all participants expressed their companies have moral responsibilities toward some aspects of sustainability. Particularly, they viewed that their companies emphasize labor relations (LR) and righteous operation (RO) activities over environmental protection (EP) or public welfare involvement (PW) activities when fulfilling their sustainability responsibilities. After analyzing each response by following MRCS, 41 companies were categorized as occasionally sustainability corporations. The remaining 259 responses were categorized as consistently sustainability corporations in selective areas.Originality/valueThe study for the first time revealed the sustainability-related activities that most respondents in Chinese T&A manufacturing industry perceived as perfect or imperfect duties. Findings add knowledge to the area of corporate moral responsibility toward sustainability and show a spectrum of Chinese textile and apparel manufacturers' sustainability performance, empirically supporting MRCS.

Supplementary materials The case includes links to video clips on textile and apparel manufacture to familiarize students with the textile manufacturing process. The case also provides links to audio and video clips of the case protagonist discussing the strengths and weaknesses of the cluster at IK. Learning outcomes The case offers opportunities for the learner to analyze the situation from three cases as follows: industry, cluster (broadly location) and firm. Specific teaching objectives are as follows: How to identify and analyze the drivers of competitiveness of a cluster. Assess the strength of clusters using Porter’s Diamond framework. Map the linkages between players of a cluster as follows: across firms, industries and public organizations. Benchmark and compare clusters to identify opportunities for upgrading competitiveness. Case overview/synopsis The case describes the challenge facing Mr Nikunj Bagdia, the owner and chief executive of Ken Enterprises Private Limited (Ken), a textile manufacturing unit located in the town of Ichalkaranji (IK), in October of 2019. IK boasts the largest number of cutting-edge air-jet looms in India and Ken is IK’s largest exporter of woven textile fabrics. However, IK lags the textile and apparel manufacturing cluster of Tiruppur, in another region of the country. The case enables a microeconomic analysis of the business environment of industrial clusters and a cluster mapping exercise, which helps identify opportunities for enhancing IK’s textile cluster. As the case closes, Nikunj is trying to prioritize opportunities that could emerge from the analyzes. Complexity academic level Masters/MBA level courses on competitiveness, strategy for economic development and microeconomics of competitiveness. Subject Code CSS 11: Strategy.

A deep reinforcement learning based multi-criteria decision support system for optimizing textile chemical process

PurposeThe evaluation of time-based performance is a valued approach in the lean management thinking which is based on delivering value from customer's perspective. This approach contributes for long-term competitiveness and success in today's business environment. The focus of this study is to analyse the cycle time and manufacturing lead time with value stream mapping (VSM) in the preparatory stage of the textile fabric manufacturing process and to identify and improve the non-value adding activities in the value chain (VC). The study presents an insight on the translation of performance improvement across functions and how upstream supply chain (SC) segments can be linked in the performance improvement program. It also covers how the application of VSM improves visibility and planning flexibility in textile fabric manufacturing process.Design/methodology/approachThe time-based performance was evaluated using VSM and recording of the activity times in the existing process. The impact of the quality of supplier's raw material was also measured contributing to identify the strategy for procurement and the means to establish a feedback system to the upstream segments of the SC. The methodology of VSM, observation of the practice and the expertise of the individuals involved with the process were utilised to develop the value stream maps and to identify value adding activities, non-value adding activities, existing gaps and plans for improvement.FindingsThe means for improving the time-based performance were identified and their impact was measured. The factors responsible for improvement are related to the production system and with the procurement strategy. The improvement was achieved in terms of available capacity utilisation, balancing the work flow in the preparatory stages, visibility of the process by measuring its capability and flexibility for the planning function. The study revealed that the effectiveness and enhancement of VSM and related tools should be adopted to address the issue of limiting success rates of long term and repeating application of such tools. Continuous improvement, innovations and the systematic embedding of VSM in the process life cycle provide the ways for achieving long-term success.Research limitations/implicationsThe paper presents a real and in-depth study on the application of VSM in the textile manufacturing process. The scope of the study is broad; it covers activities across functions with actual estimates of activity times in the manufacturing process for the focused value streams. It offers researchers the opportunity to analyse the translation of productivity improvement across functions and how upstream SC segments can be linked in a performance improvement program.Practical implicationsThe study offers useful insight for the managers in textile manufacturing and other sectors for improving the time-based performance and achieving higher utilisation of capacity. It identified the production factors and their impact on warping and sizing cycle time in selected value streams and those which share common activities. It also identified the directions for future research when repeating the application of VSM in the continuous improvement cycle. Furthermore, since the industries need to progress towards advanced systems including Industry 4.0 standards, adoption of advanced VSM tool with relevant technology can align their production systems to develop the required capability. This will also bring a sustainable competitive advantage in the system.Social implicationsThe focused sector is stagnant in terms of productivity and innovation. The adoption of the advanced tools can facilitate the implementation of continuous improvement and innovation strategies.Originality/valueThe main focus of this study is to analyse and improve the cycle time in the preparatory stage of the fabric manufacturing process. This has impact on other important and tangible measures including capacity utilisation and work flow and intangible measures including production planning flexibility and process visibility. The improvement impact is across departments.

Continuous fiber reinforced thermoplastic (c-FRTP) has been focused on because of not only the excellent specific rigidity and strength but also the recyclability and the secondary workability due to a feature of the thermoplastic resin as the matrix. However, unlike the thermosetting resin, it is very difficult to impregnate thermoplastic resin into continuous fiber bundles because of its high melt viscosity. In order to solve this problem, various intermediate materials have been developed. On the other hand, Tailored Fiber Placement (TFP) is a textile manufacturing technology for continuous fiber preforming. Compared to other textile manufacturing processes, the continuous fiber material can be placed in any direction according to the requirement. From this characteristic, it is possible to change the local fiber orientation in the fiber reinforced composite material, so that mechanical properties of reinforcing fibers can be utilized to maximum. Applying fibrous intermediate material for c-FRTP to TFP technology, the high cycle c-FRTP molding with optimized fiber orientation can be achieved. However, in order to prepare a preform of c-FRTP, textile processability (flexibility) is needed for fibrous intermediate materials as dry fiber. Therefore, to develop fibrous intermediate material with both better impregnation property and flexibility for TFP technology is required. In this study, the effect of fabrication condition of newly developed fibrous intermediate material called PCY (Partially Impregnated Commingled Yarn) on preforming by TFP technology was investigated. The textile processability was evaluated by measuring the deformation resistance of various PCYs. The unidirectional (UD) preforms were prepared using PCY with better textile processability and impregnation property. In order to investigate the effect of stitch yarn on impregnation property during molding, the impregnation state was quantified by cross-sectional observation of various specimens. In addition, a tensile test using UD specimen was carried out to investigate the effect of stitch yarn on mechanical properties.

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) Technology and Application in Fashion and Textile Supply Chain highlights the technology of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) and its applications in fashion and textile manufacturing and supply chain management. It discusses the brief history, technology, and working of RFID including the types of RFID systems. It compares differences, advantages, and disadvantages of RFID and barcode technologies. It also covers application of RFID technology in textile and fashion manufacturing, supply chain, and retail, and RFID-based process control in textile and fashion manufacturing. It covers various applications of RFID starting from fibre manufacturing through yarn and fabric manufacturing; fabric chemical processing; garment manufacturing and quality control; and retail management. It offers case studies of RFID adoption by famous fashion brands detailing the competitive advantages and discusses various challenges faced and future directions of RFID technology.

Defects in the textile manufacturing process lead to a great waste of resources and further affect the quality of textile products. Automated quality guarantee of textile fabric materials is one of the most important and demanding computer vision tasks in textile smart manufacturing. This survey presents a thorough overview of algorithms for fabric defect detection. First, this review briefly introduces the importance and inevitability of fabric defect detection towards the era of manufacturing of artificial intelligence. Second, defect detection methods are categorized into traditional algorithms and learning-based algorithms, and traditional algorithms are further categorized into statistical, structural, spectral, and model-based algorithms. The learning-based algorithms are further divided into conventional machine learning algorithms and deep learning algorithms which are very popular recently. A systematic literature review on these methods is present. Thirdly, the deployments of fabric defect detection algorithms are discussed in this study. This paper provides a reference for researchers and engineers on fabric defect detection in textile manufacturing.

The textile sector makes a substantial contribution to the global economy. During the Industry 4.0 era, the textile production process is anticipated to become more adaptable and versatile. The complex interplay between the macroscopic factors in different textile processes may make decision-making challenging. To address these challenges and provide a viable answer to textile manufacturing companies, machine learning methods are suggested to develop decision support systems. It is possible for a model to correctly reflect the intricate relationships that exist between the parameters and performances of a textile manufacturing process. This representation serves as the foundation for a decision support system. Especially in this work, quality control can be improved by predicting the defects in fabrics using an effective Ornstein-Uhlenbeck reinforcement learning-based decision neural network (OU_RL_DNN), which can detect both local and global defects. The framework's approach effectively reduces the expense of manually annotating the dataset. It takes a few faulty samples mixed with reference samples to learn fault characteristics and properly locate them. The experiment, which comprised a data set that was available to the public and three private fabric data sets, demonstrated that the proposed method surpasses a number of cutting-edge methods in terms of detection and detection time.

The evolution of both discourse analysis and conversation analysis (henceforth DA and CA, respectively) has been a progressive movement from their inception as an inductive focus and unmotivated interest in how language works and what it accomplishes. From their early beginnings, quite sophisticated structures and frameworks have been developed to understand how people use language in interactions to accomplish social actions. With this framework in place, more latterly attention has turned towards the possibility of how these principles might be usefully applied to different settings (we refer you to Chapter 1 of this volume — Lester & O’Reilly — for a good overview). With this second wave characterised by a greater focus on the real-world usefulness of CA and DA findings, there is an exciting opportunity for researchers using these methodologies to interrogate the nuances of institutional interactions in order to make recommendations for changes in practice. This chapter is situated within this cutting-edge movement, which is transposing the scientific rigour and credibility of CA and DA findings into real-world applied settings and evidence-based practice (see, e.g. Kiyimba, Chapter 2, this volume). In our contemporary culture, a primary concern for practitioners across a range of institutional contexts, and particularly within therapy and counselling, is to work within evidence-based models of care and demonstrate efficacy and cost-effectiveness of interventions. We therefore seek to demonstrate that both DA and CA have a great deal to offer the evidence base in this field. It is thus extremely timely and salient for this discussion to take place in a handbook such as this one.

Textile and apparel manufacturers face severe competition in an increasingly globalized economy and a decline in the industry as the nation becomes economically mature. Therefore, understanding how a textile and apparel manufacturer maintains its competitive advantages in the global industry has become crucial. New product development (NPD) has been adopted by numerous businesses as a factor in their competitiveness. Most NPD studies in the textile and apparel sectors have been conducted in Europe and, or, the USA. This paper presents an in-depth case study of a selected Taiwanese textile and apparel manufacturer located in Asia Pacific, a highly competitive region, and examines how its NPD has been developed to maintain its competitive advantage. A twofold NPD is shown as the key to achieve various competitive advantages: flexibility, relationship building, and strategic repositioning of its services to key customers.

Even though a substantial body of research suggests that adults’ math talk fosters children’s mathematics development and willingness to learn mathematics, little is known about how teachers make pedagogical decisions to communicate mathematics to young students. Supported by socio-constructivist and semiotic lenses, the study focuses on the close interactions between teachers and their students to better understand the educators’ perspectives and the rationale for their mathematical pedagogies when communicating and mediating number sense to young students. An instrumental case study approach and discourse analysis were utilized to investigate how a cultural tool, mathematics, was communicated and mediated to preschool and kindergarten students. Findings indicated that participants focused on supporting young students’ meaning-making processes before teaching language form. This pedagogical choice resulted in educators creating a particular early year’s mathematical discourse grounded in the avoidance of nouns and in the use of terms that students knew, verbs, and terms that denoted actions.

The article offers a critical analysis of contemporary scholarly and critical discourse in the context of overcoming the negative consequences of postmodernist epistemic hegemony, which has led to the degradation of epistemological foundations, the distortion of cognitive processes, and the spread of the phenomenon of narrative pollution. Against the backdrop of the growing influence of informational manipulation, deepfake strategems, and commercially driven discursive practices, the author substantiates the need to return to the transcendental foundations of thought and to restore the role of the sensory as a key instrument of theoretical cognition and cultural formation. The article examines the transcensus of the sensory as a fundamental methodological direction capable of counteracting regressive tendencies in contemporary culture, ensuring the development of an integrated historical consciousness, the restoration of aesthetic criteria, and the strengthening of the competitiveness of the Ukrainian cultural environment. Particular attention is devoted to the impact of global political, social, and technological transformations on cultural development, the crisis of contemporary visual culture, the devaluation of aesthetic judgment, and the risks of deskilling in the arts. The author emphasizes the role of Ukrainian scholars and artists in shaping an alternative model of cultural cognition based on the unity of the logical and the sensory, and outlines the potential of transcendental aesthetics as a tool for cleansing the informational environment and renewing humanitarian thought. In conclusion, it is argued that the transcending of the sensory may serve as an effective compass for cultural development and social resilience in conditions of post-truth, hybrid warfare, and civilizational crises.

Green reverse logistics, a new branch of reverse logistics, is the process of taking back the products from their final destination back to the distributor or manufacturer for rework, replacement, or disposal in an environmentally friendly manner. The apparel and textile industry is a significant contributor to the Sri Lankan economy, and the Sri Lankan economy is heavily dependent on the apparel and textile industry. The industrial manufacturing processes of the apparel and textile industry are chemically aggressive, and the industry generates a heavy amount of post-industrial waste, including chemicals, dyes, fabric pieces, plastics, cardboards, and dyed water, which results in sustainability issues. The textile industry, being an industry that generates a massive amount of post-industrial waste, has been recognized by researchers as an industry that should adopt green reverse logistics to mitigate the generation of post-industrial waste. The study examines the influence of green reverse technologies adopted by Sri Lankan apparel and textile companies in improving environmental sustainability. A qualitative multiple case study based on two leading Sri Lankan apparel and textile manufacturers was employed by the researcher. The research findings highlighted that that production of synthetic fabric from PET polyester yarn, waste upcycling (e.g.: knitting lint-paper manufacturing, fabric rejects – production of rugs, bags etc.), sending out used oil to a certified company for re-refining, re-using the water used in dye machines, and dye clean and re-use projects are the key green reverse logistics practices adopted by Sri Lankan apparel and textile manufacturers. The research findings further indicated that green reverse techniques adopted by apparel and textile manufacturers result in a responsible and sustainable manufacturing process through promoting alternative uses of resources, using alternative energy sources, optimizing materials, and reusing materials.

Today, enzymes have become an integral part of the textile processing. With the increasing awareness of environmental pollution and the extensive consideration of mankind health, chemical processes used in textile industries are being replaced by enzymatic processes. Usages of enzymes in textile industry will be the best possible alternative of chemicals used in textile industry. Enzymes like amylase, cellulase, catalase, protease, pectinase, laccase, and lipase are widely used in textile manufacturing and processing industries. Use of enzymatic treatments in textile industries is very promising approach as they are eco-friendly, produce high-quality products, and lead to the reduction of energy, water, and time. It is observed that enzymes can replace harsh chemicals, catalyze reaction and operate under mild conditions. These are biodegradable, safe to use and easy to control. In this review environment-friendly uses of various enzymes in different textile processing steps have been discussed.

Work related attitudes, such as perceived organizational support, turnover intention, job satisfaction, affective commitment, and job involvement, have received much attention by academics and practitioners for a number of reasons. Previous research indicates that such attitudes have important organizational consequences. However, little attention has been given to investigate the differential effect of gender on the work-related attitudes, in particular shop-floor employees of the textile and apparel manufacturing sector. In this study, using a sample of 616 employees in the textile and apparel manufacturing industry, the effects of gender on work-related attitudes was investigated. The results suggested that women perceived more organizational support, job satisfaction, affective commitment, and job involvement than men. However, despite the above positive work attitudes, women perceive higher turnover intention than men. This contradicts the general findings of organizational behavior theory that higher work attitudes lead to lower turnover intention.