Exploring current enablers and barriers for sustainable proximity manufacturing

Abstract

Purpose Amidst offshoring and reshoring trends, the purpose of this paper is to explore why business practitioners, especially from the labour-intensive clothing industry, choose to manufacture some products in proximity to the high-cost European market. Moreover, the rise of sustainability concerns led us to further explore whether these reasons relate to triple bottom line (TBL): business, environment and society. Design/methodology/approach The content analysis was adopted for within-case and cross-case analysis of data from semi-structured interviews of managers from 12 clothing companies. Findings Within-case analysis showed enablers and barriers (factors) of proximity manufacturing within each company’s characteristics under TBL. Cross-case analysis showed the most-mentioned enablers (high-quality suppliers, short lead-time and fast replenishment) and barriers (expensive production cost and lack of industrial set-up and seamstresses). The findings revealed both common and different factors from existing studies. Research limitations/implications Besides being motives for companies to bring manufacturing back to Europe, the results can be used by researchers and companies to develop criteria and performance measures of manufacturing locations for enhancing the TBL sustainability. Future research may explore different locations and industries for possibilities of proximity–manufacturing generalisation. Social implications Findings show that governments could focus on eliminating barriers of proximity manufacturing and creating favourable institutional infrastructure for the European clothing industry and sustainability. Originality/value This paper highlights updated proximity–manufacturing factors from practices in relation to TBL sustainability, including support for proximity manufacturing as a practice for TBL enhancement.

Global Sourcing in Fast Fashion Retailers: Sourcing Locations and Sustainability Considerations

“…In fact, to produce fashion garments at low-cost and quickly, fast fashion retailers have made a significant use of natural resources and chemicals [44], beyond exploiting questionable manufacturing working conditions. Nonetheless, they are trying to make more sustainable their manufacturing sourcing [15][16][17] and, in this perspective, an in depth analysis of results allows exploring whether, beyond cost and time [30], also sustainability considerations may represent a new decision criterion able to orientate sourcing location decisions in fast fashion retailers.…”

“…Strategic suppliers are responsible for 96% of manufacturing for Retailer A and 60% for Retailer B; for Retailer C, they represent 98% of suppliers (first column of Table 4). According to the previous academic literature [15,[17][18][19], fast fashion retailers appear to maintain a balance between social, environmental, and economic goals. In fact, they base their supplier selection and ongoing relationship on an initial assessment conducted by internal and external auditors aimed at judging the level of supplier compliance to a set of standards contained within codes of conduct [49].…”

“…The collapse of the Rana Plaza factory in 2013 in Bangladesh [10][11][12][13], which caused thousands of deaths, placed the fashion industry under increasing public scrutiny and fashion companies felt the urgency of bridging the gap between economic sustainability and social and environmental performance [14]. Consequently, they are now trying to make their manufacturing sourcing more sustainable by focusing on the triple bottom line (TBL) approach, which involves the economic, environmental, and social dimensions of sustainability [15][16][17][18][19].…”

“…Past studies [27][28][29] highlighted that in order to be both convenient and quick, fast fashion retailers leverage global and local sourcing locations which are often selected based on two main decision criteria: cost and time [30]. In fact, for a lengthy period, apparel location decisions have been largely based on quantitative cost measures [7,15]. However, the need to contemplate additional factors beyond cost has arisen and companies are often re-evaluating their supply chain design [28,[31][32][33].…”

A Strategic Location Decision-Making Approach for Multi-Tier Supply Chain Sustainability

“…For the supply location decisions, an empirical study by one of the authors [9] shows that managers of focal firms usually compare and choose supply locations and suppliers by calculating landed costs of products based on supplier quotations, together with requirements of certificates, auditing reports, and/or supplier visits by the managers in order to ensure environmental and social compliance at the suppliers' factories. However, few of them ensure that the quoted product prices by suppliers are not too low to allow the suppliers to produce high-quality products with proper environmental and social compliance.…”