Sample: Innovation Outlook: Transparency and Traceability Ankit Innovation Outlook

Alongside the Fourth Industrial Revolution, the demystification of the supply chain is undoubtedly a key priority of the textile & fashion industries. Not only does an increase in transparency and traceability generate immediate competitive benefits – the supply chain collapse during the Covid-19 pandemic exacerbated the need for comprehensive insight – but the movement also emboldens efforts to build an ethical value chain that is both socially and environmentally sustainable.

Transparency, by definition, involves the demystification of supply chains to improve clarity and awareness of a product’s supply chain journey. This would constitute country of origin, shipping information, place of manufacture and further processing information, among additional insightful information that can provide value to the supply chain. Meanwhile, within the supply chain itself, traceability allows the identification, tracking and tracing of said product or elements of the product as it travels from raw goods to the consumer.

Demand for more transparency and traceability does not only come from consumers and activists. In the US and European Union (EU) governments, there are strategies that drive fashion and interior players to demonstrate evidence of supply chain transparency. New European Commission (EC) propositions will soon make mandatory information requirements that will forge transparent supply chains. Meanwhile, opaque supply chain-related controversies have increased the layman’s understanding of supply chain opacity, further adding to pressures for brands to be open and honest about production processes, or to trace their products using unique tracer technologies.

As such, as transparency and traceability reach peak importance in the textile & apparel industry, WTiN’s fourth and final issue of the Innovation Outlook for 2023 dives into technologies capable of mapping supply chains, making product information transparent and tracing fibres and materials.

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