Traceability has recently gained considerable attention in the textile industry. Traceability stands for information sharing about a product including the product history, specification, or location. With the involvement of globally dispersed actors in the textile supply chain, ensuring appropriate product quality with timely supplies is crucial for surviving in this industry with ever increasing competition. Hence it is of paramount importance for a supply chain actor to track every product and trace its history in the supply chain. In this context, this paper presents a framework to implement traceability in the textile supply chain. A system approach has been followed, where firstly the usage requirement of traceability is defined, and then a framework for implementing intra-actor or internal traceability and inter-actor or external traceability is discussed. This article further presents a sequential diagram to demonstrate the interaction and information exchange between the actors in the supply chain, when the traceability information is requested. An example is also illustrated for data storage using a relational database management system and information exchange using XML for the textile weaver. Finally, the article discusses challenges and future studies required to implement traceability in the textile supply chain.

ABSTRACT

Purpose

The focus of this work-in-progress is to develop a general traceability framework for the textile supply chain. Traceability is of a significant importance for the textile industry, firstly due to multiple actors’ involvement in the production and distribution, and secondly the heterogeneous nature of actors, dealing with diverse materials, including fibre spinning mills, yarn spinning mills, weaving industry and garment manufacturers. Moreover, The textile industry has seen a global shift towards recently industrialized countries; consequently, the offshore buyers have become more dependent on complex supply chains and created more information asymmetry as offshore buyers cannot directly observe the production activities of a distant manufacturer. Resulting consequences of information asymmetry can be seen in terms of counterfeit products, malpractices in production and other social and environmental issues. Moreover, textile market is a volatile market because of rapidly changing trends and consumers’ preferences, therefore inter-actor visibility of production activities is required for synchronous production to meet the market demands. Considering the above-mentioned characteristics and challenges in textile industry, this work targets to develop a traceability framework for improving supply chain visibility and integrate various actors in the textile production supply chain.

Design/methodology/approach

The traceability framework development has been divided into four steps, namely, identification of user requirement of different stakeholders in the textile supply chain, identification of different information points, traceability data modelling, and information exchange model to develop traceability among various stakeholders in the textile production supply chain. In-depth analysis was conducted for the need of traceability from various stakeholders’ perspectives in textile sectors, which include various actors in textile production and distribution, consumers and surveillance/certification authorities. An UML case diagram approach has been followed to define the traceability requirements and UML class diagram approach has been adopted for modelling traceability data.

Findings

The present traceability framework is proposed to handle traceability information and information exchange between various stakeholders in the textile production supply chain, which can not only disseminate the traceability information in the supply chain, but also helpful 704 in case of recall crisis (such as product design fault, harmful chemicals or other related issues) where surveillance authorities can track (forward traceability) and trace (for identifying the source error which resulted recall) the products in the textile supply chain for recalling. Moreover, the traceability information can be used by consumers in order to about the product and raw materials’ history.

Practical implications

Traceability works on the credibility of the organizations, which handle the traceability data. Therefore, in the real implementation, either organizations need to be transparent in terms of traceability data or third party certification/audit is required for ensuring that the traceability information provided by an organization is correct/authentic. Secondly the semantics for information exchange are required to be unified across various actors involved in traceability information storage and exchange.

Original/value

The traceability framework covers perspectives from traceability not only from various actors involved in textile supply chain, but also includes consumers therefore, traceability information is collected by this framework can be utilized from industrial as well as consumer and surveillance perspectives.

special session Information

We are witnessing the beginning of a seismic shift in retail due to digitalization. However, what is meant by digitalization is less clear. Sometimes it is understood as means for automatization and sometimes it is regarded as equal to e-commerce. Sometimes digitalization is considered being both automatization and e-commerce trough new technology. In recent years there has been an increase in Internet and mobile devise usage within the retail sector and e-commerce is growing, encompassing both large and small retailers. Digital tools such as, new applications are developing rapidly in order to search for information about products based on price, health, environmental and ethical considerations, and also to facilitate payments. Also the fixed store settings are changing due to digitalization and at an overall level; digitalization will lead to existing business models being reviewed, challenged and ultimately changed. More specifically, digitalization has consequences for all parts of the physical stores including customer interface, knowledge creation, sustainability performance and logistics. As with all major shifts, digitalization comprises both opportunities and challenges for retail firms and employees, and these needs to be empirically studied and systematically analysed. The Swedish Institute for Innovative Retailing at University of Borås is a research centre with the aim of identifying and analysing emerging trends that digitalization brings for the retail industry.

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