SUSTAINABILITY AND PROFITABILITY THROUGH INCREASED TRANSPARENCY MAIN AGENDA
The UK Fashion and Textile Association (UKFT) is working with technology companies IBM, Tech Data, and the Future Fashion Factory to design, prototype and pilot a new technology platform to help the fashion and textile industry drive sustainability and profitability through increased transparency within the supply chain.
The Sustainable Supply Chain Optimisation project will see retailers Next, H&M (COS brand), N Brown, New Look and yarn manufacturer Laxtons taking part in the initial nine-month pilot.
The initiative has been awarded 1.4 million pounds of funding by Innovate UK, part of UK Research and Innovation, on behalf of the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund (ISCF) Manufacturing Made Smarter Challenge.
Adam Mansell, chief executive of the UK Fashion and Textile Association (UKFT), said “This project aims to promote greater transparency in the industry to ultimately enhance the competitiveness of UK textile and garment manufacturers, while reducing the environmental and ethical impact of the sector.”
UKFT teams up with IBM, Tech Data, and the Future Fashion Factory on supply chain platform
The new technology platform will combine several emerging technologies built on a combination of IBM’s Blockchain, AI and sensor technologies running on IBM Cloud.
Blockchain technology will enable increased transparency in the supply chain, while AI technology will facilitate the detection and response to supply chain disruption and provide the insights for real-time analysis of current business performance, rapid problem solving and optimisation of business flows.
Next, H&M (COS brand), N Brown, New Look and Laxtons to pilot UKFT SSCO Project Joanne Poynor, head of sustainable development at Next, added: “Working together, we are pleased to support the development of a new supply chain platform tool for the apparel and textiles sector, to facilitate the gathering of robust sustainability data and provide clear visibility of environmental and ethical impacts to empower better decisions.”
Sue Fairley, head of sourcing, sustainability and quality at New Look, said: “We are delighted to be taking part in the UKFT SSCO Project as part of New Look’s core strategic commitment to integrate sustainable practices across the business.
We recognise that collaborating on this project will help remove complexity, increase transparency and help develop sustainable solutions with more reassuring visibility of the people and the environments impacted throughout the value chain.
We anticipate that by bringing new technologies and global networks together, UKFT will accelerate change and allow the provenance of the products we sell to open up from origin to end user.”
