Impact of COVID-19 on the textile, apparel and fashion manufacturing industry supply chain : Case study on a ready-made garment manufacturing industry
Abstract
Over the past few months, the world has witnessed how the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted the supply chain of the textile, apparel and fashion manufacturing (TAFM) industry in various unprecedented ways. As the global textile market is interconnected, this outbreak has a global impact due to travel restrictions and raw materials shortages. This study highlights the imminent impact of COVID-19 on the TAFM industry supply chain, focusing on root-cause analysis and statistical data on consumption of textile goods, both locally and globally. There has not been any academic research on TAFM supply chain disruption. This paper has fulfilled this research gap. Our research is a two-fold study. The first part reviews the overall impact of the pandemic on the TAFM industry and conducts a text analysis on the statements collected from business reports, academic journals, market researchers’ opinions, manufacturers’ statements and business journals, in order to identify the most frequently used terms associated with supply chain disruption. The second part is a case study on a ready-made garment (RMG) industry in Bangladesh, which showed that the supply chain disruption due to COVID-19 would increase the production cost. This is alarming for garment manufacturers and exporters, as the worldwide apparel consumption is also projected to reduce during and after the pandemic. Lastly, this study forecasts the takeaways of the TAFM industry from this global pandemic and recommends a mathematical model to tackle any similar situation in future.
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Author's Biography
Samit Chakraborty is a PhD fellow and working as research assistant at Wilson College of Textiles. His research is based on implementing innovative technologies and ensuring sustainable supply chain management in the textile manufacturing and fashion retailing industry. He completed his Master’s at the University of Manchester, UK and Bachelor’s at Bangladesh University of Textiles. He has over five years’ working experience as a production merchandiser and product developer in the apparel manufacturing industry, where he developed products for European brands such as C&A and Tom Tailor. With this diverse industrial experience, he joined Daffodil International University, Bangladesh as a lecturer to continue his research and pursue a career in academia. He has published articles on consumer behaviour and sustainable supply chain in various international journals.
Manik Chandra Biswas is a doctoral fellow, recipient of North Carolina Textile Foundation (NCTF) Fellowship, and a polymer and materials engineer with more than ten years’ research and industrial experience seeking to innovate real-world textile and polymeric products and guide innovations in green chemistry as well as their adoption by industry. His graduate research (at Master’s and doctoral levels) focuses on innovations in the conversion of biomass waste into value-added materials and substitution of petroleum-based additives with biomass derivatives for the strengthening of plastics and regenerated fibres from natural resources. Overall, this research will improve the sustainability of the textile industry by introducing overlap between the circular economies of both the textile and agricultural industries. At graduate level, since 2015, he has supported work in five industry-sponsored projects (all related to green chemistry), filed one US patent application, drafted another patent disclosure and published 12 peer-reviewed journal articles and five book chapters on the use of biomass derivatives towards manmade fibre production and polymer nanocomposites towards sustainability.
Citation
Chakraborty, Samit and Biswas, Manik Chandra (2020, December 1). Impact of COVID-19 on the textile, apparel and fashion manufacturing industry supply chain : Case study on a ready-made garment manufacturing industry. In the Journal of Supply Chain Management, Logistics and Procurement, Volume 3, Issue 2. https://doi.org/10.69554/GJKF4967.
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