Search results

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.

The content analysis was adopted for within-case and cross-case analysis of data from semi-structured interviews of managers from 12 clothing companies.

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.

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.

Findings show that governments could focus on eliminating barriers of proximity manufacturing and creating favourable institutional infrastructure for the European clothing industry and sustainability.

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.

The purpose of this paper is to reveal benefits and factors (elements) of proximity manufacturing that enhance triple bottom line (TBL) sustainability in the clothing industry and discusses previous proximity manufacturing studies.

A systematic review is used in searching and extracting data (primary studies artifacts and proximity manufacturing elements) from peer-reviewed articles. Extracted elements are gathered and analyzed in constructed tables under TBL. Four subgroups are inducted under the business bottom line.

This paper shows the potential of proximity manufacturing to enhance TBL sustainability, the scope of proximity manufacturing, and the trend and absence of existing studies. The most frequently mentioned elements are time-to-market, job creation, product quality, quick response, and trade policies. Governments and clusters are also important players.

Future research can further explore elements potentially improving TBL sustainability to fill gaps in existing studies, including how proximity manufacturing can drive environmental and social practices, and how governments can encourage proximity manufacturing in various markets.

Besides perceiving the benefits of proximity manufacturing, businesses may use the derived elements to make manufacturing decisions.

Public policies giving privileges to the locally produced garment industry have great potential to drive the economy and employment as well as sustain local clothing knowledge and the environment.

Proximity manufacturing strategies toward sustainability are under-researched academically and under-practiced industrially; this paper provides insight into sustainability benefits of proximity manufacturing.

This chapter shows how different recycling locations influence closed-loop supply chain (CLSC) cost and carbon dioxide equivalents (CO₂e), as well as reveal competitive recycling and manufacturing locations, including relevant distance- and location-related factors, for achieving very low cost and CO₂e CLSCs supporting circular economy. Exploratory data analysis is used to analyze results from simulations based on empirical data and market rates relating to textile and clothing CLSCs. The results show that most very low-cost and CO₂e CLSCs consist of fabric and garment manufacturing located at the same or nearby locations, and whose labor costs and electricity CO₂e are low, whether fiber recycling facilities are located in proximity to used garment sorting facilities or not. Scenario and sensitivity analyses of important cost and CO₂e factors for recycling location competitiveness reveal that increasing used garment prices makes locations with high import duties lose competitiveness, and that varying water freight CO₂e changes comparative location competitiveness.