| Author: | Cai, Yajun |
| Title: | Achieving sustainable development goals (SDGs) : sustainable supply chain management in the fashion industry |
| Advisors: | Choi, Tsan-ming (ITC) |
| Degree: | Ph.D. |
| Year: | 2021 |
| Subject: | Clothing trade -- Environmental aspects Sustainable design Sustainability Hong Kong Polytechnic University -- Dissertations |
| Department: | Institute of Textiles and Clothing |
| Pages: | ix, 116 pages |
| Language: | English |
| Abstract: | United Nations' new sustainable development agenda for 2030 has come into force since 2016, which initiates 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs). The SDGs well demonstrate the new objectives of economic, social, and environmental developments, such as ending poverty, economic growth, environmental protection and so on. SDGs call for everyone in the world to contribute to the goals, including the government, the companies, the civil organizations, and the public. From the private sector, it is reported that sustainable business can bring up to US$ 12 trillion in economic opportunities. Sustainable business can be observed in the real-world practice. For example, design for environment is considered in the initial stage of product development; quick response strategy is adopted in the production process to avoid overstock; and post-consuming (used) products are taken back for remanufacturing by retailers to reduce waste. This dissertation research is to solve the related issues: i) To study producer's choice of design-for-environment under environmental taxation; ii) To investigate the impacts of lead time reduction on fabric sourcing in apparel production with yield and environmental considerations; iii) To explore commercial used apparel collection operations in retail supply chains. These problems are new and have not been studied in the extant literature. To analyze the proposed problems, we build stylized analytical models and derived the following main results: Firstly, we find that the "constant tax" does not encourage sustainable product design and the "zero tax" is even better than the "constant tax". On the contrary, the "linear tax" can promote sustainable product design and can be regarded as the best. We further discover that the "linear tax" can help balance the design for environment (DfE) level, the stakeholders' benefits and the social welfare performance. The leveraging effect of marginal DfE allowance in the "linear tax" is surprisingly important and useful. Secondly, when the fabric supplier's profit is improved under lead time reduction, the environment must be hurt. We hence propose the use of an environment tax to help and prove that lead time reduction can even improve the environment if the environment tax is appropriately set. Finally, we show that the product's demand coefficients of variation would mediate how the fabric production yield affects the fabric supplier's expected benefit as well as the expected harm to the environment under lead time reduction. Thirdly, we consider the case when a fashion retail brand promotes its used apparel collection (UAC) program and collects the used apparel from consumers in the basic model. Depending on the conditions of the collected apparel products, the fashion retail brand will classify and either donate them for charity or send to remanufacturing. For either case, the fashion retail brand gains a benefit. We analytically derive in closed-form the optimal promotion effort and study the mechanism for supply chain coordination. Our results indicate that many traditional supply contracts fail to achieve supply chain coordination. Thus, the effort cost sharing (ECS) contract is proposed and proven to be effective for "profit" coordination. Finally, managerial insights are generated, and future research directions are discussed. |
| Rights: | All rights reserved |
| Access: | open access |
Copyright Undertaking
As a bona fide Library user, I declare that:
- I will abide by the rules and legal ordinances governing copyright regarding the use of the Database.
- I will use the Database for the purpose of my research or private study only and not for circulation or further reproduction or any other purpose.
- I agree to indemnify and hold the University harmless from and against any loss, damage, cost, liability or expenses arising from copyright infringement or unauthorized usage.
By downloading any item(s) listed above, you acknowledge that you have read and understood the copyright undertaking as stated above, and agree to be bound by all of its terms.
Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item:
https://theses.lib.polyu.edu.hk/handle/200/11431