Will 3D printing make the mass fashion industry more sustainable?

Exploring the disruptive potential of AM in the mass apparel industry

What will the practical consequences be for the industry? PhD candidate Marlene Hohn and Professor Christian Durach from ESCP Business School (Berlin campus) explored the subject in a recent research article. “As AM may bring significant change to how and where goods are produced, the technology's emergence stands to significantly affect the governance mechanisms of current supply chains which, in turn, is likely to alter existing social sustainability conditions,” they explain.

The question of the impact is particularly worth exploring in the mass apparel industry as supply chains are highly disintegrated, with retail firms yielding significant power over suppliers. Scholars have repeatedly draw a link between these governance structures and the industry's severe social shortcomings, such as child labour, excessive working hours and unsafe conditions.

To investigate the impact of the implementation of AM in the mass apparel industry, the researchers conducted two Delphi studies, rounds of surveys with recognized experts in order to obtain informed predictions. They first picked the brains of their selected experts to develop the most likely scenarios for how apparel mass production could be reshaped by AM technology. The second study built on these potential changes in apparel firms' ecosystems and focused on the potential impact on supply chain governance and social sustainability issues.

Reshaping the industry through complementarity or reshoring

The experts identified two possible uses for AM: as a standalone or complementary production technology – based on the assumption that it will reach technological maturity at some point.

• The “complementarity” scenario
  First and foremost, the experts agreed that introducing AM to current production processes would facilitate the design process, with easier prototyping and mass-customization. One likely scenario also suggested that “as factories can 3-D print machine spare parts independently, downtimes due to machine failures (...) will be significantly reduced.”
• The “reshored production” scenario
  As components of existing apparel items (such as bags or shoes) could be produced using AM, the relocation of these production steps to main consumer markets becomes possible, as does the repair of such items.
  
  In both cases, a likely consequence is a decrease in demand for manual labour.

Mixed consequences on supply chains and social sustainability

What would be the impact on producers in a “complementarity” scenario? For one, the experts believe that safety concerns are likely to be less of an issue in potential AM machine-operating jobs than in traditional unskilled jobs, and would be better paid. Upstream, producers would potentially decrease their dependency on suppliers of components such as zippers, subcontract less, and as a result better monitor social working conditions.
Notwithstanding, the experts remain sceptical about who would reap the potential benefits, rather suggesting that “more powerful actors in the downstream supply chain will capture any resulting economic gains, for example due to the decrease in order lead times.”

For the “reshored production” scenario, the study data suggests that new supply chains will likely be based on governance structures “very similar” to current ones. Indeed, the expert panel believes that the high-value-added activities surrounding the AM-based printing of apparel items will be dominated by a few big firms, with AM-based production possibly relocated in ‘the Global North’ and input material production in the Global South. This would likely merely reproduce the current power differential between manufacturers and their supply chains, with new supply chains facing similar social sustainability issues, for example regarding unpaid overtime.

Finally, in the short term, a partial transfer of production to the Global North is likely to increase competition, threatening the jobs of the unskilled workers in current producer countries. However, write the researchers, in the long run “the reshoring trend may lead some apparel producers to change their cost-leadership business strategy to a differentiation strategy” and refocus production “toward high value-added items produced under improved working conditions.”