Currently I was suggested by two friends in a video conference to refer some transparency platforms on the market. ProductDNA, Haelixa, retraced, SUPPLYSHIFT, Transparency-One, Sedex and many more had been developed and promoted in the last few years. It is claimed that the transparency of supply chains of different industries could be improved exponentially through these platforms, therefore the process to improve the sustainability targets like should be accelerated in wide range. There is no doubt, that transparency is the very first step and an on-going piece of sustainability work. In many of these platforms, you may map your supply chain by inviting buyers and suppliers via email, typing in the general information. Like professional networking media such as LinkedIn, if everyone does so, reality-close supply chains, or even business communities can be mapped, as the base. On this base, related reports, certificates and order information can be uploaded and exchanged with different setting of visibility levels toward different partners. It seems to be a very smart solution compared with exchanging all those information via calls and mails, like an ERP, specialized for supply chain, not within an single enterprise, but for the whole industry, and even more, so far being said in all marketing clichés. But really, is it the way we work in the future? Numerous German transformation thinkers like Maja Goepel and Jule&Lukas Bosch have already given the answer. Sustainability has to be combined with digitalized solutions in the future, and a good digital solution should make sustainability visible , measurable and scalable (lessbar, messbar und eskalierbar in German)! Most of the transparency platforms can ease textile companies to make supply chains transparent ( visible ), especially for the business users. Brands will be put under more pressure to certify their manufacturers and eventually improve those manufacturers´ social and environmental conditions of factories we haven´t “seen” before. And here come the limits of things. Many of these transparency platforms seem not really understand the textile business, although they claim the textile business should be fit for the platforms. Categories for document exchange are reserved by platforms like bluesign or OEKO-TEX certificate, which are order-based and one-off document, and provide no reference for other orders and other buyers in the business network. Not to mention that ownerships of documents are different depending on contracts and business practice, if it comes to the question, who should upload which document for what purpose and why on my/you/their cost. Furtherly, the whole certificate business, developed by a few large trend-makers such as SGS, Bureau Veritas and TÜV etc. are based on verifying and auditing, in other words, test but not teach. There is no existing system to coach or improve most of the sustainability goals. amfori and SAC mentioned till 14 environmental performance areas, but till now just a small part of capacity building modules for 2 areas (wastewater and chemical management) were provided. Surely these areas are huge. But let´s just forget about the other 12 areas! All these make platforms still have a long way to make performances of suppliers measurable and scalable. Specialization and localization in individual industries will be a good way for platforms to get more practical substance. Otherwise, it would be too optimistic to make claims like penetrating the garment supply chain till the cotton farmers in the next 5 or even 10 years. Do the transparency platform know that far before the cotton farmers (tier 6, 7 supplier), even the upstream manufacturers, like spinning mills (tier 3, 4 suppliers, mostly multi-billions enterprises) speak no word English, except the only salesman, who has no time for operating on any external platform. If they don´t directly work with the key authorities of supplying countries, all these ambitious claims stay just marketing slogan. A small story of mine in this aspect in-between: As I was leader of the sustainability of a mid-sized German garment importer. In 2018, my German and local teams contributed amfori on the new BEPI platform more than half of factory data of the total database. This kept even for the next 2 years, so that I was always very welcome by amfori. But I kept it for myself that most of the factory data up from tier 2 were not contributed by those factories (because they simply didn´t understand the BEPI platform), but by my teams in name and permission of the factories, which was the only way to fulfill our client requirement. For suppliers and manufacturers, using these different transparency platforms will be a total chaos! Till now, they still could barely follow to cooperate organizing certification with different buyers in different styles, via emails. Can you imagine that manufacturers should change to use not one but different platforms to manage those papers in near future? Provided that 1% of employees in a mid-sized German textile company can master to operate on one single platform (for instance BEPI) correctly, according to my experience, there is no chance for an Asian factory to find one guy who can operate on 3 different platforms! Finally, we should put ourselves in our suppliers´ role and ask, what do our suppliers gain on this platform? The key toward any successful sustainability change, if it doesn´t come top-down from the legislator, is always a win-win-split between buyer and supplier, spender and receiver. If the answer for this question is still not clear or direct enough, we need to rethink on this approach before we jump to implement it.

Heute wurden wir von einem Unternehmen gefragt, für wen das Lieferkettengesetz gelten wird. Vorab kann man natürlich erstmal nur mutmaßen. Erste Gesetzesentwürfe sind Stand heute noch in Arbeit. Man darf wohl annehmen, dass sich das Gesetz vor allem auf dieselben Grundlagen, wie der Nationale Aktionsplan für Menschenrechte stützen wird. Zudem scheint es auch wahrscheinlich, dass sich die Grüne-Knopf-Zertifizierung als Absicherung gegen rechtliche Risken erweisen wird. Somit kann man davon ausgehen, dass der Gesetzestext sich auf die Unternehmen mit mehr als 500 Mitarbeiter beziehen wird. Eine Umsatzgrößenordnung wird sicherlich ebenfalls festgesetzt werden mit dem Versuch, kleine Unternehmen auszunehmen. Man darf allerdings daran zweifeln, dass kleinere Unternehmen damit "aus dem Schneider" sind. Unsere Märkte werden nicht von milliardenschweren Konzernen mit tausenden von Mitarbeitern versorgt. Vielmehr wird der Einzelhandel, aber auch jedes Markenunternehmen von einer Vielzahl von mittelständischen Spezialisten, die in Europa sitzen, versorgt. Der Fertigwaren-Importeur, die Handelsagentur und sogar das in Deutschland konfektionierende Unternehmen, das unter Made-in-Germany labelt, das sind die Unternehmen, die den Großteil der Waren im europäischen Wirtschaftsraum an den Kunden bringen, B2B, B2C, online und offline. Das Großunternehmen, das vergisst diese wichtigen Partner in sein Nachhaltigkeitskonzept einzubeziehen, handelt nicht nur in Fernost oder Südamerika fahrlässig, sondern schon vor der eigenen Haustüre. Deshalb werden die Zulieferer in Deutschland, egal welcher Größe, der Erfüllung der rechtlichen Rahmenbedingungen zuarbeiten müssen. Und das ist auch gut so. Die Lieferkette ist kein asiatisches Problem. Vielmehr wird seit Jahren unterschätzt, dass die vermeintlich kleinen Händler, die die Mehrheit der Unternehmen stellen, sich um die Wette und um Kopf und Kragen unterbieten müssen, um Aufträge von potenten Kunden zu bekommen. Das ist ein globales Problem, von der Milch bis zum T-Shirt, von Berlin bis Jakarta. Derjenige, der am besten mit Risiko und Preis jongliert, gewinnt. Wettbewerb ist gut. Wettbewerb ist wichtig. Umso wichtiger ist, dass dieser zu fairen Bedingungen erfolgt und soziale Gerechtigkeit geschützt wird, sowie die Umwelt. Das gilt nicht allein in der ach so fernen Lieferkette, sondern beginnt bei uns, bei allen Unternehmen, unabhängig von der Größe. Deshalb muss das Lieferkettengesetz für alle geschaffen werden. Es wird alle betreffen. Nicht nur die Großen.

The “Germany Quality” is a well-known “slang” by many in the production countries, not only because of the good quality of German products, but also the high quality-level that German enterprises expect from their suppliers. Since the case of Rana Plaza in 2013, many Germany enterprises have, again, token the lead, in all kinds of ranking, to improve the social conditions in many production sites in Asian. We almost think, this could become a great tradition of German, for the next coming challenges. As Greenpeace had especially set a DETOX ranking for the German supermarket giants in 2014, followed by preparation to challenge selected German Brands, big steps ahead compared to the global level, to improve the environmental condition in textile wet processing factories till 2020. But till now, no feedback shows that the German would become the global leader for environmental compliance. Not to mention the next new-coming goals for the next decade, such as circular economy, for textile business. Not only the Nordic countries, even UK, Holland and France are known for having put great effort to achieve this goal. But where is the Germany consensus on circular economy? Different to CSR (cooperate social responsibility) work, which has a very strong focus on tier 1 producers, CER (cooperate environmental responsibility) and circular economy require a much deeper work along the supply chain (Tier 2 even 3 factories) and this work is totally knowledge-based. The German businesspeople have been very straightforward with quality issues, which is not a bad thing, but analog relying on lab reports. And that is exactly the problem. A DETOX report show a clean result, but the dyeing mill is in bad conditions like those a hundred years ago, barely lighted, machines and ground are covered by dick film of different color and dirt, strong unpleasant smell, people handling chemicals without using glove. “But It does have a good report, so DETOX is fine.”, said a buying director. And he is not a single case. Most of them struggle a lot to come out of the old mindset, that tests are not all the ingredients in the CER work, but also, internal & external audits, capacity building work, the multi-stakeholder-projects aligned with science-based targets!! GIZ has been doing great work in market research in different topics, environmental friendly dyeing technologies, circular economy etc., but implementation is the job of “partnership for Sustainable Textiles (also called Textilebündnis)”, who has finally brought out a yearly project in 2017 in several Asian countries, a training section called “Advanced Chemical Management Training”, which covers probably 1% of the wet processing factories in production countries, while I organized for my company similar program covering more than 10% of our factories, every year. Without going into details, but it is way too little to meet the necessary effect for a solid change! It seems clearly, that we need a correct mainstream consensus and some efficient tools to reach a consensus to facilitate good and feasible solutions. Without that, we are still not far away from that starting point. It was great to have some German consultation firms on the market, who also provide services in CER in production countries, Systain, GoBlu, etc. But we might need more options, options that we develop together for us, powerful but cost-efficient. So, please leave some comment and tell me what you think. See ya around!