Bangladesh’s Social Accountability International (SAI) and Vertru have developed FairCapacity, a digital platform with the goal of improving labour practices and working conditions in the apparel sector. Garment manufacturers in Bangladesh and India can access it at no cost, gaining prioritised access to new digital tools and free training.
The virtual launch event for the FairCapacity platform was held on December 10, 2021, featuring speakers from India’s Apparel Export Promotion Council, National Institute of Fashion Technology, Netee Exports, International Labour Organisation (ILO) India, and The Global Fund to End Modern Slavery (GFEMS), the company said in a media statement.
Faced with pressing business demands, manufacturers in apparel supply chains often take on more orders than they can handle, and find themselves at increased risk of excessive overtime, unauthorised subcontracting, forced labour, health, and safety issues, employee burnout, absenteeism, and lower productivity. The FairCapacity Platform seeks to address these problems through much improved production capacity measurement and planning, responsible sub-contracting, and better buyer-supplier communication. It lets buyers know in real-time and with confidence if suppliers have the capacity to complete orders at a high quality and in compliance with labour expectations in the allotted time.
The inspiration for FairCapacity comes from innovations like Hotels.com and other platforms that transform how businesses optimise their capacity and attract more customers. Unlike other platforms, FairCapacity will help factories and suppliers meet social compliance requirements, promote responsible subcontracting, and help improve production planning to avoid overextension, according to SAI.
The project also focuses on improving purchasing practices and encouraging sourcing and production processes that enable social compliance, benefit business, and increase consumer confidence, ultimately benefitting the bottom line. Even for those that do not have serious concerns about excessive work hours or unauthorised subcontracting in their supply chains, there are still many ways buyers can benefit from this project.
With FairCapacity, buyers get increased transparency from suppliers, increased visibility into typical procurement challenges and improved ability to mitigate long-term and short-term performance risks, expanded ability to fill orders through better production planning and capacity utilisation, ability to view supplier commitments to compliance (view certifications, associations, and initiatives in which they take part), and enhanced ability to work together with suppliers.
“This is a great opportunity for brands to gain deeper insight into operations within their supply chains. With the Capacity Calculator in the FairCapacity platform, suppliers will be able to consider meaningful inputs they may not have had the ability to formally quantify before,” Louis Vanegas, senior director at SAI said in a statement.
“FairCapacity encourages increased transparency, responsible subcontracting and supplier control over their available capacity. With these mechanisms in place, buyers can demonstrate their due diligence on forced labour and other labour performance risks even at lower tiers of the supply chain,” Stephanie Wilson, associate director of innovation and partnerships at SAI said.