The Worldwide Responsible Accredited Production (WRAP) has issued a call for a new approach to social compliance saying past attempts at harmonisation across the supply chain have repeatedly failed.
In a position paper, WRAP says the new approach to social compliance in a post-pandemic world is based on a handful of specialised, professional, independent organisations providing a “menu-of-options” for the supply chain as a whole instead of having duplicative proprietary programmes. It also calls upon those independent organisations to work together in concert to be more efficient when it comes to where existing expertise and coverage lie.
“Previous attempts to harmonise have typically involved a call to coalesce around a ‘let’s all just do it this one-way’ banner, the implication being that a single-player/entity or a single standard has the “right” answer, with its champions telling everyone to do it that way and no other. Harmonisation, under this approach, means everyone singing the same single note,” reads the paper.
Elaborating on a webinar for the Apparel Textile Sourcing Virtual (ATSV) event, WRAP CEO Avedis Sefarian explained: “Attempts at harmonisation have all failed because the central theme of this has been to do it just one way. It’s easy to say ‘If we all do it my way we will have harmony’. It doesn’t work that way. There are multiple ways to do things, multiple approaches, multiple mechanisms with multiple benefits to them,” adding that they have been primarily dominated by brands and retailers using their own proprietary social compliance programmes.
“Telling vendors you have to be checked in our way according to our rules ultimately results in audit fatigue. Harmonisation attempts, even though ostensibly being about supply chain management, have tended not to think of the supply chain holistically, but to treat it as having one end in opposition to the other. Even if some attempts have made it a point of involving representatives from across the supply chain, they operate on the assumption that the “rules” are set at the buyer end and go upstream from there. But the truth is the underlying challenge is one for the supply chain as a whole,” WRAP says in its position paper.
The coronavirus pandemic has disrupted the supply chain globally with factories losing orders, company closures and workers out of jobs. The pandemic has thrown the sourcing process under the spotlight with brands and retailers criticised for the purchasing practices they have conducted for years.
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By GlobalDataThe position paper examines the pre-competitive (pre-consumer-facing) phase of social compliance programmes across various stakeholder organisations, including buyers, manufacturers, and multistakeholder initiatives, and introduces a new term, “symphonisation” to describe “a more rationalised approach to harmonisation”.
“We believe that the term symphonisation far more accurately exemplifies the desired path, which is to play or sound together harmoniously. And in achieving an apparel industry symphony, we hope to reach that even broader goal of the supply chain – sustainability.
“The supply chain must be seen as a network and an ecosystem; all of our actions affect one another. The benefit of symphonisation is that it makes clear supply chain compliance is not something you have to (or even could) figure out alone. Expert organisations with experience, each differing slightly from one another, form a menu-of-options to collectively meet your specific needs.”
The paper calls for the abandonment of company-owned programmes and instead the utilisation of independent programmes out there doing “a credible job”, thereby eliminating the need for multiple audits in a compliance programme.
“A period of great uncertainty and challenge – this is our reality right now and it is not going to change very soon,” Sefarian said on the ATSV webinar. “These conditions we are in are causing major upheaval across the supply chain. Sourcing models themselves are being questioned at the foundational level. Are we going to be able to go back to those extended supply chains? Are we going to need to consider reshoring or onshoring? Are we going to be able to have seasons that are months-long in planning? Are we going to be able to go back to that? I think the answer is no. Some of these changes the pandemic has already affected or is about to are here to stay. Fundamental changes are coming too, the supply chain sourcing model at its core.
“Going forward the importance of aligning with a credible independent social compliance programme will be important – they bring more credibility to the process. The future should involve collaboration between these programmes to further improve the efficiency and efficacy of this model. Social compliance is then marching deeper into the supply chain, beyond the first tier, going into tier 2, tier 3, and so on.
“Ultimately it is a question of ensuring more robust, flexible, and resilient supply chains. We need to be able to handle these crises better because I sure don’t want to have to go through all this again. Truly, when you boil it down to its essence this is a question of sustainability. Can we sustain supply chains? We have to evolve, we have to get that more flexible and more resilient method.”
