This paper aims to reveal how paying manufacturing workers with living wages instead of minimum wages increases business costs and alters comparative advantages among 98 multi-tier supply chains, as well as to find the level of wage increase to make the lowest cost supply chain lose its competitiveness. Both scenario and sensitivity analyses are employed. The findings show that paying living wages neither significantly increases business costs nor influences comparative advantages of the 98 supply chains, implying no manufacturing relocation and unemployment. Furthermore, the findings present the importance of proximity between materials and product manufacturing locations. Lastly, governments can potentially create their location competitiveness supporting low transportation costs and port fees, and incentivizing materials manufacturing to attract other manufacturing activities.

There has been a significant increase in the number of women involved in various security duties. However, they mostly wear men’s ballistic vests with smaller sizes, which bring poor ballistic protection performance, less comfort, and negative psychological effects. In recent decades, considerable efforts have also been made to improve the overall performance of ballistic protective vest for women. However, a ballistic vest that properly adjusts the chest area for different morphologies to provide a good fit, comfort, and better ballistic protection is very important and in high demand. Our current research study introduces a new 2D-3D-2D pattern re-engineering design method and automatic pattern generation on the adaptive 3D virtual mannequin to develop the first and multi-layer pattern for a seamless women ballistic vest. The method mainly eliminates the inclusion of darts to achieve the required breast volume with better fit and most importantly satisfactory ballistic protection.

The textile coloration sector normally employs the color stripping process for correcting the various faults obtained during the wet processing operations like the printing and dyeing. However, the traditional method for the color stripping carries with it the possibility of grave ecological pollution. The purpose of this work is to investigate the new, ecological method such as ozone based process for the color stripping of the reactive dyed textiles. This novel ozonation process was performed at room temperature with low amount of chemical auxiliaries. The effects of different process parameters like the acidic pH, 45 g/m3 ozone concentration and the treatment time of 30 minutes on the color stripping was investigated. Additional colorimetric analysis has been studied. The results indicate that the color stripping was achieved effectively at the atmospheric temperature with the ozonation process. This proposed technique was successfully implemented for the color stripping of different reactive dyes on the cotton substrate.

The purpose of this work was to investigate the potential application of scCO2 dyeing technology to produce functional and smart textiles. Selected dyes and functional agents were applied to polyester fabric using the scCO2 impregnation technique. The effects of the processing variables on the functional and colour performances were explored. The results showed that scCO2 is a viable technique to produce functional polyester fabric in a resource-efficient and eco-friendly way. Dyed polyester fabric with additional functionalities such as antimicrobial, antioxidant, UV protection, and UV sensing properties were realised. The fabrics developed have demonstrated desirable colour and functional properties without affecting each other confirming compatibility. Moreover, the functional fabrics exhibited the required durability and fastness properties sufficient for various applications. This research project contributes towards widening the application of the supercritical CO2 dyeing technique and paves a way for sustainable production of functional and smart textiles in a resource-efficient and eco-friendly way.

The objectives of this work are to investigate the use of different eco-technologies as strategies for immobilization of redox enzymes on conductive carbon-based felts, to produce bio-functionalized textiles for a future use in sustainable applications while maintaining low environmental impact. Methods using cold remote plasma, electrically conductive biocompatible coating (PEDOT:PSS) and natural crosslinker for the enzyme (genipin) were tested and showed to be efficient in the intended applications. The enzymatic activity of the used glucose oxidase was maintained for multiple number of uses, and showed potential in sustainable wastewater treatment applications in bio-Fenton and bio-electro-Fenton setups.