Industry 4.0 (I4.0) Based Virtual Organization Model for the Coordination of Sustainable Textile Supply Chain

Abstract

The lack of attention on the forward and backward supply chain issues, i.e., the transparency between supply chain agents, information sharing, resource deployment, workforce knowledge, waste reduction, cost efficiency, and resource management are the major problems of textile supply chain. The coordination of forward and backward supply chain becomes difficult due to the players' self-interest and firmographics. It becomes much complicated when we consider the triple bottom line of sustainability (TBLS) in the supply chain. Therefore, in this paper, we propose an Industry 4.0 (I4.0) based virtual organization model for the coordination of the forward and backward supply chain. The results obtained through virtual organization model are also compared with the centralized supply chain and traditional cost-sharing contract. The results reveal that virtual organization model can perform better than the price only contract and it will be help firms in achieving greater sustainability with respect to traditional contract mechanisms.