Round Table Certification

The idea to start a Round Table Session on the topic of certification developed out of numerous inquiries of our member companies regarding this issue. In course of the workshop several certificates and standards have been introduced in order to give the companies a better overview.Subsequently Foursource GmbH and Setlog GmbH presented their relevant software platforms. The workshop was set out to facilitate an open dialogue on these topics, which manifested itself in the several discussions about those issues that concern the industry most at the end of the event.

Mini-Presentation Certifiers

Firstly Dr. Ostrop of the Hohenstein Institute introduced the Öko-Tex Products, such as the Standard 100, STeP and the „Made-In-Green“ Label. The Made-In-Green Label allows the consumer to transparently track down the production processes of an item via a QR-Code.
The FKT e.V., as pointed out by Dr. Doser, differs from other certifiers in as far as it examines certain substances that can emerge from textiles and possibly harm the body. Thus, the test label primarily focuses on the production processes.
Dr. Richter presented the PFI. Originally specializing on shoes, the institute meanwhile tests leather products, synthetics in cars, medical products and safety clothing. The PFI has a chemical, physical and microbiological department.
Following this, Ms Pfeifer introduced the GOTS Standard. GOTS describes a natural fiber standard (at least 70% have to come from ecological cultivation/animal breeding). Furthermore, the standard includes social standard criteria and thus encompasses the entire manufacturing process of a product.
Lastly Ms Wirtz presented Fairtrade / TransFair e.V.. The Fairtrade-Seal includes numerous standards for products from different industries, including a textile standard. This standard contains the whole supply chain and therefore covers social, ecological and economical criteria. Ms Wirtz was accompanied by Ms Rosado who represented FLO-CERT GmbH, a certifier who stands in co-operation with TransFair e.V. FLO-CERT was founded in 2003 and primarily certifies in the area of social standards and minimum wage.

FOURSOURCE GmbH

After the certifiers‘ short presentations Godecke Wessel and Jonas Wand from Foursource GmbH presented their new digital sourcing platform for the textile industry. With regards to issues like the growing digitalization, higher transparecy requirements and demands of companies that keep getting more complex, Foursource developed a sourcing-platform that aims to simplify all these demands and therefore enables faster, digital and efficient sourcing processes. Foursource can be best imagined as „Parship for companies and suppliers“: it’s a profile data base where both companies and suppliers can register and set up an individual profile containing all relevant information – completely open and transparent. This also includes the certificates oft he suppliers and the certificate requierements of the companies. The certificates‘ validation is given through the respective name, location and number, which can be reviewed via a scan. The respective companies and suppliers can then be brought together on the basis of their provided information by a match-making algorithm. Foursource has been online for 13 weeks and already has a three-digit membership.

Setlog GmbH

Subsequently Georg Jürgens of Setlog GmbH held a presentation on Setlogs Innovation Project „QualityNavigator“. In this project Setlog’s 16 years of experience in Supply Chain and Vendor Compliance Management is bundled in order to develop a overarching platform for quality managament. The project’s background are the many manual processes, media disruptions and the high costs of product examinations and inspections. Regarding these issues, Setlog has conducted interviews with its customers of the textile industry, in order to understand the problems in the quality managament sector. The solution Setlog developed is a platform which simplifies the cooperation between testing institutes, suppliers and purchasers. The platform’s services digitalizes the information and data from product examinations, inspections and audits. This ensures the documentation and analyzability of all processes. The platform is currently still in development but will be made accessible for Early Adopter soon.

After the presentations a lively discussion on many topics evolved. How can digitialization help in dealing with the „certification pressure“ that lasts on the industry these days? The growing transparency demands of society, the press, NGOs, as well as of many end-consumers pose enormous challenges for big companies with countless suppliers and production locations. The need for a longer discussion only reflects the importance of topics such as certification, standards and digitalization in the current industry. For this reason the DTB plans another workshop on this topic which will provide a deeper insight into the issues.