Research in risk assessment for textile and apparel and propose a future research agenda with a conceptual framework

Risk assessment is a critical segment in risk management theory for evaluating the potential risk from a collection of testing data addressing the safety problems of textile and apparel. Risk assessment has become an increasing popular and valuable measure in product safety analysis research, and major industries typically employ different assessment methods. This article describes the process of conducting risk assessment for textile and apparel: selecting evaluation indicators; deciding evaluation principles; developing conceptual assessment framework; conducting the actual assessment (including information how to do the evaluation on popular computer packages such as MATLAB2008a) and doing some more advanced assessment. Guidance is also given on how to write up a risk assessment results for textile and apparel. Quantitative and highly reliable evaluation of textile and apparel risks, relatively easy grading classification and simplicity in operating the evaluation process are the advantages that promote the application of risk assessment model based on fuzzy neural network for textile and apparel, and actual empirical analysis showed considerably good applicability. The research is useful to ensure safety textile and apparel in market, also contributing to the sustainable development of textile industries in future.