Fast fashion still comes with deadly risks, 10 years after the Rana Plaza disaster – the industry's many moving pieces make it easy to cut corners

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Ravi Anupindi, University of Michigan

(THE CONVERSATION) On April 24, 2013, a multistory garment factory complex in Bangladesh called Rana Plaza collapsed, killing more than 1,000 workers and injuring another 2,500. It remains the worst accident in the history of the apparel industry and one of the deadliest industrial accidents in the world.

Several factories inside the complex produced apparel for Western brands, including Benetton, Primark and Walmart, shining a spotlight on the unsafe conditions in which a sizable portion of Americans’ cheap clothing is produced. The humanitarian tragedy hit home as wealthy nations’ shoppers wrestled with their own complicity and called for reforms – but a decade later, progress is still patchy.

As a professor of operations and supply chain management, I believe it is important to understand how the complex and fragmented supply chains that are the norm in the clothing industry create conditions where unsafe conditions and abuse can flourish – and make it difficult to assign responsibility for reforms.

Shamed into action?

Rana...