Keynote speaker: Dr. Aydın Alptekinoğlu, Professor of Operations and Supply Chain Management and Robert G. Schwartz University Endowed Fellow in Business Administration at Penn State’s Smeal College of Business.

Title: Choking the Planet: The Dangers of the Global Fashion Supply Chain

Abstract: The global fashion industry produces a large variety of fashion items in advance of highly uncertain and fickle demand. “Fast Fashion” results in colossal overproduction, wage theft, and major contributions to landfills all over the world. Could mass customization—producing on-demand exactly what the customer wants in mass scale—help change this model and contribute toward a more sustainable fashion future?