The American Apparel & Footwear Association (AAFA) has published a five-part heat stress toolkit for the global garment and footwear supply chain, giving brands and manufacturers a shared framework to protect workers as extreme heat events become more frequent and persistent.
The toolkit builds on the trade group’s Guide to Protecting Workers from Heat Stress, Version 2.0, released in April 2026. It is open to all industry stakeholders and is designed to be practical, AAFA said, stressing that it is neither an audit protocol nor another compliance standard.
The package includes an introduction, management guidelines and a workbook for manufacturers, implementation guidelines for brands, and a supplier survey questionnaire. Manufacturers can use the materials to develop facility-level heat stress plans, while brands can build their own management processes without duplicating existing efforts.
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The toolkit rests on five principles: protecting workers, measuring action, sharing risk and financial responsibility, prioritizing context over prescription, and making communication two-way. AAFA said data should trigger protection and target investment, remaining with the facility to avoid duplicative reporting requests. It added that no single solution fits every factory, given differences in operational, financial, technical and local conditions.
The approach asks brands and manufacturers to share the investment and potential disruption involved in building resilience, rather than expecting suppliers to collect more data, undergo another audit or absorb costs alone. Both sides are encouraged to plan together and communicate expectations early, so production impacts are addressed before they become crises.
The AAFA Heat Guidance Working Group, which includes brands, manufacturers and worker-advocacy groups, developed the brand guidelines and supplier survey. The Fashion Producer Collective created the manufacturer guidelines and workbook. Contributors included Elevate Textiles, Epic Group, Shahi Exports and YKK Corporation. Some materials require sign-in for full access on the AAFA website, it said.