Textile Automation

Listing ID #1022672

Increasing global competition, energy costs, living costs and high inflation have made it difficult for the textile industry of pakistan to compete in european and north american markets. For the government, finding solutions to the economic recession seems secondary to tackling the political crises in the country. The industry is currently on the verge of collapsing and many of its workers face lay-offs. The textile sector contributes 55 per cent to total national exports and employs 38 per cent of the total productive workforce. The industry has experienced slowed growth in value added textiles, with the exception of garment manufacturing; a sub sector which has shown some promise. However, because pakistan is known as an unreliable supplier, even garment orders suffering.
To cope with the situation, investors and mill owners are looking for solutions such as relocating factories outside pakistan (dubai, bangladesh etc.), promoting semi finished cotton products and yarns, searching for productivity and system improvements, downsizing, or more drastically, shutting down.
Threats to the industry. The industry faces many threats to its survival. Included among these are a lack of large orders, frequent style changes in products, low price negotiations, lack of skilled and unskilled labor, increased energy costs and unavailability of sufficient energy, increasing wages and costs of facilities, hidden expenses incurred in complying with international standards, law and order problems that delay production, taxes and the withdrawal of rebates on export garments and problems with logistics and road conditions.
So far, system changes through business process re-engineering (bpr) or automation have not been considered as solutions, as many industrialists rely on traditional approaches or follow their competition rather than invest in research and development.
How automation can help, the benefits of automation include lessened dependence on skilled labor, reduced expenses on lighting, transport, meals, human resource management and other facilities, increases in sewing time and productivity by 200 to 300 per cent and a return on investment within a year. Moreover, the excessive movement of material and labour, a non value added operation, is common in the garment industry. Centralised cutting or packaging facilities can reduce the costs associated with this.
Most large scale garment factories own quite a lot of automated machineries imported from japan or germany at high capital costs. In the recent past, automation companies have developed equipment to automate various factories, enabling them to meet international standards and increasing productivity by more than 100 per cent.
Automation companies have now come out with low cost technology – locally developed robots, equipment and machinery – which can be used to automate the sewing process.
To keep inventories to minimum required levels and reduce extra expenditures and idle stocks, stores can be automated to monitor levels of the in-hand stock of goods.
In the ‘cutting’ operation, most factories are already utilising automated machinery.
Packing areas can also be automated to reduce losses and achieve higher accuracy. This will also reduce the need for labour in ironing and pressing operations, where high temperature is a health hazard.
Automating the stitching process addresses most of the threats the industry faces. It will reduce costs and increase productivity and help develop export oriented garment manufacturing. It will also position the industry at par with state of the art technology which will help overcome restrictions imposed upon exports by developed countries.