How does digital transformation bring "new opportunities" to the textile industry?

Let's see what world-class problems the textile industry has encountered.

First, high energy consumption. Textile and garment industry is the world's second largest manufacturer of environmental pollution after the petrochemical industry. Only planting 1kg cotton requires about 20000kg water and a large amount of pesticides and fertilizers; Each ton of dyed fabric needs at least 200 tons of fresh water, thousands of chemicals and a lot of energy consumption.

The second is high pollution. From materials to ready to wear, processing and manufacturing and logistics distribution layer by layer, many waste and pollution are hidden in each link.

The third is high inventory, which is a disadvantage of the clothing industry. It is estimated that 20% - 30% of the clothing produced in the industry will become inventory. The industry is generally overcapacity and overstocked in inventory, and the supply cannot accurately predict and match the demand, and the enterprise cannot predict how many pieces can be sold in any "style code". After consuming a lot of energy and causing a lot of pollution, these stocks can also be burned by a fire!! H&M was exposed to burning nearly 60 tons of inventory in 5 years, with an average of 12 tons burned in a year

Relevant problems have been raised ten years ago, but have not been properly solved. Can digital transformation bring about a turnaround for the textile industry?

Textile industry is a cost sensitive and labor-intensive industry. It is an inevitable law to seek cost depression and policy highland. New development modes and paths must be explored. Therefore, digital transformation is one of the necessary means. Moreover, the rapid change of the market and the continuous refinement and customization of the product line also require enterprises to change to the intelligent and innovative direction.

In China, the digital transformation of the textile industry is more urgent. China is the largest textile and garment producer, consumer and exporter in the world, and the country with the most complete textile industry chain and the most complete categories. Textile industry is the fastest growing industry in China and the most influential industry in the world. With the rapid growth of China's economy, the market potential and demand prospects of the textile industry will be broader.

Therefore, China attaches great importance to the digital transformation of the textile industry. In 2021, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology released the second batch of typical application scenarios and key industry practices of "5G+Industrial Internet", including the textile industry. Relevant policies also point out that the digital transformation of the textile industry should be gradually realized. In June 2021, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology proposed in the "Fourteenth Five Year Plan" Development Outline of the Textile Industry to continuously deepen the adjustment, transformation and upgrading of the industrial structure, strengthen scientific and technological innovation and personnel training, and build a number of world-class advanced textile industry clusters. The Action Plan for the Development of the Industrial Internet in the Textile Industry (2018-2020) proposes to vigorously develop the industrial Internet in the textile industry, promote the deep integration of the Internet and the textile industry, promote the transformation, upgrading and high-quality development of the textile industry, and build a textile power.

Therefore, promoting the digital transformation of the textile industry is the direction of joint efforts of the industry.

Through the comprehensive sorting and summary of the whole industry, it is concluded that there are six major bottlenecks in the development of the textile industry.

Basic management lacks effective management tools, and the process is confused and error prone. As a traditional industry, the textile industry is often lack of efficient and accurate management tools and management systems, with decentralized business processes and low efficiency.

High requirements for order customization, large variety of production, small batch, fast renovation and personalized customization have brought a strong impact on large-scale production. Multi variety, small batch and quick renovation have become the new features of orders. The equipment, process, process and concept of traditional factories are all suitable for mass production, and the flexibility is seriously insufficient.

The control over the warehousing and unloading of surface and auxiliary materials is not strict, and the material control management is difficult. It is not strict to control the warehousing and unloading of surface and auxiliary materials, and it is difficult to find the required sample quickly after the sample is completed. Due to the large material control management, it is impossible to know the real-time distribution of materials during procurement and production; When cutting, it is unknown whether the length and range of the fabric match the shipping mark.

The cost of energy consumption remains high, and the cost of pollution control is high. As a high energy consuming enterprise, the cost of textile enterprises is mainly composed of electricity and water. At the same time, a large amount of wastewater generated by water dyeing and other processes in printing and dyeing enterprises has high pollution treatment costs.

The number of workers is large, and the funds for automation transformation are insufficient. As a typical labor-intensive traditional industry, the most obvious problem of textile and clothing industry is the aging of enterprise workers.

Digital transformation is poorly understood and does not fit the industry characteristics. Digital transformation is a systematic project, so we must formulate a strategy, overall planning, step-by-step implementation, reasonable investment, and ecological win-win to truly implement digitalization.

The problem can be better solved through gradual refinement. Through sorting out the scenarios of various links in the textile industry such as "research, production, supply, marketing and clothing", it is concluded that the digital scenarios in the textile industry mainly fall into five categories: data collection and perception, AI machine vision, remote control, remote assistance, and equipment networking. Specific classification scenarios include data collection, AGV scheduling, cloud MES, flaw detection, AI automatic analysis, equipment inspection, etc.

Nowadays, the digital transformation of the textile industry has made progress in automation, intelligence, production management, low energy consumption, flexible production, supply chain management, etc. Specifically, 1. Production data collection+intelligent equipment to achieve data connection and management; 2. Information software and system construction, complete lean analysis and optimization of production, cost reduction and efficiency increase, and improve the digital level of product manufacturing; 3. Connect external enterprises and optimize supply chain collaboration. To solve the problem of small batch and customized orders, we will achieve flexible production and build an information-based supply chain management system.

Enable the digital transformation of the textile industry, and the industry enterprises have also created a wealth of digital solutions for the textile industry.

China Telecom has provided the idea of 5G customized network for the textile industry. Based on Tianyi Cloud, China Telecom has built a series of industrial digital platforms. At present, it has completed the construction of data middle platform, business middle platform and security middle platform, and has sorted out more than 1000 atomic capabilities for opening up and calling. Taking 5G and cloud network as the starting point, the company started to penetrate into the core production links from auxiliary applications, accumulated data management, intelligent AI and other capabilities, and gradually evolved to platform capabilities. Now, a number of benchmark cases have emerged in Fujian, Jiangsu and other industrial clusters.

At present, the digital transformation of China Telecom textile industry enabled by 5G customized network has made many achievements. First, 5G+data acquisition has been achieved to improve the flexibility of production lines. Data acquisition terminals are connected to SCADA systems through 5G, and equipment acquisition data is transmitted to the industrial Internet platform through 5G CPE; Reduce the deployment of wired network in the workshop and optimize the layout of the workshop. Second, machine vision based on 5G+edge cloud collaboration is applied to flaw detection to improve quality and reduce labor. Third, the intelligent AGV based on 5G+MEC makes the AGV truly unmanned and intelligent.

Fufu Textile Industry Internet Platform is a textile industry Internet collaboration platform meticulously built by Zhongdian Fufu for the textile field, which mainly includes data acquisition equipment, textile platform software, system function modules, etc. It provides textile enterprises with solutions including data acquisition, enterprise production execution (MES) system, enterprise operation relationship (ERP) system, enterprise energy consumption monitoring, etc., and helps textile enterprises to put their industrial equipment on the cloud platform, Improve production efficiency, improve product quality, save people, save energy and reduce consumption, comprehensively realize digital transformation and upgrading, and enhance enterprise competitiveness.

Huansi Wisdom is a digital solution provider for the whole industrial chain of the textile and clothing industry, covering seven professional software products of the entire textile industry chain, providing overall solutions for industry informatization, serving more than 4000 large and medium-sized textile and clothing enterprises, providing design and development PDM, supply chain management SCM, enterprise middle platform solutions, enterprise Internet platform solutions, intelligent manufacturing solutions, and APS solutions. Huansi Smart cooperated with Decathlon, covering more than 50 Decathlon suppliers in 2019, of which WMS penetration rate reached 50%, ERP and MES coverage rate reached 20%~30%. The rolling order is shortened from two weeks to one week, the delivery cycle is shortened from seven weeks to five weeks, the average stock age is shortened from 40 days to 30 days, and the data update is shortened from 12 days to one day.

Moreover, Shanghai Ideal, Huayu Textile, Heng'an Textile and other enterprises have actively explored the digital transformation of the textile industry and achieved rich results.

After realizing the evolution of the textile industry's digital scheme from 0 to 1, the next step is to solve the problem from 1 to N. Therefore, the whole industry needs to work together to build a digital ecology in the future, tap the common needs of the industry through the benchmarking effect, gradually realize the industry scale replication, and enable the textile industry's digital transformation.

Author: Cheng Linlin

Editor in charge/format: Fan Fan

Reviewed by: Shen Qing

Supervised by: Liu Qicheng