Impact of New Technologies on Textile Supply Chai

Several innovations have transformed the technologies of textile manufacture. There has been growing interest in increased machine speeds, reduction of lead time in manufacturing and savings in materials and other cost. New technologies are justified, they are adopted and at certain time they become obsolete. Few examples of obsolete technologies are mule spinning, scutcher in blowroom, handloom, group drive of shuttle looms, automatic cop changing loom, steam engine and data storage devices such as floppies for computers. It is not only the technology that transform but also the supply chain undergoes transformation. Recently, the motivational factors for those transformations are customization, energy consumption, amount of waste, competitive advantages in the aspect of capital investment, reduction in labor work, a better product and additional savings.;Smart technology in manufacturing is the need of the hour. Here the term smart technology does not indicate the advent of communication technologies but the smart manufacturing technology that is also advantageous for the supply chain. In this research two different technologies viz. spin-knit technologies and digital textile printing technology, which are located at distinct positions in the textile supply chain, are selected for case studies to analyze the impact of those new technologies on textile supply chain. A theoretical framework and model for analysis of new technologies is developed. Different factors for the analysis of new technology are identified and classified according to time dependent, country specific and technology specific factors. The evaluation of spin-knit technologies as per the theoretical model reveals that CorizonRTM technology can provide reduction of electric power cost by 54 %, spinning labor cost by 48 % and reduces cost of land, interest and depreciation. There are countrywide differences in the cost of cotton fibers. United States can be the most preferred location due to lowest cost of cotton as raw material since it is cheaper by nearly 100 % than the maximum cost. For the determination of capacity utilization and other specific needs of the batch process, Matlab SimEventsRTM based simulation models are prepared for process capacity utilization and supply chain simulation. It is found that the use of 120 spindle roving frame, which corresponds to the 120 feeders on combined spinning and knitting machine, instead of 192 spindles can provide 100 % capacity utilization of knitting in the combined process. The difference in weight of roving bobbin and weight of cones also results in reduced capacity utilization at knitting stage in the combined process.;The advent of single pass digital textile printers has resulted in increased printing speed. The developments in printing head, increase of printing speed, development of printing ink and satisfactory image resolution with 125 to 600 DPI along with elimination of cumbersome operations and reduction in lot changeover time are the strength of this technology. From the supply chain point of view, the ability to economically process smaller batches coupled with drastic reduction in the process timeframe of eleven weeks to few hours for compete process from design idea to final shipment of printed fabrics, has resulted in the emergence of new supply chain models. The power cost is reduced by 64 % with digital textile printing. Digital textile printing also offers 42 % saving in requirement of floor space area for the plant and machines. It is possible to give up the low wage criteria and instead prefer skilled workforce as criteria and carry out reshoring of production with the new technology. The need of additional operations such fabric pretreatment is the major hurdle which affects the performance of this process. Matlab simulation model for capacity utilization and transportation can be used to determine the process requirements in different manufacturing scenarios.