The digitalization of the textile and apparel industry is accelerating
Recently, five departments including the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and the Ministry of Commerce jointly issued the “Action Plan for Digitalization to Support the “Three Products” of the Consumer Goods Industry (2022-2025)” (hereinafter referred to as the “Plan”). In textiles and clothing, Industries such as household appliances, food and medicine, and consumer electronics will cultivate 200 intelligent manufacturing demonstration factories and build 200 well-known brands worth tens of billions.
In this regard, Sun Ruizhe, president of the China Textile Industry Federation, said that the introduction of the “Plan” has enabled the textile industry to better implement new development concepts and integrate into the new era. The new development pattern brings new opportunities to achieve technological, fashionable and green highquality development.
Clear digital direction
At present, the digital economy has become the main economic form and is promoting the renewal of factor resources, the reset of infrastructure and the extension of market scenarios at an unprecedented speed, scale and scope, and the textile and clothing industry is no exception.
“This year, all factories in Hebo have used the Hubble smart system.” Gao Min, vice chairman of the China Garment Association and president of Hebo International Group, told reporters that through the digital system, Hebo has achieved flexible production in small batches and has a lot of market demand. Now, the inventory pressure is reduced and orders come faster. At the same time, the number of factory workers has decreased, production capacity has increased, and workers’ income has also increased by about 10%.
Gao Min said that Hanbo previously had nearly 10 brands and more than 300 retail stores across the country. In 2016, Hempel closed all its direct retail stores and devoted all its energy to the creation and construction of the supply chain platform. Introducing Foxconn’s smart manufacturing capabilities, establishing Hubble Smart Cloud, and building the “ZHI” fashion industry chain… In recent years, with the help of digital empowerment, Hempel’s production capacity has steadily increased by about 15% every year, and energy consumption has also been effectively controlled.
The transformation of Hanbo is very representative in the traditional clothing industry. With the surging wave of digitalization, the industrial Internet and intelligent manufacturing are deeply integrated into all fields of the textile and apparel industry, giving rise to new business formats, new models, and new scenarios such as collaborative R&D and design, automated production, online monitoring, and shared manufacturing. These digital, intelligent and automation technology applications have brought the textile industry and the digital economy closer and accelerated their integration.
Digital applications have brought broader development opportunities to apparel companies that are deeply involved in customized services. With the help of Internet technology, clothing customization companies use the O2O model to provide services to consumers. After the customization companies obtain the data, they produce it through their own or third-party factories and then send it to consumers. The production cycle and cost are greatly reduced. Tianyancha data shows that there are currently more than 5,000 clothing customization-related companies in my country, of which more than 620 are newly registered companies in 2021.
Fang Qin, founder of Yibangren, said that many years ago the company proposed a strategy of digitally transforming the traditional clothing customization model, relying on the company’s unique “cloud tailoring” system and combining big data applications to create a more flexible and agile customization supply chain. The system not only greatly improves the efficiency of customized production, but also ensures that customized clothing is more in line with user needs.
Promoting digital transformation has become an important way to open up the production, distribution, circulation and consumption of the textile and apparel industry, improve the efficiency of resource allocation of different elements of the industry, and realize value conversion. According to Chen Guoqiang, former vice president of the China Garment Association, there are currently many pain points in the development of my country’s garment industry, such as huge inventory, severe homogeneity, redundant intermediate channels in the industry chain, and professionaltalent font> is missing, etc. The solutions to these problems ultimately point in one direction, namely digital transformation.
The transformation will be carried out in batches
Although the direction is clear, promoting digital transformation is not easy. The digital development of the textile and apparel industry in the sales link has been relatively mature, but in terms of digital transformation on the production side, the transformation is still in its infancy.
“Traditional foreign trade factories place large orders, and it is very difficult for workers to accept small orders.” Gao Min mentioned that not only that, flexible manufacturing also means adding more intelligent new technologies to traditional manufacturing. On the one hand, it is difficult to find a suitable software company to develop related technologies. On the other hand, the cost is also high, and the loss of production line shutdown during upgrades is also huge. Over the past six years, Hempel has invested a total of 50 to 60 million yuan in developing and promoting digital systems. By persisting in reforms, workers gradually adapted, and flexible manufacturing achieved a key breakthrough.
Qu Jing, vice president of Huimei Fashion Group, revealed that promoting digitalization is a self-revolution for enterprises, and the transformation is very difficult. Huimei took the initiative to take the lead, and then companies in the supply chain gradually adapted, and then the upstream and downstream collaboration was completed. After the industrial chain has completed digital transformation, it has become more efficient and company decisions have a more scientific basis.
However, although many leading textile and apparel companies are actively exploring digital transformation, and some companies have achieved significant results, most small and medium-sized enterprises are still waiting to see digitalization. In Dongguan, Guangdong, the digital transformation of many small and medium-sized textile and garment enterprises on the production side is still in its infancy, with the phenomenon of “do not want to switch, dare not switch, and cannot switch”Still prevalent.
The high purchase cost of digital equipment, long return period on capital investment, immature existing process technology, insufficient own technical strength and high post-construction operation and maintenance costs are the most worrying problems for most small and medium-sized textile and garment enterprises. In order to drive the digital transformation of the industry to deepen and become more practical, the China National Textile and Apparel Industry Federation recently issued the “Three-Year Action Plan for Digital Transformation of the Textile Industry (2022-2024)” to create a new digital industrial system and released the “Digital Transformation Solutions for the Textile and Garment Industry”. The plan focuses on promoting the Directory, playing a demonstration and leading role, and promoting the digital transformation of the entire industry.
Sun Ruizhe said that in recent years, the textile industry has actively carried out pilot demonstrations of intelligent manufacturing enterprises and the selection of outstanding integrators of system solutions, effectively guiding the upgrading practice of intelligent manufacturing in the entire industry. During the “14th Five-Year Plan” period, the textile industry will strengthen public service platforms, accelerate the promotion and application of mature and applicable intelligent manufacturing technologies, equipment and software in the entire industry, especially small and medium-sized enterprises, and continuously enhance the resilience and vitality of enterprise development.
Building a digital ecosystem
As transformation progresses, digital applications continue to expand. From the initial stage of generating various digital forms and reports to the organic combination of business data, process data and equipment data, the digital ecosystem of the textile and apparel industry is gradually being established.
Chen Guoqiang told reporters that as a labor-intensive industry, the garment industry needs to use new technologies, new applications, and smart equipment to upgrade the entire industry if it wants to transform into digitalization and ecology. chain production efficiency. At the same time, he admitted that in order to establish a digital ecosystem, the industry still lacks comprehensively developed digital service providers with nationwide coverage.
Fortunately, the problem of digital service providers is being gradually solved by companies within and outside the industry. In the industry, Hubble Smart Cloud, the first industrial Internet platform for the fashion industry launched by Hempel, takes intelligent manufacturing as the core engine and builds a clothing industry cloud and an intelligent manufacturing cloud based on the concept of “all elements, entire industry chain, and entire life cycle”. Help small and medium-sized enterprises in the clothing field transform and upgrade.
Gao Min said that Hubble Smart Cloud can provide standardized access points for supply chain partners, automatically dispatch platform orders to downstream factories, and achieve information matching between the supply chain and the factory; it can help traditional factories carry out information transformation and use low-cost Intelligent production solutions that can be replicated in batches collect, process, transmit, analyze, and feed back production capacity data to match industry cloud order data and supply chain data.
Professional technology companies have also begun to delve into the digitalization of textiles and clothing. Liu Ke, co-founder and chief product officer of Feiliu Technology, said that Feiliu Technology is committed to the application of artificial intelligence technology in the field of clothing supply chain, providing smart production for tens of millions of domestic and foreign clothing factories, designers, brand customers, etc. Collaborative system products and new model supply purchasing and marketing platform and supply chain service platform.
“A number of excellent solutions have emerged in the textile industry around optimizing supply and demand.” Sun Ruizhe said that accelerating digital transformation is a strategic choice to seize new opportunities in a new round of technological revolution and industrial transformation, and is the only way to achieve the goal of becoming a manufacturing power. It is also a practical requirement to meet the people’s yearning for a better life. The textile industry will actively promote the implementation of the “Plan”, use digitalization as a new fulcrum, leverage the high-quality development of the industry, and achieve new results in the implementation of the “Three Products” strategy.
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