Company A is a Hong Kong based yarn spinning and dyeing producer with main factories in Mainland China. With technology and innovation investment in the past decade, it has become an innovative manufacturer highly relied on automation instead of intensive labor.
To increase the efficiency of production and reduce labor cost, the company has introduced automatic machinery for spinning, which replaced more than 2/3 of its workforce compared to traditional spinners. To better manage the inventory and enhance information visibility in the supply chain, it deployed RFID-based information system to tag ID number and storage location of spools of yarn. The RFID system helps the company reduce time and manpower resources for managing stock in the warehouse, and enables it to make appropriate decisions on sale and purchase. Besides, it has deployed smart warehouse technology, including robots and robotic arms for picking and moving yarns to replace intensive manpower, while shortening the time and increasing accuracy for shipment. To integrate different information across the whole production and sale chain, enterprise resource planning (ERP) has also been applied with customized features. The improvement of the production process is illustrated as follows.
The company has been highly successful in adopting such technologies and demonstrates the importance of automation for traditional textile manufacturing. In recent years, many developed countries such as USA have started revival revolutions in the textile industry through automation and new technologies. With the application of digital technologies, the manufacturing sector of the fashion industry will become more intelligent and automatic, which will be the main trend for the production of fashion products in the future.