Future Factory of Apparel Manufacturing

Book excerpt: Apparel manufacturing globally remains the same over the last fifty years; only migrated from one country to another in search of cheap labour. Notwithstanding, the changing economics of production and distribution, shifts in consumer demand, the emergence of “fast fashion” and the political agenda of reshoring and sustainable manufacturing are pushing apparel manufacturers to explore radically new ways of creating and capturing value. The fourth industrial revolution more commonly known as Industry 4.0 has already brought a plethora of technologies for adoption in manufacturing. The increased processing power of computing and miniaturization of chip size is making things earlier thought impossible, possible. The reduction in cost of data processing, storing and transferring has made AI and ML affordable for commercial use. The mighty robots changed themselves to safe co-bots to work alongside human workers. A wind of change is visible, and the apparel manufacturing industry is also embracing newer technologies and manufacturing concepts to herald in the new era of future manufacturing. This book details how different technologies are going to shape apparel manufacturing factories of the future.