Revolution or evolution?

Analysts at the consultancy PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) were astonished: its 2016 study ‘Industrie
4.0: Building the digital enterprise’ revealed that many companies across the globe are already taking
digitalization seriously. The more than 2,000 participating companies from nine sectors of industry in
26 countries were planning to increase their degree of digitalization in 2015, the year of the survey,
from an average of 33 percent to 72 percent within the five following years leading up to 2020. To
achieve this, these enterprises are planning to invest around five percent of turnover – equivalent to
US$ 907 billion a year. In return, they expect cost savings of 3.6 percent and average annual sales
growth of 2.9 percent.
Huge investment in digitalization
This tendency is not only evident within companies industrialized countries, but also in emerging
economies and developing countries – however, the PwC study is able to filter out differing targets. In
Germany, Scandinavia and Japan, it is primarily about expanding operational efficiency and product
quality. In the US, businesses plan to develop predominantly new digital business models and to expand
digital product and service ranges. China is hoping to benefit as a result of automating and digitalizing
labor-intensive manufacturing processes.
The study anticipates that the challenges for companies will above all lie in digitally qualifying staff or
recruiting expert employees and in establishing an appropriate internal organization and ‘digital culture’.
This is necessary in order to use data analysis to improve and optimize planning and hence exploit
the full potential of Industrie 4.0.
Textile Industrie 4.0: the status quo
Digitalization is also creating a revolution within the textile industry: clients can today already configure
and order customized apparel online and have it delivered with very short lead times. This form of
manufacturing is also becoming increasingly profitable for manufacturers, as production and logistics
processes will in future be extensively automated and self-controlled. However, some textiles experts
are viewing the revolution more as an evolution: there is frequently currently still a lack of qualified
manpower, reciprocal networking and interdisciplinary cooperation to realize these visions. When looking
at digitally covering the entire value chain, not all links are in place yet for Industrie 4.0: they might
be in sewing factories in China, but not at those in Ethiopia or Hungary. And the textile industry therefore
requires sector-specific solutions above all.
The fact that these are possible is meanwhile being showcased by ever more Industrie 4.0 pioneers.
At its virtually fully-automated Speedfactory, Adidas is able – after a treadmill analysis of the customer
at the point-of-sale – to design, and in part manufacture by means of 3D printing, trainers in a matter
of a few hours rather than over several months. With their Microfactory, companies under the auspices
of the Deutsche Institute für Textil- und Faserforschung Denkendorf (DITF/German Institutes for Textile
and Fiber Research Denkendorf) are demonstrating how an integrated production chain for apparel
works, manufacturing sweaters and T-shirts using 3D simulation patterns in half a day – customized
and profitably even for batch sizes of one. The project can be viewed as a fantastic example of the
exchange of knowledge and technology transfer that Industrie 4.0 solutions require. And it enables
more flexible, more customer-focused business models away from conventional mass production. The
well-known elite German university RWTH Aachen is pursuing a similar approach. In a Learning Factory
4.0, the so-called Digital Capability Center (DCC), the Institut für Textiltechnik (ITA/Institute for
Textile Technology) housed there is showcasing how digital transformation can be successful on the
basis of a networked textile process chain and using assistance systems, among other things.
On the way to the fully networked textile factory
And with that we move from the consumer product to the actual production and ultimately to the textile
machine manufacturers. They are also focusing on digitalization and are intensively driving the development
of an entire industry forward. But even the manufacturers of textile machines for mass production
are looking at digitalization. The scenario of the future: textile production – from the supply chain
through to dispatch – is autonomously controlled in the fully-networked Factory 4.0. The product being
created controls and monitors the processes itself using embedded sensors. The manufacturing or
order status is known at all times, raw materials are automatically reordered, wear and maintenance
are planned as integral parts of the production process and error processes are identified, alleviated or
displayed. This should cut costs, convert production lines more flexibly and help reduce downtimes
and waste. For this, the machine construction sector has to provide correspondingly intelligent and
Webweb-enabled production systems, capable of communicating using wired or wireless connections.
No easy feat, as this requires interfaces between all systems involved and the collation, channeling
and evaluation of tremendous volumes of data in real time.
The first steps on this journey have already been taken – with Oerlikon in the very vanguard. With its
Plant Operation Center (POC) for process monitoring, Oerlikon Barmag, for instance, enables the
collation of existing production data in a central location and to make these data available. On the
occasion of the ITMA ASIA + CITME 2018 in Shanghai, China, the company also showcased the prospect
of a development designed – on the basis of machine data – to identify error patterns or deviations
as well as provide diagnosis support and help using artificial intelligence. An assistance system
based on mixed-reality glasses (Microsoft HoloLens) has already been launched by Oerlikon – supporting
predictive maintenance concepts and enabling virtual 360-degree tours through spinning systems.
“The market is increasingly looking for more intelligent machine technology in order to more
speedily and profitably collate and evaluate production data. And we are addressing this trend and are
presenting solutions in a new, digital dimension”, comments Markus Reichwein, Head of Product
Management for the Oerlikon Manmade Fibers segment.
Digital visions require the qualifying of employees
Digital visions indicate a future in which consumers are able to codetermine their textile products to a
considerably greater extent. New business and production models are emerging that will also make
smaller batch sizes profitable. This will once again make high-wage countries attractive manufacturing
sites. But experts do not anticipate that intelligent, extensively-automated factories will not be able to
dispense entirely with people. People will, however, assume other tasks – in part within the context of
newly-created professions. Against this backdrop, qualifying employees and their positive (or negative)
view of the opportunities offered by digitalization will be decisive in how swiftly the textile industry
embarks on its digital future. And data protection and data security open up many questions that could
slow down the speed of the revolution that is Industrie 4.0. Ultimately, many things depend on the
textile companies themselves and their ability to embrace – and prepare themselves and their employees
for – the opportunities offered by digitalization.