Uster: Fabric Quality Automatically Assured
The highly-competitive nature of today’s textile markets is a fact of life fabric producers know only too well. The technical challenge is to deliver unique products that meet customers’ quality requirements and are free from unacceptable defects. The business challenge is to achieve those aims as economically as possible, making best use of costly resources such as raw materials and labor.
Success in these demanding objectives clearly calls for comprehensive and sophisticated mill management strategies, embracing the opportunities presented by latest technologies. A striking example is the use of automated systems for fabric inspection. Automation makes producers less dependent on human judgment, on varying levels of operative ability and experience, or on differences related to times of day and shift. These are all risk factors in trying to produce consistent, reliable quality to satisfy customers.
Uster® Fabric Inspection systems bring the Think Quality approach to fabric production. They offer potential for further automation and reconfiguration of processes, leading to increased efficiency and sustainable performance.
FABRIC QUALITY CHALLENGES
Fabric inspection under the Uster® EVS brand comprises three automated solutions, for quality assurance and optimization of fabric yield in the final product.
The Uster approach begins by avoiding off-quality at the earliest possible stage. The Uster® EVS Q-BAR detects faults during manufacturing, preventing long-running defects. This minimizes material losses and removes the need for manual inspection after production. This is starting point for consistent and reliable quality – a key factor in the mill‘s ultimate market competitiveness.
Uster® EVS FABRIQ VISION delivers the consistently high rate of defect detection that is essential for opti- mum fabric quality. It applies automated control during intermediate and final inspection – eradicating the need for manual checking. This system is able to capture any visible defects, so that fabric yield can be optimized and claims for off-quality avoided.
Uster® EVS FABRIQ SHADE is the third element in the Uster® Fabric Inspection program. It automatically monitors color and shade variations in dyed fabrics, where color consistency is critical. Working throughout the length and breadth of the fabric roll – and on different rolls from the same lot – it operates in any process where color and shade uniformity are paramount. The result is consistent quality, with no seconds and satisfied customers.
FACTS AND REALITY
These automated fabric inspection and vision-based process moni- toring systems – founded on more than 25 years of pioneering development in this field – count 1,000 installations in wide-ranging textile segments worldwide. EVS customers today inspect over 40 million meters of fabric per day.
The high-tech solutions from Uster® EVS can provide fabric producers with unmatched value for their business. They tackle the urgent need to reduce material waste and avoid seconds, across the entire spectrum of apparel and home textiles. The precision and reliability guaranteed by automated systems will differentiate mills from their competitors and ensure the longterm quality standards required for strong partnerships with big-brand customers.
