The rate of Technological obsolesces is so fast that unless one is updating himself continuously , the organization will be only as good or as bad as the knowledge resource of its people.
Unfortunately the updating of technology is still left to the employees, who largely fancy that, if they have the latest hand phones, or an apple computer ,then they are already technology compliant.
Technology is changing each and every area of our work environment and is changing very very fast. Unfortunately, there is still not a proper mechanism within an organization to keep itself abreast of the latest developments in the area of their business. They would await for someone to either come and educate them or till the technology has scaled to the level that they can adapt it without any risk.
It is about time, where each organization starts with a Technology cell, which continuously monitors the updates on technology in each area of manufacturing or service. This technology cell then periodically ensures that all its managers , supervisors are mapping the inputs to their job functions and the efficiency is clearly showing out in terms of cost reduction, quality improvements or better way of working etc etc. Budgets have to already incorporate upgrades in unforeseen technology and conducive environment has to be designed for easy adaption and exit of old technologies. Incentives have to be designed for any group, which embraces technology which would increase the thru put of the company or cuts a process down or infringes on manual or a mechanical system.
Eg: Each machine could now easily have a energy panel and all panels could easily link to give a consolidated report via wireless to the manager. Monitoring will ensure that the energy consumptions are linear through out the operations and will also show, which machines on account of poor maintenance or belt slippage or poor lubrication etc were consuming average more energy then other machines.
Many many such opportunities exist today to get the system into a technological loop. However, it needs first the right information, then correct mapping to your industry, finally exploiting to get the revenue advantages.
Technology monitoring is a full time job and needs inputs from the global feeds of products, services, developments, researches, etc etc. Smarter companies themselves will post their requirements on their technology needs and find quick solutions.
Textiles does not believe in technology. Machines are loaded with technology and only and only if the machine maker offers something unique, the user having confirmed multiple times will try it out. No one is aggressive enough to themselves design a machine.
Sunday, December 26, 2010
Sunday, December 19, 2010
Fate Sanctity And Managerial Performance.
Fate is such a powerful tool that no one person can override the embedded code of destiny. One so often comes across people who are less then average, but are in very key positions, very powerful, and draw fancy salaries. On the other side, there are brilliant managers, top school graduates, hands on experience and way ahead of others, but struggling with their jobs.
When I first started my business, I migrated from being a service professional to a business professional. The migration was painful. But one thing which constantly bugged me was about the survival of business itself, forget the growth . I would all the time think, if I had some sure model, which would predict with reasonable accuracy the risk adventure results.
Well, I did not miss out taking astrologers consultation and all the jokers predicted wrongly about my business. Infact , some of them were of global fame and I wrote to them many years later, that they better stop fooling others.
However, from my own childhood, I had an interest in " Palmistry" and I would read the hands of people. With time, I found that I was quite accurate with my readings. It is only, when defying all the astrologers advise and going by my ownhand, I migrated to business, that I started counselling people for Fate Compliance.
Today, I offer " Fate Compliance " service to the corporate sectors, where in I advise the firm that the CEO of the company or any executive is actually fate compliant to run the company successfully. A non compliant CEO will doom the shareholders wealth. I will not name the companies that are my global clients, but my clients have expressed satisfaction with the results so far. Browse my site . www.paybackpalmistry.com
There are also many cases of executives, who were non fate compliant and had to struggle both with the job and the personal lives.
Moreover, the typical hand structure would define the type of job which the person would be most successful. The time, when his fate would retard him and when his fate will accelerate him.
Many Top End Executives hands which I have seen were all qualified as Fate Accelerators. Wherein their fate was taking them to where they were. As person they were actually very average, but their Fate had moved them to a position of envy.
It does not hurt sometime to get yourself Fate Approved for a New Job.
When I first started my business, I migrated from being a service professional to a business professional. The migration was painful. But one thing which constantly bugged me was about the survival of business itself, forget the growth . I would all the time think, if I had some sure model, which would predict with reasonable accuracy the risk adventure results.
Well, I did not miss out taking astrologers consultation and all the jokers predicted wrongly about my business. Infact , some of them were of global fame and I wrote to them many years later, that they better stop fooling others.
However, from my own childhood, I had an interest in " Palmistry" and I would read the hands of people. With time, I found that I was quite accurate with my readings. It is only, when defying all the astrologers advise and going by my ownhand, I migrated to business, that I started counselling people for Fate Compliance.
Today, I offer " Fate Compliance " service to the corporate sectors, where in I advise the firm that the CEO of the company or any executive is actually fate compliant to run the company successfully. A non compliant CEO will doom the shareholders wealth. I will not name the companies that are my global clients, but my clients have expressed satisfaction with the results so far. Browse my site . www.paybackpalmistry.com
There are also many cases of executives, who were non fate compliant and had to struggle both with the job and the personal lives.
Moreover, the typical hand structure would define the type of job which the person would be most successful. The time, when his fate would retard him and when his fate will accelerate him.
Many Top End Executives hands which I have seen were all qualified as Fate Accelerators. Wherein their fate was taking them to where they were. As person they were actually very average, but their Fate had moved them to a position of envy.
It does not hurt sometime to get yourself Fate Approved for a New Job.
EQ + IQ = MQ
EQ is the Emotional Quotient of the Manager.
IQ is the Intelligence Quotient of the Manager.
When EQ is added to IQ, the result is MQ = Managerial Quotient .
IQ is pumped via the schools and the general intelligence of the person. But when it comes to EQ, there has never been a serious effort on the part of the society to factor it as a part of schooling and personality development.
In my other blog, " Life is Beautiful" I had once written about " Optimum- The child Development Code " and now I would add EQ balance as another primary input for a rational society to develop.
One of the most important missing element in the Managerial Quality has been the EQ. The emotional self of the managers are generally biased as per the environment in which they grew up. If it was urban or rural or violent or peaceful or fast or slow or rich or poor etc etc.
This EQ quotient then defines the management style of the person. Considering that the the IQ of most managers is at the same level, the management style gets reflected by the EQ, which at the moment has no real measure .
A low risk taker manager will postpone key growth investment decisions and will find enough escuses to delay jobs.
A high risk taker will jump, without much analysis and the middle ground managers are anyway most dangerous. They are called the 50:50 Managers. Neither here, nor there.
They are just talkers and will keep blaming one or the other thing for poor growth.
Coming back to EQ: Till we choose to define an optimum manager , the EQ is only a relative term. EQ will factor the behavior, risk abilities, foresight, extreme conditions tolerance, human capital development, innovation, ability to find clarity in clutter , technology savvy etc etc. The list can be improvized and plotted to scale a " Good For Time " manager.
MQ will then be a least score, which one has to qualify to be able to supervize a team with targets and resources.
EQ has to start from the primary classes, where behaviroal sciences have to be given the top score and even with mediocre IQ students ,the EQ will still go and make a very fine society/ organization. EQ would teach the students the diversity of nature and its significance and the respect which each element of nature deserves to develop a true harmonous society. Currently, this is being left to the discipline in the class and the religious beliefs of the people.
IQ is the Intelligence Quotient of the Manager.
When EQ is added to IQ, the result is MQ = Managerial Quotient .
IQ is pumped via the schools and the general intelligence of the person. But when it comes to EQ, there has never been a serious effort on the part of the society to factor it as a part of schooling and personality development.
In my other blog, " Life is Beautiful" I had once written about " Optimum- The child Development Code " and now I would add EQ balance as another primary input for a rational society to develop.
One of the most important missing element in the Managerial Quality has been the EQ. The emotional self of the managers are generally biased as per the environment in which they grew up. If it was urban or rural or violent or peaceful or fast or slow or rich or poor etc etc.
This EQ quotient then defines the management style of the person. Considering that the the IQ of most managers is at the same level, the management style gets reflected by the EQ, which at the moment has no real measure .
A low risk taker manager will postpone key growth investment decisions and will find enough escuses to delay jobs.
A high risk taker will jump, without much analysis and the middle ground managers are anyway most dangerous. They are called the 50:50 Managers. Neither here, nor there.
They are just talkers and will keep blaming one or the other thing for poor growth.
Coming back to EQ: Till we choose to define an optimum manager , the EQ is only a relative term. EQ will factor the behavior, risk abilities, foresight, extreme conditions tolerance, human capital development, innovation, ability to find clarity in clutter , technology savvy etc etc. The list can be improvized and plotted to scale a " Good For Time " manager.
MQ will then be a least score, which one has to qualify to be able to supervize a team with targets and resources.
EQ has to start from the primary classes, where behaviroal sciences have to be given the top score and even with mediocre IQ students ,the EQ will still go and make a very fine society/ organization. EQ would teach the students the diversity of nature and its significance and the respect which each element of nature deserves to develop a true harmonous society. Currently, this is being left to the discipline in the class and the religious beliefs of the people.
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
Y2K Bugged Managers
We all recall, the Y2K bug , which was to end the whole computing systems, crash planes, run machines amuk and abruptly shoot out missiles. Thankfully , nothing happened and we all transcended to the safe havens of year 2000.
But there was one thing , which actually changed the world since the advent of year 2000. This was, the " Arrival Of A New World"
The pace of change of technology since year 2000 is like one year growth is = 10 years of growth before year 2000. This itself was a big crash for those who refused to change their ways of life, thinking and adaption to the new world.
So, for me there are managers , who are profiled before the year 2000 and there are managers , who are profiled after the year 2000. The one who are profiled after 2000 are technology savvy, connected to the new world with all the modern technologies and are quickly putting these technologies into their work place and making the system more efficient . Each process, system, technology, machine after the year 2000 has become so much different from the ones before the year 2000.
So, the first thing, I check on any company, is the machines running in that company are made after the year 2000 or before the year 2000. If before, then it is way too antiquated. Because even after 2000, we are one decade afar and which is equal to 100 years away from the current technologies.
More is complex about the generation of managers, who now lead the organization, but were profiled to built companies on the last century. For them, most of the developments are way so fast that it is beyond their understanding.
These are the Y2K Bugged Managers.
But there was one thing , which actually changed the world since the advent of year 2000. This was, the " Arrival Of A New World"
The pace of change of technology since year 2000 is like one year growth is = 10 years of growth before year 2000. This itself was a big crash for those who refused to change their ways of life, thinking and adaption to the new world.
So, for me there are managers , who are profiled before the year 2000 and there are managers , who are profiled after the year 2000. The one who are profiled after 2000 are technology savvy, connected to the new world with all the modern technologies and are quickly putting these technologies into their work place and making the system more efficient . Each process, system, technology, machine after the year 2000 has become so much different from the ones before the year 2000.
So, the first thing, I check on any company, is the machines running in that company are made after the year 2000 or before the year 2000. If before, then it is way too antiquated. Because even after 2000, we are one decade afar and which is equal to 100 years away from the current technologies.
More is complex about the generation of managers, who now lead the organization, but were profiled to built companies on the last century. For them, most of the developments are way so fast that it is beyond their understanding.
These are the Y2K Bugged Managers.
leadership
The more you read about leadership, the more puzzling it is. Every Manager latently believes that he is the best leader, the team ever had. Or is He ?
Leadership has to be captured out of Politicians, State Heads, History , Sports and Science.
History is the open secret and the first source of information as to what kind of people finally became leaders. The more you dig , the more you find that most leaders were those who had a large following. And most of these of these followings was that of actually foolish, ( Better term would be Blind ) but goal driven and motivated to fall behind their leader , no matter, how much wrong or right that person may have been.
The key elements of all the leaders were.
Exceptionally Good Orator
Selling Dreams, ( which of course will never come out true)
Wielding Power with Iron Hand.
Keeping the people in a stage of Idealism. ( Idealism as per the ideas of the leader)
In Management, the situation is actually not any different. Depending upon, how well you can exercise the above four variables to your advantage, the better leader you would be in the long run.
Rest you should be able to speak tons and tons of words , which no one can understand, but sound very impressive on initiatives, economy, markets, policies, government, technology, IT etc etc.
In a world, where One Up Manship is the rule, then exception the leader has to find his position out of strength. And remind himself consistently on Darwin's Corporate Theory on " Survival of the Meanest"
If I was to design a leader, I would still count on the following variables.
1. Knowledgeable : Meaning well educated and with hands on experience.
2. Kind : Meaning shows sensitively to the needs of his team, not necessarily meaning extra incentives or bonuses or rewards , but providing the required resource for a fair growth opportunity.
3. Powerful : Covers risk adequately and takes quick action against any human, capital or plan failure.
By default, if you are leading a team without the knowledge and the resource , then the only variable, which works is the " Power " There are situations, wherein a person is advised to take up a job, where he has zero knowledge and is given low resources. In such an event "Power " is a very good tool to keep the place going.
Leaders are Borne, not Made. Give Birth to your leadership now.
The best leaders, which History remembers are still those, who have their profile cut out on Oration , Power, Idealism and Dreams. Rest is all ideology and self satisfaction. For a commercial enterprise, the value of a person is only till he is contributing to the shareholders wealth. His value to the society is when he has contributed to the uplifting of the society at large.
Leadership has to be captured out of Politicians, State Heads, History , Sports and Science.
History is the open secret and the first source of information as to what kind of people finally became leaders. The more you dig , the more you find that most leaders were those who had a large following. And most of these of these followings was that of actually foolish, ( Better term would be Blind ) but goal driven and motivated to fall behind their leader , no matter, how much wrong or right that person may have been.
The key elements of all the leaders were.
Exceptionally Good Orator
Selling Dreams, ( which of course will never come out true)
Wielding Power with Iron Hand.
Keeping the people in a stage of Idealism. ( Idealism as per the ideas of the leader)
In Management, the situation is actually not any different. Depending upon, how well you can exercise the above four variables to your advantage, the better leader you would be in the long run.
Rest you should be able to speak tons and tons of words , which no one can understand, but sound very impressive on initiatives, economy, markets, policies, government, technology, IT etc etc.
In a world, where One Up Manship is the rule, then exception the leader has to find his position out of strength. And remind himself consistently on Darwin's Corporate Theory on " Survival of the Meanest"
If I was to design a leader, I would still count on the following variables.
1. Knowledgeable : Meaning well educated and with hands on experience.
2. Kind : Meaning shows sensitively to the needs of his team, not necessarily meaning extra incentives or bonuses or rewards , but providing the required resource for a fair growth opportunity.
3. Powerful : Covers risk adequately and takes quick action against any human, capital or plan failure.
By default, if you are leading a team without the knowledge and the resource , then the only variable, which works is the " Power " There are situations, wherein a person is advised to take up a job, where he has zero knowledge and is given low resources. In such an event "Power " is a very good tool to keep the place going.
Leaders are Borne, not Made. Give Birth to your leadership now.
The best leaders, which History remembers are still those, who have their profile cut out on Oration , Power, Idealism and Dreams. Rest is all ideology and self satisfaction. For a commercial enterprise, the value of a person is only till he is contributing to the shareholders wealth. His value to the society is when he has contributed to the uplifting of the society at large.
It is somewhat strange that people from middle class rarely become leaders. Either in corporate sector or social life. Middle class continuously pushes a person towards follower ship and idealism. Rarely ever breeds Frontal Lead Players who can take risk and reap the rewards. Middle class is totally risk averse simply for the reason that they can never afford to loose the little that they have to keep up a social well being face before the Consumer world. And leadership is about loosing a ton, before rising to take over the world. The lower class has nothing more to loose and the Higher class don't care much, if some gets lost. Therefore, technically ,these are two basic classes which come out with the Best Leaders. Whether it is Obama to be cited or Lincoln or Bush.
Middle class leaders like Mr Man Mohan Singh ( PM of India ) can be best seen as Line Man in Leadership. If only Lalu Yadav was made the PM against him, he would have still taken many drastic decisions, whether good or bad. But Mr Man Mohan Singh, a professor of economics himself and in the highest position of the country, yet could not dismantle the bureaucracy and corruption. Simply because Middle class is not just risk averse, but within its own heart a very coward species . And leadership demands Leading From The Front with Valor and Strength.
Hence, first step to leadership is to Break Off from the Middle Class Thinking.
Empathy - A Trap
Human Resource Understanding is by far the most complex senstivity, which a Manager needs to develop. The more adept he is in mapping the conduct and capability of a person and maximizes his output to the benefit of the organization, the more successful team he builds.
One of the biggest traps,which we all fall into is the " Empathy " . The social, moral and political values of ours continously drag us to point towards being sensitive to the issues of a person. Sometimes these issues are realistic , but most of the times, these are only the economic and social weaknesses, which the manager tries to cover with his flexible oversight of work quality , expenses or behavior .
I recall , all my executives over inflated their travel expense statements. I still signed it and allowed the little extras to be taken by them, though I knew, it was an unfair reward. However, since the salaries of these executives was quite low, I would still ignore the inflated expenses. In the long run, the executives started disproportionately charging the expenses and it became a virus difficult to control. Second, having tasted blood, most of these exeutives later were finding it difficult to manage with the real situation. This was the cost of " Empathy "
But Empathy is most complicated with the Labour Force. Every single day, all of us try to give a little more to our workers. More out of sensitivity to his condition and less on account of his productivity and behavior. But the same worker, then stands up against us and fights that the little extra, which we gave as our generosity is now his right and infact, he actually deserves to get the same as the MD of the company. Here Empathy is the biggest Trap. Even the smallest gesture of goodwill extended to a worker can then become a major cause of conflict.
Somedays back, I was watching a movie on HBO. I dont really recall the name. Wherein a US Millionaire lady steps out to the Latin America to see the sufferring of the people outside US. Within the first month of watching and listening stories of rape, crime, drugs, cheating, corruption she is a pshyic case. But the most interesting line in the movie was. " Poverty is less of a curse to a person who was experiencing it, but more of a curse to those who see it around them "
In my own personal experience, my biggest waterloo in my management style was my spirtualism. What I considered as my spirtual duty to service people around me of higher order then maximizing the profit of the share holders. Later turned out that the very same set of people considered me a weak manager and started exploiting the generosities that I was extending to these low performing executives. Finally, ofcourse all of them paid a heavy price for their misdeamenour.
The reason, I am sharing this is to keep all the readers enriched with this experience, that " Empathy" is a Trap and do not allow it to overtake your professional decisions, no matter, how compelling the situation.
Do not try to be a social reformer or play Godfather in Business. Motivation of a team does not need empathy. It needs success as the driver of any job.
One of the biggest traps,which we all fall into is the " Empathy " . The social, moral and political values of ours continously drag us to point towards being sensitive to the issues of a person. Sometimes these issues are realistic , but most of the times, these are only the economic and social weaknesses, which the manager tries to cover with his flexible oversight of work quality , expenses or behavior .
I recall , all my executives over inflated their travel expense statements. I still signed it and allowed the little extras to be taken by them, though I knew, it was an unfair reward. However, since the salaries of these executives was quite low, I would still ignore the inflated expenses. In the long run, the executives started disproportionately charging the expenses and it became a virus difficult to control. Second, having tasted blood, most of these exeutives later were finding it difficult to manage with the real situation. This was the cost of " Empathy "
But Empathy is most complicated with the Labour Force. Every single day, all of us try to give a little more to our workers. More out of sensitivity to his condition and less on account of his productivity and behavior. But the same worker, then stands up against us and fights that the little extra, which we gave as our generosity is now his right and infact, he actually deserves to get the same as the MD of the company. Here Empathy is the biggest Trap. Even the smallest gesture of goodwill extended to a worker can then become a major cause of conflict.
Somedays back, I was watching a movie on HBO. I dont really recall the name. Wherein a US Millionaire lady steps out to the Latin America to see the sufferring of the people outside US. Within the first month of watching and listening stories of rape, crime, drugs, cheating, corruption she is a pshyic case. But the most interesting line in the movie was. " Poverty is less of a curse to a person who was experiencing it, but more of a curse to those who see it around them "
In my own personal experience, my biggest waterloo in my management style was my spirtualism. What I considered as my spirtual duty to service people around me of higher order then maximizing the profit of the share holders. Later turned out that the very same set of people considered me a weak manager and started exploiting the generosities that I was extending to these low performing executives. Finally, ofcourse all of them paid a heavy price for their misdeamenour.
The reason, I am sharing this is to keep all the readers enriched with this experience, that " Empathy" is a Trap and do not allow it to overtake your professional decisions, no matter, how compelling the situation.
Do not try to be a social reformer or play Godfather in Business. Motivation of a team does not need empathy. It needs success as the driver of any job.
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
SuperCritical Carbon Dioxide Dyeing - TRUE GREEN DYEING
DryDye has revolutinized the " Dyeing " Technology. For the first time in the last many centuries, here is one company, which was not even distantly related to textiles has come out with a Technology which will change the shape of Dyeing Industry forever.
DryDye would mean, no pretreatment , no posttreatment, no drying, no marks, no crease issue, no other hanky panky. At best, it might still need Stenter. However, we hope the maker of this machine also finds a solution to heat set the fabric within the dyeing equipment using microwave technology.
DryDye would use no water, no chemicals, no auxilaries and dyes mixed with carbon dioxide will penetrate the polyester chains or cellulose yarns. After completing the dyes would get extracted automatically as carbondioxide would be turned to gas again.
This means no effluent discharge, no headaches of keeping the Eco System in balance.
This new technology will change the spinning business altogather. Most spinning mills, who have so far been churning out griege yarns will automaticlly go in for dyed yarns as value added solution. The mills dont invest into yarn dyeing , more on account of large infrastructre of steam, effluent, large vessels, small lots etc etc.
Best value would be actually found by the Sewing Thread companies.
Nevertheless, Good Bye Dyeing Machine Makers . Many of my post, I have already written that most machine makers do not invest in technology at all. This is one such case, where a Non Textile Equipment Maker has come and challanged the conventional technology. CO2 Dyeing was well known to the Industry for the last two decades, but none of the dyeing machine maker invested into it and now a Dutch Company has taken the lead.
It is now upto this Dutch company to quickly make a Market Plan and take advantage of its pioneering status. Sell the system as Technology and not an equipment. Otherwise, it will see that as all other machine makers, the Copy cats have been too fast in copying and there is very little left for the Innovaters.
It is about time that they start beating their Drums and position a Global Marketing Organization to captialize on this opportunity.
Interestingly, if you check online on the patents, there are hundreds of very nice tecnologies, which can actually be commercialized by the machine makers. But since they live in their own entrapped world, they dont see Technology and Design as the key Growth engines of the current century.
DryDye would mean, no pretreatment , no posttreatment, no drying, no marks, no crease issue, no other hanky panky. At best, it might still need Stenter. However, we hope the maker of this machine also finds a solution to heat set the fabric within the dyeing equipment using microwave technology.
DryDye would use no water, no chemicals, no auxilaries and dyes mixed with carbon dioxide will penetrate the polyester chains or cellulose yarns. After completing the dyes would get extracted automatically as carbondioxide would be turned to gas again.
This means no effluent discharge, no headaches of keeping the Eco System in balance.
This new technology will change the spinning business altogather. Most spinning mills, who have so far been churning out griege yarns will automaticlly go in for dyed yarns as value added solution. The mills dont invest into yarn dyeing , more on account of large infrastructre of steam, effluent, large vessels, small lots etc etc.
Best value would be actually found by the Sewing Thread companies.
Nevertheless, Good Bye Dyeing Machine Makers . Many of my post, I have already written that most machine makers do not invest in technology at all. This is one such case, where a Non Textile Equipment Maker has come and challanged the conventional technology. CO2 Dyeing was well known to the Industry for the last two decades, but none of the dyeing machine maker invested into it and now a Dutch Company has taken the lead.
It is now upto this Dutch company to quickly make a Market Plan and take advantage of its pioneering status. Sell the system as Technology and not an equipment. Otherwise, it will see that as all other machine makers, the Copy cats have been too fast in copying and there is very little left for the Innovaters.
It is about time that they start beating their Drums and position a Global Marketing Organization to captialize on this opportunity.
Interestingly, if you check online on the patents, there are hundreds of very nice tecnologies, which can actually be commercialized by the machine makers. But since they live in their own entrapped world, they dont see Technology and Design as the key Growth engines of the current century.
Friday, September 17, 2010
Metered Packages
Last time I wrote about " Cone Size Error" and also on Sewing Threads being sold in Metres.
Textile Yarns are all sold in Kgs. Well for want of a better system of controlling the supply the weight units were adapted historically. However, now with Metered Supply packages possible, Textile Industry has still not reoriented itself to the new available Technology.
Almost everything in textiles after yarn stage takes the length unit of measurement. So, logically the supply chain has to automatically fall in line and supply the inputs as units of length.
If a fabric beam is 5000 metres each, then the supply packages have to be multiples of 1000 metres .( Considering that some beams will be of shorter lengths or longer Lengths). Yarn makers have to make exact lengths with a reserve to make the whole system efficient.
Supply packages have to have a label of say 150,000 metres packages. The user automatically then knows the number of beams available to him . The user also orders yarns as meters based on the production program.
Finally some day all yarns will be sold the sewing thread way. Cones of 150,000 metres or 120,000 metres etc .
The other ambiguity in buying yarns in kgs is the percentage of moisture or lubricant on the yarn. Normally 2 to 3% is only water, so the buyer is practically paying yarn prices for water or lubricant.
It therefore makes more sense to order as metres per yarn. However, to control exact supplies would be a big challenge.
In the meantime, atleast those who supply metered packages can always have a premium on their supplies.
Textile Yarns are all sold in Kgs. Well for want of a better system of controlling the supply the weight units were adapted historically. However, now with Metered Supply packages possible, Textile Industry has still not reoriented itself to the new available Technology.
Almost everything in textiles after yarn stage takes the length unit of measurement. So, logically the supply chain has to automatically fall in line and supply the inputs as units of length.
If a fabric beam is 5000 metres each, then the supply packages have to be multiples of 1000 metres .( Considering that some beams will be of shorter lengths or longer Lengths). Yarn makers have to make exact lengths with a reserve to make the whole system efficient.
Supply packages have to have a label of say 150,000 metres packages. The user automatically then knows the number of beams available to him . The user also orders yarns as meters based on the production program.
Finally some day all yarns will be sold the sewing thread way. Cones of 150,000 metres or 120,000 metres etc .
The other ambiguity in buying yarns in kgs is the percentage of moisture or lubricant on the yarn. Normally 2 to 3% is only water, so the buyer is practically paying yarn prices for water or lubricant.
It therefore makes more sense to order as metres per yarn. However, to control exact supplies would be a big challenge.
In the meantime, atleast those who supply metered packages can always have a premium on their supplies.
Thursday, September 16, 2010
Cotton Marketing.
Cotton is largely sold as a commodity. Pricing therefore follows the commodity rules of demand and supply.
But so is the same for any other fibre substrate like viscose , polyester, nylon etc etc.
Here is an interesting story of a Brand " Lycra " which though a man made fibre changed from commodity to a " Brand"
Lycra the DuPont brand was long perceived as Spandex and with little Textile Use never found its place in the Textile Domain. Lycra then changed its strategy and got itself related to Fashion with its appeal on stretchibility, drape etc. ( Though none of these features actually had a Fashion appeal, but then that is what is marketing ) found a good market share and is now dominant fibre in many textile applications.
Polyester makers also branded their products like Dulon, Pulon, etc etc. However, never had a marketing genius to make a brand which would not take the commodity route. The reason was the overburden of selling large volumes of production flushing out of the spinneretts and managing cash flows. If only Polyester Makers would have chosen to make Polyester with wool texture or silk texture and taken it as small percentage of the total apparel value, it would have gone the lycra way.
In case of Cotton, the story was still more interesting. Egyptian cotton was the best cotton , but failed to Brand itself as "EgCotton " and got connected to the High Value Fashion Brands, hence only got a commodity price, but with only incremental value.
Unless and Until the fibre substrates and machine makers connect there brands to the Ultimate Fashion or Home Textiles, the value of the offerings would remain subject of speculation and the best money would still only be made by the Hedge Funds.
If Oranges, Apples, Bananas could get Branded and were linked to Farms and got priced higher with their brand perceptions, then Cotton no case could have been left out.
Coca Farmers in Africa complain about the money being made by the Swiss Chocolate makers and the story for cotton farmers is no different. The yarn makers and the Fashion brands finally make the money and the farmer only hopes that the crop would get a better price then last year.
The Organic Cotton has given the best opportunity to many a farmers to come out of this vicious cycle of commodity and now is again a chance to Brand correctly and connect to the Fashion World. Cotton Marketing Organizations have to bring value to the Farmers. Commodity any high school drop out can sell.
The next important thing for cotton marketers is the Blow Room Operations. Time has come , where Farmers need to add a Blow room to their Ginning operations. A clean, uniformed, lapped and baled cotton will directly move to the Carding section of the Textile Mill. This would open up two avenues.
Higher value realization for the Farmer > Does a Apple farmer , not clean up and then nicely pack it in boxes and deliver it to the market.
Higher Value to the Spinner : The spinner gets ready to card cotton.
The best advantage of this delivery would be that now cotton can be used with thousands and thousands of Polyester spinning mills without much change. One small change and a very large market opens up for Cotton Farmers.
The 18th century cotton delivery has to now change. It is about time that the supply chain and the user , both see beyond the obvious practices.
But so is the same for any other fibre substrate like viscose , polyester, nylon etc etc.
Here is an interesting story of a Brand " Lycra " which though a man made fibre changed from commodity to a " Brand"
Lycra the DuPont brand was long perceived as Spandex and with little Textile Use never found its place in the Textile Domain. Lycra then changed its strategy and got itself related to Fashion with its appeal on stretchibility, drape etc. ( Though none of these features actually had a Fashion appeal, but then that is what is marketing ) found a good market share and is now dominant fibre in many textile applications.
Polyester makers also branded their products like Dulon, Pulon, etc etc. However, never had a marketing genius to make a brand which would not take the commodity route. The reason was the overburden of selling large volumes of production flushing out of the spinneretts and managing cash flows. If only Polyester Makers would have chosen to make Polyester with wool texture or silk texture and taken it as small percentage of the total apparel value, it would have gone the lycra way.
In case of Cotton, the story was still more interesting. Egyptian cotton was the best cotton , but failed to Brand itself as "EgCotton " and got connected to the High Value Fashion Brands, hence only got a commodity price, but with only incremental value.
Unless and Until the fibre substrates and machine makers connect there brands to the Ultimate Fashion or Home Textiles, the value of the offerings would remain subject of speculation and the best money would still only be made by the Hedge Funds.
If Oranges, Apples, Bananas could get Branded and were linked to Farms and got priced higher with their brand perceptions, then Cotton no case could have been left out.
Coca Farmers in Africa complain about the money being made by the Swiss Chocolate makers and the story for cotton farmers is no different. The yarn makers and the Fashion brands finally make the money and the farmer only hopes that the crop would get a better price then last year.
The Organic Cotton has given the best opportunity to many a farmers to come out of this vicious cycle of commodity and now is again a chance to Brand correctly and connect to the Fashion World. Cotton Marketing Organizations have to bring value to the Farmers. Commodity any high school drop out can sell.
The next important thing for cotton marketers is the Blow Room Operations. Time has come , where Farmers need to add a Blow room to their Ginning operations. A clean, uniformed, lapped and baled cotton will directly move to the Carding section of the Textile Mill. This would open up two avenues.
Higher value realization for the Farmer > Does a Apple farmer , not clean up and then nicely pack it in boxes and deliver it to the market.
Higher Value to the Spinner : The spinner gets ready to card cotton.
The best advantage of this delivery would be that now cotton can be used with thousands and thousands of Polyester spinning mills without much change. One small change and a very large market opens up for Cotton Farmers.
The 18th century cotton delivery has to now change. It is about time that the supply chain and the user , both see beyond the obvious practices.
Cone Size Error!
The delivery vehicle for the yarn is a " cone " or a " Cheese" . Interestingly the traverse of all the winding machines have been either, 6 inches, 8 inches or maximum of 10 inches. Except for sewing threads.
While the Traverse is only 6 inches, which is say around 155 mm, the cone is 170mm. The reason being the poor quality of drums and winding will take away usually another 5 mm to 10mm . In case of precision winding, this abnormality is much lower.
However, this extra 15 mm provided to the delivery vehicle is a major logistics cost. Practically meaning shipping Thin Air.
It only takes a little ingenuity to Redesign the cone or tube with maximum of 160mm length and have longer adapters on the cradle to take up such a tube or cone.
This would automatically increase the Container Loading by 6%. If a company shipping 50 containers per month @ $2000 per container freight charge. The annual savings automatically makes it $72000. Further, as the cone size shrinks, the cost of cone comes down by the same percentage . Sales Value per container goes up by 6%. Further Intelligence suggest that there is no sanctity of a 1.89 kg package. The package has to be as large as possible and preferably above 2.5kgs. Some things, since time immemorial go on without questioning . Marketing has to impress on its customers to take as large as a package as possible. This not only improves the logistics cost, but also the machine efficiency, inventory efficiency, continuity, consistency and better value for both the user and the maker.
This becomes 15% savings, when using Texturizing Tubes or Carpet yarn tubes or any 10 inches traverse cones of tubes.
It is still an Irony that none of the Textile Mills chooses to use the Pallet as the Branding Space. Pallets are still plastic wrapped. Needless to say, a company can change this to water proof paper wrapping. Plastics are violent abuse of nature.
While the Traverse is only 6 inches, which is say around 155 mm, the cone is 170mm. The reason being the poor quality of drums and winding will take away usually another 5 mm to 10mm . In case of precision winding, this abnormality is much lower.
However, this extra 15 mm provided to the delivery vehicle is a major logistics cost. Practically meaning shipping Thin Air.
It only takes a little ingenuity to Redesign the cone or tube with maximum of 160mm length and have longer adapters on the cradle to take up such a tube or cone.
This would automatically increase the Container Loading by 6%. If a company shipping 50 containers per month @ $2000 per container freight charge. The annual savings automatically makes it $72000. Further, as the cone size shrinks, the cost of cone comes down by the same percentage . Sales Value per container goes up by 6%. Further Intelligence suggest that there is no sanctity of a 1.89 kg package. The package has to be as large as possible and preferably above 2.5kgs. Some things, since time immemorial go on without questioning . Marketing has to impress on its customers to take as large as a package as possible. This not only improves the logistics cost, but also the machine efficiency, inventory efficiency, continuity, consistency and better value for both the user and the maker.
This becomes 15% savings, when using Texturizing Tubes or Carpet yarn tubes or any 10 inches traverse cones of tubes.
It is still an Irony that none of the Textile Mills chooses to use the Pallet as the Branding Space. Pallets are still plastic wrapped. Needless to say, a company can change this to water proof paper wrapping. Plastics are violent abuse of nature.
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Polyester Pillows or Heat Exchangers.
Last weekend, I was browsing the super mall and I always track , what is new in Textiles as a material.
For long I have been watching polyester filled pillows and now there is a special mattress filled with polyester fibers. Some of these fillings are hollow fibers, some are high denier etc etc.
As a whole the gimmick of marketing has made the polyester pillows quite a success. Though for Tropical countries and Hot countries , it is a catastrophe.
I hate polyester pillows and always thought, why are the home textile companies so dumb, that they did not catch up with this new demand and quickly bought forward the Cotton filled pillows.
Combed cotton with its yellow cheesy look is just out of the world and has a handle which would be as soft like sleeping in the sky. However, no company has ever tried taking cotton fillings into mattress and pillows. Simple, because this was always the natural way of making a mattress at the first place.
Only it required was smart dressing up and branding and positioning into the market. It would have been a runaway success.
Though quilts did find a place in the branded market, however, the pillow and mattress market still remains wide open for combed cotton fillings.
In my part of the world, as a kid, I would see a hawker carrying a non descriptive large wire cotton flyer sorting the cotton and filling into a mattress. But all this got overtaken by polyurethane mattresses, which are more like heat exchangers.
Hope someday, Home Textile companies will find value in the cotton fillings again and bring regalia to sleeping paraphernalia.
For long I have been watching polyester filled pillows and now there is a special mattress filled with polyester fibers. Some of these fillings are hollow fibers, some are high denier etc etc.
As a whole the gimmick of marketing has made the polyester pillows quite a success. Though for Tropical countries and Hot countries , it is a catastrophe.
I hate polyester pillows and always thought, why are the home textile companies so dumb, that they did not catch up with this new demand and quickly bought forward the Cotton filled pillows.
Combed cotton with its yellow cheesy look is just out of the world and has a handle which would be as soft like sleeping in the sky. However, no company has ever tried taking cotton fillings into mattress and pillows. Simple, because this was always the natural way of making a mattress at the first place.
Only it required was smart dressing up and branding and positioning into the market. It would have been a runaway success.
Though quilts did find a place in the branded market, however, the pillow and mattress market still remains wide open for combed cotton fillings.
In my part of the world, as a kid, I would see a hawker carrying a non descriptive large wire cotton flyer sorting the cotton and filling into a mattress. But all this got overtaken by polyurethane mattresses, which are more like heat exchangers.
Hope someday, Home Textile companies will find value in the cotton fillings again and bring regalia to sleeping paraphernalia.
Sunday, July 25, 2010
Carbon Fibre Composites
Carbon Fibre will soon be the "In " fiber for most low weight , high strength products.
Carbon Fibre did not find any apparel applications, but was also not exploited for industrial applications. Some of the composites of carbon are now used in auto motives and airplanes, but it has still not reached a stage, where it can find a niche positioning in most industrial applications.
One of the most interesting applications of Carbon Fibre is Shoe Soles. Carbon fibers on account of low weight and high strength are wear resistance and have good abrasion resistance and the best thing being low weight.
For sports shoe applications, the carbon fibers are the best solution. A change of even 10 to 25 gms. in the shoe weight can bring about a major change in the athletes positioning in sports events, where nano seconds matter.
The shoe top fabrics also have to be researched and probably can be made out of carbon yarns.
The other application of carbon composites are heat conductive inductance cooking. Cold weather architecture application for heat preservation. Defense applications etc.
Carbon Fibre did not find any apparel applications, but was also not exploited for industrial applications. Some of the composites of carbon are now used in auto motives and airplanes, but it has still not reached a stage, where it can find a niche positioning in most industrial applications.
One of the most interesting applications of Carbon Fibre is Shoe Soles. Carbon fibers on account of low weight and high strength are wear resistance and have good abrasion resistance and the best thing being low weight.
For sports shoe applications, the carbon fibers are the best solution. A change of even 10 to 25 gms. in the shoe weight can bring about a major change in the athletes positioning in sports events, where nano seconds matter.
The shoe top fabrics also have to be researched and probably can be made out of carbon yarns.
The other application of carbon composites are heat conductive inductance cooking. Cold weather architecture application for heat preservation. Defense applications etc.
One step S and Z.
Ingenuity of technical enterprenuers always gets them the best profits and positioning in the market.
Recently I visited a factory making sewing thread. While as a factory, it is one of the most antiquated, but the most interesting thing was that the owner had practically designed each and every machine by himself. He is not a textile graduate, a raw technician and runs a very large sewing thread operation with quality only to the extent of acceptable at price point.
I will skip writing about his all other machine designs, but one of the most interesting machine that he had designed was that the S and Z twisting together in one operation.
No machine maker under the sun has been able to design such a system, but here was something unique, where 3 yarns are twisted independently on three positions as one for one and then combine on a guide and get fed into a cop which is turning anticlockwise and giving z twist with ring twister. Though the machine is still one for one twisting, yet the system is ingenuous and perfect.
The machine frame was made out of wooden board, the spindles were that of ring twisting on the z twister and the ring rail was a wooden board with rings embedded on it . The ring rail was given motion by a cam drive. Such a simple system, but giving good results.
I was not allowed to take pictures. However, sooner or later, I will get the pictures and post here.
In my opening blogs I wrote that technology in textiles has to be developed ingenuously to find a niche position in the market. The basic technology is very low in textiles and the machines are far too standard to find flexibility for the user.
Most textile machines are designed to serve the cave man textiles, the users themselves are too lazy to design machines by themselves. It is only rarely one finds that a technician has used his own mind to find a unique solution.
Recently I visited a factory making sewing thread. While as a factory, it is one of the most antiquated, but the most interesting thing was that the owner had practically designed each and every machine by himself. He is not a textile graduate, a raw technician and runs a very large sewing thread operation with quality only to the extent of acceptable at price point.
I will skip writing about his all other machine designs, but one of the most interesting machine that he had designed was that the S and Z twisting together in one operation.
No machine maker under the sun has been able to design such a system, but here was something unique, where 3 yarns are twisted independently on three positions as one for one and then combine on a guide and get fed into a cop which is turning anticlockwise and giving z twist with ring twister. Though the machine is still one for one twisting, yet the system is ingenuous and perfect.
The machine frame was made out of wooden board, the spindles were that of ring twisting on the z twister and the ring rail was a wooden board with rings embedded on it . The ring rail was given motion by a cam drive. Such a simple system, but giving good results.
I was not allowed to take pictures. However, sooner or later, I will get the pictures and post here.
In my opening blogs I wrote that technology in textiles has to be developed ingenuously to find a niche position in the market. The basic technology is very low in textiles and the machines are far too standard to find flexibility for the user.
Most textile machines are designed to serve the cave man textiles, the users themselves are too lazy to design machines by themselves. It is only rarely one finds that a technician has used his own mind to find a unique solution.
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
Twist Setting
Twist is what finally gives the power to the yarn. It brings out drape, feel, strength for weaving and crease qualities.
Higher the twist, higher is the torque in the yarn and this torque is a mess in warping and weaving. In warping, the yarns would slough off the package and in weaving, the weft would pop up incrementally and give trough to the fabric. It is for this very reason that twisted yarns are very rarely used in weft.
Twisted yarns need to be twist stabilized, but the way the system is designed is a disaster. The yarns are shoved into a steaming oven, wherein after a certain time and certain temperatures are pulled out and put to use.
How can steam or hot air ever penetrate the inner layers of yarn and even with conductivity, yarns inside layers to outside layers and middle layers have differential heat exposure and hence differential shrinkage. One of the effects of this shrinkage is a twist CV% going out of range and hence a differential dyeing result.
Interestingly , the fabric dyer believes that it is a dyeing problem and keeps trying to change recipes to take care of streaks and deep dyeing etc, but can never imagine for his life that the problem is with the twist of the yarn in the fabric. Same applies to yarn dyeing.
The whole know how in good stabilized twisted package is with optimizing the density of the package in twisting machines. Unless, one makes soft packages to allow the steam to easily enter the package and stabilize all layers of package, the twist setting would remain sub optimal.
As a hint, the density of polyester textured yarns should be around 450 gms per litre as maximum and for FDY yarns should be around 220 gms per litre. But to get such levels of density, the twisting machines need to be tweaked.
Secondly, the package centre has to be a spring bobbin only. Mantex Dyesprings are the best option.
All textured and FDY yarns, which go for high twist should be with zero residual lubricant, otherwise,it would give yellow color with steam. Secondly, the steamer should have water purifiers lest the hardness of water would give yellow color as compliment.
Timing in a steamer depends upon the torque in the yarn and hardness of the package.
Higher the twist, higher is the torque in the yarn and this torque is a mess in warping and weaving. In warping, the yarns would slough off the package and in weaving, the weft would pop up incrementally and give trough to the fabric. It is for this very reason that twisted yarns are very rarely used in weft.
Twisted yarns need to be twist stabilized, but the way the system is designed is a disaster. The yarns are shoved into a steaming oven, wherein after a certain time and certain temperatures are pulled out and put to use.
How can steam or hot air ever penetrate the inner layers of yarn and even with conductivity, yarns inside layers to outside layers and middle layers have differential heat exposure and hence differential shrinkage. One of the effects of this shrinkage is a twist CV% going out of range and hence a differential dyeing result.
Interestingly , the fabric dyer believes that it is a dyeing problem and keeps trying to change recipes to take care of streaks and deep dyeing etc, but can never imagine for his life that the problem is with the twist of the yarn in the fabric. Same applies to yarn dyeing.
The whole know how in good stabilized twisted package is with optimizing the density of the package in twisting machines. Unless, one makes soft packages to allow the steam to easily enter the package and stabilize all layers of package, the twist setting would remain sub optimal.
As a hint, the density of polyester textured yarns should be around 450 gms per litre as maximum and for FDY yarns should be around 220 gms per litre. But to get such levels of density, the twisting machines need to be tweaked.
Secondly, the package centre has to be a spring bobbin only. Mantex Dyesprings are the best option.
All textured and FDY yarns, which go for high twist should be with zero residual lubricant, otherwise,it would give yellow color with steam. Secondly, the steamer should have water purifiers lest the hardness of water would give yellow color as compliment.
Timing in a steamer depends upon the torque in the yarn and hardness of the package.
Saturday, April 17, 2010
Commodity Yarns or Cave Man Textiles
If you happen to uncover a Large Stone in India, then most likely a Textile Mill will show up. Indian Entrepreneurs love Textile Mills and besides 3000++ , more are always on the way. But this phenomenon is not just in India, it is spread across Indonesia and Thailand.
Most would joke in South India, that Bar Owners have now diversified into Textile Mills .
Such is the simplicity of the business, that with little extra money in bank with a business man and next thing , you get to know that he is a Mill Owner.
Some of these mill owners do not know, which if the front of the machine or which is the back of the machine. However, year after year, the number of spindles keep growing and next year , if you visit him, the mill has grown to 100,000+ spindles.
Most mill, say 90% run few counts like 20s, 30s and 40s and some have twisting capacities. For polyester DTY yarns, it is only 150 den or 300 den . Polyester staple Fibre is essentially 1.2 d x 38 mm.
Largely the textile across the globe is covered with these few yarns.
Therefore, the whole business of textiles is just about converting PSF or Cotton , or PTA to few textile counts.
The conversion cost is also known to the security guard on the front gate. So, as long as you can wind yarn on the cone, then already you are up and running.
Commodity yarns as these are, can be best described as Cave Man Textiles. Day in and day night, the same routine and same cycle to roll out bundles of yarns.
The most interesting thing about these mills/ plants is that despite running commodity yarns, none of them understands that at the end Profitability of such a business is largely dependent on the Productivity and if you don't push your machines to run at the highest speeds, there is no way, that at the end of the year, you can find a fat black bottom line.
Every 5% gain in speeds on the Ring Frame is a direct profit of 5% to the company. Unless and Until each year, the company gains in productivity, there is little chance that it has room for survival in coming time. All other cost will go up by minimum 5% each year and same is not matched with productivity profits, the company is up for grabs.
Which also means, unless and until the company regularly invests into machines which will yield higher outputs, the laggard assets will only loose out. Most cost in a mill are fixed and the Top line is largely the price of market x output. Market prices for commodities in a global space are not just cut throat, but volcanic.
In a kind of Cave Man Textiles, the job is largely production management with very little incentive on development and creativity. However, best production managers are those, who can drive the machines much much higher then the known limits to the industry and the machine configuration.
Quality in commodity is a very relative term and as long as the yarn runs perfectly well on the user machine, most other attributes are academic. Only for a certain set of customers, where special quality is managed and higher prices realized,perhaps, machines can be tweaked.
Another interesting thing about commodity yarns is that , say, if the plant produces 150 denier all round the year, then allow certain set of machines to run the same yarn with same settings and same speeds year after year. These machines will give yarn quality, which no one can match in the market. Somehow, machines love consistency and have a tacit " Do Not Disturb board " which most of us fail to read.
Cave Man Textiles are still a great engine of growth in developing economies and many cave time machine makers are happy serving these mill.
Most would joke in South India, that Bar Owners have now diversified into Textile Mills .
Such is the simplicity of the business, that with little extra money in bank with a business man and next thing , you get to know that he is a Mill Owner.
Some of these mill owners do not know, which if the front of the machine or which is the back of the machine. However, year after year, the number of spindles keep growing and next year , if you visit him, the mill has grown to 100,000+ spindles.
Most mill, say 90% run few counts like 20s, 30s and 40s and some have twisting capacities. For polyester DTY yarns, it is only 150 den or 300 den . Polyester staple Fibre is essentially 1.2 d x 38 mm.
Largely the textile across the globe is covered with these few yarns.
Therefore, the whole business of textiles is just about converting PSF or Cotton , or PTA to few textile counts.
The conversion cost is also known to the security guard on the front gate. So, as long as you can wind yarn on the cone, then already you are up and running.
Commodity yarns as these are, can be best described as Cave Man Textiles. Day in and day night, the same routine and same cycle to roll out bundles of yarns.
The most interesting thing about these mills/ plants is that despite running commodity yarns, none of them understands that at the end Profitability of such a business is largely dependent on the Productivity and if you don't push your machines to run at the highest speeds, there is no way, that at the end of the year, you can find a fat black bottom line.
Every 5% gain in speeds on the Ring Frame is a direct profit of 5% to the company. Unless and Until each year, the company gains in productivity, there is little chance that it has room for survival in coming time. All other cost will go up by minimum 5% each year and same is not matched with productivity profits, the company is up for grabs.
Which also means, unless and until the company regularly invests into machines which will yield higher outputs, the laggard assets will only loose out. Most cost in a mill are fixed and the Top line is largely the price of market x output. Market prices for commodities in a global space are not just cut throat, but volcanic.
In a kind of Cave Man Textiles, the job is largely production management with very little incentive on development and creativity. However, best production managers are those, who can drive the machines much much higher then the known limits to the industry and the machine configuration.
Quality in commodity is a very relative term and as long as the yarn runs perfectly well on the user machine, most other attributes are academic. Only for a certain set of customers, where special quality is managed and higher prices realized,perhaps, machines can be tweaked.
Another interesting thing about commodity yarns is that , say, if the plant produces 150 denier all round the year, then allow certain set of machines to run the same yarn with same settings and same speeds year after year. These machines will give yarn quality, which no one can match in the market. Somehow, machines love consistency and have a tacit " Do Not Disturb board " which most of us fail to read.
Cave Man Textiles are still a great engine of growth in developing economies and many cave time machine makers are happy serving these mill.
Thursday, April 15, 2010
Nylon : New York + London => The Porn Yarn
Ny-lon gets it name from New York and London. When it was first made, it was a yarn that would unwind straight from New York to London . Perhaps, it would have been the first filament yarn.
I call Nylon, the Porn Yarn. Playboy girls are largely covered with nylon . From stockings to lingerie to nets and fancies, Nylon for its silky touch and silvery reflection has all the entrapping for a fashion cat.
Nylon was never a textile friendly yarn. With its poor feel, static cluster, and heat trap, it got quickly abandoned for more cooler yarns like polyester, viscose etc. etc.
Nylon socks still attack my foot and I don't find easily nice cotton socks anywhere. Socks, lingerie, elastics, and sewing threads have still continued to use nylon as the base yarn.
Nylon as long as was pin textured still had the bulk and handle for next to skin applications. But with disc texturizing, it is gives a petroleum extract feeling. Nylon should have technically gone the Air Texturizing route, however, very rarely is air texturized.
Socks and stockings out of Nylon are mal-wares of Textiles and should have long been replaced with other nicer yarns. Though polypropylene has been tried successfully, however, it still does not give a good feel. Cotton and polyester do not have the elastic hug and wool mixed with nylon is still used in cold countries.
Nylon is wonderful, when it comes to Industrial Applications, like Ropes, Cords, Tire Cords, Belting, Conveyors, Composites, parachutes, fishing nets etc. However, here again the technology is largely cabling and twisting. Heavy cabler and twister machines are power suckers. A rather simpler system would have been a winding application with single twist tube passing the package. Given the speeds of winding, the productivity would be anytime better and with the missing spindle, the power will be almost nil.
Same can be applied for spun yarns as well.
Nylon Threads form the best industrial threads for leather and heavy applications. However, time has now come for replacement of these threads with composites like carbon with polyamides or steel with silk etc.
Nylon Fibre could never make it far. Best was about blends with wool. However, for the carpet industry, it was still an unexplored area. Nylon Fibre Woolen blend carpets would have the silky touch and reflectance properties with great washing and bending properties. Blankets is another Area, where low weight and higher heat conductivity can be useful.
Heat Insulation ropes/ fabrics made out of Nylon Wool ,rather then Glass wool, specially for home interior piping are anytime better option.
I call Nylon, the Porn Yarn. Playboy girls are largely covered with nylon . From stockings to lingerie to nets and fancies, Nylon for its silky touch and silvery reflection has all the entrapping for a fashion cat.
Nylon was never a textile friendly yarn. With its poor feel, static cluster, and heat trap, it got quickly abandoned for more cooler yarns like polyester, viscose etc. etc.
Nylon socks still attack my foot and I don't find easily nice cotton socks anywhere. Socks, lingerie, elastics, and sewing threads have still continued to use nylon as the base yarn.
Nylon as long as was pin textured still had the bulk and handle for next to skin applications. But with disc texturizing, it is gives a petroleum extract feeling. Nylon should have technically gone the Air Texturizing route, however, very rarely is air texturized.
Socks and stockings out of Nylon are mal-wares of Textiles and should have long been replaced with other nicer yarns. Though polypropylene has been tried successfully, however, it still does not give a good feel. Cotton and polyester do not have the elastic hug and wool mixed with nylon is still used in cold countries.
Nylon is wonderful, when it comes to Industrial Applications, like Ropes, Cords, Tire Cords, Belting, Conveyors, Composites, parachutes, fishing nets etc. However, here again the technology is largely cabling and twisting. Heavy cabler and twister machines are power suckers. A rather simpler system would have been a winding application with single twist tube passing the package. Given the speeds of winding, the productivity would be anytime better and with the missing spindle, the power will be almost nil.
Same can be applied for spun yarns as well.
Nylon Threads form the best industrial threads for leather and heavy applications. However, time has now come for replacement of these threads with composites like carbon with polyamides or steel with silk etc.
Nylon Fibre could never make it far. Best was about blends with wool. However, for the carpet industry, it was still an unexplored area. Nylon Fibre Woolen blend carpets would have the silky touch and reflectance properties with great washing and bending properties. Blankets is another Area, where low weight and higher heat conductivity can be useful.
Heat Insulation ropes/ fabrics made out of Nylon Wool ,rather then Glass wool, specially for home interior piping are anytime better option.
Sunday, April 11, 2010
Design : The New Brand Paradigm
Perhaps, when " Branding " would have been first used for Product and Market Sensitivity. Design was an intrinsic function. Much of it was subdued by attributes, which linked it to reliability and functionality. Most brands got the acts right and peaked on deliverables. And the Brand Paradigm has moved to " Design "
Now " Design " Practically defines the Brand.
South Korea is the only country in the world, which has has the subtlety to recognize that the next generation of product lines would only be " Design " Delights.
Again within South Korea, the one company I admire most is " LG" . Fighting Samsung, Sharp, Sony, Nokia , etc etc and though may still not be the top brand, but the fighting strategy of LG was always "Design" . Considering that almost all product offerings had the same features and same technical specifications, it was only the unique Design, which would keep LG ahead in the race has made them unique.
When I was to change my Hand Phone in the year 2008, I made a general spec of what I wanted and it was simply something which could make a call, sent sms, but without the keyboard and take a picture . After surveying the whole range of product range, I found Nokia was too complicated to understand, Motorola was loosely placed, samsung was ok , but LG had a cute design . However, during that time, there was No Touch Screen . I accidentally came across a Phone, " Prada" . Never did I imagine that Prada was also linked to Hand Phones and not just fashion accessories. It incidentally was the only phone at that time with Touch Screen. Little further exploration and guess what? The phone was made by LG. Prada now runs my communication faculties and still none of my friends and associates have been able to find an equivalent match , nor Prada is easily available.
If you research further LG offerings, you will find that almost all its offerings have a distinct design, which is unmatched by any other product in the global space.
This is only an example of how " Designs" are shaping up Brands and positioning themselves into he murky world of marketing.
South Korea is the first country in the world, which has taken up officially " Design " as the key market differentiators and the Industry is recognizing it as a very major attribute of Product Integrity.
Industrial products have so far failed to factor " Shopfloor Vista " as a product key integrator and hence work experience is insipid and dull in many factories.
Machine makers to Accessories to Utilities have to redefine the designs to make the work place " A Visual Functional Paradise "
Technology embedded and Design Delights will rule the world.
Now " Design " Practically defines the Brand.
South Korea is the only country in the world, which has has the subtlety to recognize that the next generation of product lines would only be " Design " Delights.
Again within South Korea, the one company I admire most is " LG" . Fighting Samsung, Sharp, Sony, Nokia , etc etc and though may still not be the top brand, but the fighting strategy of LG was always "Design" . Considering that almost all product offerings had the same features and same technical specifications, it was only the unique Design, which would keep LG ahead in the race has made them unique.
When I was to change my Hand Phone in the year 2008, I made a general spec of what I wanted and it was simply something which could make a call, sent sms, but without the keyboard and take a picture . After surveying the whole range of product range, I found Nokia was too complicated to understand, Motorola was loosely placed, samsung was ok , but LG had a cute design . However, during that time, there was No Touch Screen . I accidentally came across a Phone, " Prada" . Never did I imagine that Prada was also linked to Hand Phones and not just fashion accessories. It incidentally was the only phone at that time with Touch Screen. Little further exploration and guess what? The phone was made by LG. Prada now runs my communication faculties and still none of my friends and associates have been able to find an equivalent match , nor Prada is easily available.
If you research further LG offerings, you will find that almost all its offerings have a distinct design, which is unmatched by any other product in the global space.
This is only an example of how " Designs" are shaping up Brands and positioning themselves into he murky world of marketing.
South Korea is the first country in the world, which has taken up officially " Design " as the key market differentiators and the Industry is recognizing it as a very major attribute of Product Integrity.
Industrial products have so far failed to factor " Shopfloor Vista " as a product key integrator and hence work experience is insipid and dull in many factories.
Machine makers to Accessories to Utilities have to redefine the designs to make the work place " A Visual Functional Paradise "
Technology embedded and Design Delights will rule the world.
Thursday, April 8, 2010
Humidity Or Hawa Pani
When I started my career with a spinning mill, I found it interesting, when the shift in-charge would call the in-charge for Hawa Pani ( Humidity )
The lack of right humidity would cause a havoc in spinning. Ends breaking in spinning, simplex running a muck, drawing roller lapping and carding loading etc etc.
Humidity is a major cost center in spinning. A power guzzler and a necessary evil. But again like everything else in Textiles, Humidity and its controls have remained basically unchanged in the last 100 years.
If Hand phones merged a Camera and a FM radio and Internet on a small device, then the message was that it only needs some lateral thinking to get other accessories merged into the basic machine.
There was no reason that the Humidification could have not been localized on the machine itself and not a large separate plant eating away so much of power.
The integrated machine would have a small fan and a water dehumidifier sitting right on the top of it. Thereby ensuring that the fiber gets enough humidity as desired and fully controllable on the user machine.
While for Ring Frames and Simplex could still have a split conditioning wherein the machine frame has a duct running across the machine and enough dehumidifier points.
This also avoids the use of outside air, which normally is a source of blackening of the yarn.
The air change would be managed with suction fans etc.
The investment into humidity plant runs into few hundred thousand dollars and the operational cost is a drain on profitability.
The lack of right humidity would cause a havoc in spinning. Ends breaking in spinning, simplex running a muck, drawing roller lapping and carding loading etc etc.
Humidity is a major cost center in spinning. A power guzzler and a necessary evil. But again like everything else in Textiles, Humidity and its controls have remained basically unchanged in the last 100 years.
If Hand phones merged a Camera and a FM radio and Internet on a small device, then the message was that it only needs some lateral thinking to get other accessories merged into the basic machine.
There was no reason that the Humidification could have not been localized on the machine itself and not a large separate plant eating away so much of power.
The integrated machine would have a small fan and a water dehumidifier sitting right on the top of it. Thereby ensuring that the fiber gets enough humidity as desired and fully controllable on the user machine.
While for Ring Frames and Simplex could still have a split conditioning wherein the machine frame has a duct running across the machine and enough dehumidifier points.
This also avoids the use of outside air, which normally is a source of blackening of the yarn.
The air change would be managed with suction fans etc.
The investment into humidity plant runs into few hundred thousand dollars and the operational cost is a drain on profitability.
e-F@ctory For Synthetic Spinning
Synthetic spinning could have actually been made much more simpler and cleaner then the current process. Synthetic fibres unlike cotton have exactly the same staple lengths, the same tenacity, elongation, moisture and uniformity.
Given the profile of the fiber, the spinning does not really need a rigorous set up for parallelism and homogeneity. Which practically means, that on the carding machines, the sliver only needs a set of extended draw rollers and is already good enough for feeding the simplex machine in conventional spinning.
The blow room with a simple bale opener and fibre individualize r is good enough to chute it into a Carding Engine. Current blow room with beaters etc is not required at all. However, a good carding engine will deliver a good yarn spec.
Drawing is totally superfluous for synthetic spinning. The whole purpose of drawing is getting the right hank and homogenizing the sliver line. Homogeneity is not required for man made fibers and paralleling is already enough in the carding stage and can be further extended by having a set of draw rollers on the carding machine itself.
So, if one is spinning on MVS system, then the carding cans can be directly used on the machine and you are ready with spun yarn.
Carding and MVS is already a spinning mill. All it needs is less then 50 operators to give a production same as that of 25,000 spindles of ring spinning.
A good designer would rather have a track laid out for central repository of card cans so the cans move automatically on getting loaded. From the central repository, they get automatically moved to the MVS with a blue tooth call and replaces the runout can. A robot hand then fixes the sliver into the chute of MVS, which sucks and does the needful.
Cans to have artificial intelligence loaded on it to respond to all wireless calls and the toy motor then drives it to the calling station. All of which is programmed automatically with the requirement of the machine. ( If you can control a toy aircraft and toy cars with radio waves, then moving cans is another child`s play)
Final packages from MVS get picked by the moving belt on the top of the machine and is unloaded directly at the end of the machine, where the Trolley collects it and makes it pass the water shower chamber and then a small RF chamber for getting the right conditioning
Conditioning machines in the current form are a disaster. ( Next Blog Coming soon on this system)
Packaging is already well automated. Only that at the MVS winding head, after doffing ,it should have a bar coding system on the cone to track it all the way till the warping machine.
A control room with a closed loop vision system monitors the process and vision sensors show real time quality of yarn.
The extension of this mill is the Polyester staple fibre plant or viscose stable fibre plant itself, where after the cutter, one needs to chute the fibre directly to the carding and no blow room would be required. From the carding , follow the MVS route. Hence a PSF/ VSF plant is now making synthetic yarns by just adding two sets of machines.
Given the profile of the fiber, the spinning does not really need a rigorous set up for parallelism and homogeneity. Which practically means, that on the carding machines, the sliver only needs a set of extended draw rollers and is already good enough for feeding the simplex machine in conventional spinning.
The blow room with a simple bale opener and fibre individualize r is good enough to chute it into a Carding Engine. Current blow room with beaters etc is not required at all. However, a good carding engine will deliver a good yarn spec.
Drawing is totally superfluous for synthetic spinning. The whole purpose of drawing is getting the right hank and homogenizing the sliver line. Homogeneity is not required for man made fibers and paralleling is already enough in the carding stage and can be further extended by having a set of draw rollers on the carding machine itself.
So, if one is spinning on MVS system, then the carding cans can be directly used on the machine and you are ready with spun yarn.
Carding and MVS is already a spinning mill. All it needs is less then 50 operators to give a production same as that of 25,000 spindles of ring spinning.
A good designer would rather have a track laid out for central repository of card cans so the cans move automatically on getting loaded. From the central repository, they get automatically moved to the MVS with a blue tooth call and replaces the runout can. A robot hand then fixes the sliver into the chute of MVS, which sucks and does the needful.
Cans to have artificial intelligence loaded on it to respond to all wireless calls and the toy motor then drives it to the calling station. All of which is programmed automatically with the requirement of the machine. ( If you can control a toy aircraft and toy cars with radio waves, then moving cans is another child`s play)
Final packages from MVS get picked by the moving belt on the top of the machine and is unloaded directly at the end of the machine, where the Trolley collects it and makes it pass the water shower chamber and then a small RF chamber for getting the right conditioning
Conditioning machines in the current form are a disaster. ( Next Blog Coming soon on this system)
Packaging is already well automated. Only that at the MVS winding head, after doffing ,it should have a bar coding system on the cone to track it all the way till the warping machine.
A control room with a closed loop vision system monitors the process and vision sensors show real time quality of yarn.
The extension of this mill is the Polyester staple fibre plant or viscose stable fibre plant itself, where after the cutter, one needs to chute the fibre directly to the carding and no blow room would be required. From the carding , follow the MVS route. Hence a PSF/ VSF plant is now making synthetic yarns by just adding two sets of machines.
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Fundamentals And Dundamentals
Some problems are solved with Funda`s and these are called Fundamnetals and others are solved with a Dunda (Long Stick ) and these are called Dundamentals.
Both Fundamentals and Dundamentals are not used in the Industry. Any normal issue and we fail to apply the fundamentals to resolve the same and any complex issues and we fail to use the Dunda to resolve the issue.
Say, a yarn is not able to run on a machine, we then try to adjust the speed, make changes in the setting, look at humidity, change the yarn etc etc. I recall as a young engineer working for a machine maker, I was sent to support an engineer who was struggling to resolve a problem with a customer, wherein the yarn on twisting machine would give untwisted results intermittently and this had caused havoc with the customer. He had used the twisted yarn on the warp beam and screwed up around 10,000 metres of fabric with streaks of untwisted yarns showing up intermittently on the fabric.
My colleague did all possible settings, changed yarns, continuously monitored the spindle for any slippage, reduced speeds, monitored the take up speed, checked the cam , overfeed and every possible thing. We would then take the yarn, make a pirn out of it and use in weft and the untwisted would show up again. Though the package itself will show absolutely normal twisting. This was such a mystery, where Hitchcock would have fancied writing another best seller. The invisible hand was coming and untwisting the yarn.
At this stage, I told the management of the mill that as far as we were concerned, Machine was perfectly ok and the DTY maker had made a very special invention with Hitchcock effect and they do better contact them. But the management would not leave me. Well,I wrote my report and returned to Bombay.
A month later, the DTY, makers, which is now the worlds largest had to pay compensation of screwing up the fabric and other losses.
The Fundamental was that if the spindle speed was not varying and the take up was not showing any varitation, then no way the yarn can show differential twisting. So, no matter, how much the customer cried foul on my machine, I did not bother and made my report. The same got proven. This is called Funda.
The Dundamentals are anyday more interesting and more effective. I recall one such experience, when I was working for a polyester staple fibre plant, in the night shift a pump stopped. The maintenance was called and they checked and found everything was ok with it ,but the pump shamelessly refused to run. At this stage, I asked my operator to bring the Dunda from my room. I hit the Dunda hard on the head of the pump and there it went, gha gha, gha,.............and went to full swing.
Well, Dunda is more effective with the people, who usually show the above pump effect. There are more obstructive managers, then conducive managers. Dundamentals show better results there.
Dundamentals is a Management Technology and has my Handprint and Footprint.
Both Fundamentals and Dundamentals are not used in the Industry. Any normal issue and we fail to apply the fundamentals to resolve the same and any complex issues and we fail to use the Dunda to resolve the issue.
Say, a yarn is not able to run on a machine, we then try to adjust the speed, make changes in the setting, look at humidity, change the yarn etc etc. I recall as a young engineer working for a machine maker, I was sent to support an engineer who was struggling to resolve a problem with a customer, wherein the yarn on twisting machine would give untwisted results intermittently and this had caused havoc with the customer. He had used the twisted yarn on the warp beam and screwed up around 10,000 metres of fabric with streaks of untwisted yarns showing up intermittently on the fabric.
My colleague did all possible settings, changed yarns, continuously monitored the spindle for any slippage, reduced speeds, monitored the take up speed, checked the cam , overfeed and every possible thing. We would then take the yarn, make a pirn out of it and use in weft and the untwisted would show up again. Though the package itself will show absolutely normal twisting. This was such a mystery, where Hitchcock would have fancied writing another best seller. The invisible hand was coming and untwisting the yarn.
At this stage, I told the management of the mill that as far as we were concerned, Machine was perfectly ok and the DTY maker had made a very special invention with Hitchcock effect and they do better contact them. But the management would not leave me. Well,I wrote my report and returned to Bombay.
A month later, the DTY, makers, which is now the worlds largest had to pay compensation of screwing up the fabric and other losses.
The Fundamental was that if the spindle speed was not varying and the take up was not showing any varitation, then no way the yarn can show differential twisting. So, no matter, how much the customer cried foul on my machine, I did not bother and made my report. The same got proven. This is called Funda.
The Dundamentals are anyday more interesting and more effective. I recall one such experience, when I was working for a polyester staple fibre plant, in the night shift a pump stopped. The maintenance was called and they checked and found everything was ok with it ,but the pump shamelessly refused to run. At this stage, I asked my operator to bring the Dunda from my room. I hit the Dunda hard on the head of the pump and there it went, gha gha, gha,.............and went to full swing.
Well, Dunda is more effective with the people, who usually show the above pump effect. There are more obstructive managers, then conducive managers. Dundamentals show better results there.
Dundamentals is a Management Technology and has my Handprint and Footprint.
Greece Glory 2 Gloom !
Two years back, I changed all my Dollar assets into Euro and now all my Euro have gone on a spin. So, first I lost on Dollar and now on Euro. Guess, keeping in some Asian currency is more sensible.
Thanks to Greece and Euro has sunk.
Greece is a small country with an interesting history. Known for its Philosophy, Mathematics and the Acropolis.
The total population is only around 11.5 million people. Which would account to be around the total population of 1 metropolis city of India. Early 19th century, out from the Ottoman empire, Greece was largely a kingdom till late 1960 and much into war before that either fighting the Germans or the Italians or the communist.
At GDP per capital of USD30k+, it is still too strong to cause any major issue, but the budget deficit of Euro 30 billion has sent the panic bell ringing across Europe. It would easily refinance the same via bonds or help from Germany or IMF etc. But what I want to drive from this blog is how countries fail to exploit there own ancient culture and heritage as part of their Tourism.
Greece with its many islands is a major tourist country. Much of its economy depends on tourism and it is estimated around 20 million tourist would have visited Greece in the last year.
I have been to Greece 3 times and I had around 5 customers , all based in Athens. Year after year, I saw the textile industry collapse and on my last visit, my customer Helatex told me , may be next time, you come, the company will not be there and the same happened. What is left in Greece today, is the skeleton of one time flourishing textile industry.
Textile is not just an industry, it is also a very large job provider, in fact amongst all industries, Textile employs the most people. Therefore in any over populated nation or poor nation, Textile becomes the key employer and a social keeper of society. However, the reverse is also true, that as the economy moves north wards for the country, textile is the first industry to be axed. Greece was no omission to it.
What pains me, when the Textile Industry altogether is wiped out of a country, then it is a very large part of history, culture and heritage, which the country looses out. The skill, knowledge and expertise of all those who have been into this industry slowly decays.
Ancient Greeks were the first to have textiles from the Roman empire and that knowledge went down till the last century. However, the next generation would never know, what Textiles was part of their culture, except in the library books.
Second, for each and every country I have traveled, I have never seen " Textiles " being promoted as the part of culture and traditions of that nation. I recall visiting Athens and having a Greek Salad, and recall going for a nice Greek Dance and a cruise to the nearby islands and having my picture shot with Ms Universe, who incidentally was traveling to that Island. I also recall buying Acropolis as souvenir and visiting the museum.
But I don't recall that I could anywhere buy any "Textiles" which was special to Greece. Nor was it seen in the Museum at Acropolis.
If an average of 20 Million annual visitors to Greece would buy one metre of textile MADE IN GREECE as souvenir , it would still make 20 million metres of fabric and the garments or home furnishing or dresses etc. Making of 20 million metres would atleast employ 1000 people directly to indirectly. And for a nation of 11.5 million, and may be the working group of only 3 to 4 million, this is still a large volume. But more important is the preservation of a culture , heritage and history of a nation.
Textile is not just an industry, it is an art, culture, history, tradition, design, skill , knowledge and a piece of joy.
When last I stayed at North Carolina US at Hilton, the most outstanding thing that was written in large letters and carved on bronze plate was . " All The Textiles Used In This Hotel Is Made In USA"
Well, there is a message in it. Unless Inter Industry supports one another and Nations value their culture and heritage, the world will only sink to the limits of greed.
Thanks to Greece and Euro has sunk.
Greece is a small country with an interesting history. Known for its Philosophy, Mathematics and the Acropolis.
The total population is only around 11.5 million people. Which would account to be around the total population of 1 metropolis city of India. Early 19th century, out from the Ottoman empire, Greece was largely a kingdom till late 1960 and much into war before that either fighting the Germans or the Italians or the communist.
At GDP per capital of USD30k+, it is still too strong to cause any major issue, but the budget deficit of Euro 30 billion has sent the panic bell ringing across Europe. It would easily refinance the same via bonds or help from Germany or IMF etc. But what I want to drive from this blog is how countries fail to exploit there own ancient culture and heritage as part of their Tourism.
Greece with its many islands is a major tourist country. Much of its economy depends on tourism and it is estimated around 20 million tourist would have visited Greece in the last year.
I have been to Greece 3 times and I had around 5 customers , all based in Athens. Year after year, I saw the textile industry collapse and on my last visit, my customer Helatex told me , may be next time, you come, the company will not be there and the same happened. What is left in Greece today, is the skeleton of one time flourishing textile industry.
Textile is not just an industry, it is also a very large job provider, in fact amongst all industries, Textile employs the most people. Therefore in any over populated nation or poor nation, Textile becomes the key employer and a social keeper of society. However, the reverse is also true, that as the economy moves north wards for the country, textile is the first industry to be axed. Greece was no omission to it.
What pains me, when the Textile Industry altogether is wiped out of a country, then it is a very large part of history, culture and heritage, which the country looses out. The skill, knowledge and expertise of all those who have been into this industry slowly decays.
Ancient Greeks were the first to have textiles from the Roman empire and that knowledge went down till the last century. However, the next generation would never know, what Textiles was part of their culture, except in the library books.
Second, for each and every country I have traveled, I have never seen " Textiles " being promoted as the part of culture and traditions of that nation. I recall visiting Athens and having a Greek Salad, and recall going for a nice Greek Dance and a cruise to the nearby islands and having my picture shot with Ms Universe, who incidentally was traveling to that Island. I also recall buying Acropolis as souvenir and visiting the museum.
But I don't recall that I could anywhere buy any "Textiles" which was special to Greece. Nor was it seen in the Museum at Acropolis.
If an average of 20 Million annual visitors to Greece would buy one metre of textile MADE IN GREECE as souvenir , it would still make 20 million metres of fabric and the garments or home furnishing or dresses etc. Making of 20 million metres would atleast employ 1000 people directly to indirectly. And for a nation of 11.5 million, and may be the working group of only 3 to 4 million, this is still a large volume. But more important is the preservation of a culture , heritage and history of a nation.
Textile is not just an industry, it is an art, culture, history, tradition, design, skill , knowledge and a piece of joy.
When last I stayed at North Carolina US at Hilton, the most outstanding thing that was written in large letters and carved on bronze plate was . " All The Textiles Used In This Hotel Is Made In USA"
Well, there is a message in it. Unless Inter Industry supports one another and Nations value their culture and heritage, the world will only sink to the limits of greed.
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Tea Bag and Threads or Unsafe Condom ?
Tea Bag and Threads is a potential source of Food Contamination.
Those who have worked in Textile Industry ( In most developing countries ) know well that how yarn is handled. The operator goes to the Loo , which for sure has no running water, uses his hands to clear the small thing and is back on the machine, threading the yarn which will then become your tea bag thread.
Well, one would argue, that the thread then goes for washing and bleaching cycles and hence should be clean enough.
But would you take a risk ? At a certain temperature the thread and bag will release any chemicals left out in the bleaching cycle.
Secondly, boil tea leaves and make tea and try using boiled water and using tea bags to make tea. There is a world of difference. Flavors cannot pass the Non Woven Bag. It can impart some color of tea, it can give some taste of tea to the water . But it is still not the same ,perhaps the right analogy would be like having sex with condom, however, in this case an unsafe condom.
Further, on one side, we want to be fully organic, health conscious, hygienic and on the other side, we tend to ignore the marketing traps around us.
The good old way of using tea leaves and boiling them to have a refreshing tea cup is much nicer then using a tea bag. Why did they not go and invent coffee bags ?
Left over to the marketers , they would make a Thread and Call it God`s Thread and get it blessed by the Vatican or your favorite religious guru and each of us is wearing around us, as source of Good Luck.
Say no to plastics, say no to tea bags.
Those who have worked in Textile Industry ( In most developing countries ) know well that how yarn is handled. The operator goes to the Loo , which for sure has no running water, uses his hands to clear the small thing and is back on the machine, threading the yarn which will then become your tea bag thread.
Well, one would argue, that the thread then goes for washing and bleaching cycles and hence should be clean enough.
But would you take a risk ? At a certain temperature the thread and bag will release any chemicals left out in the bleaching cycle.
Secondly, boil tea leaves and make tea and try using boiled water and using tea bags to make tea. There is a world of difference. Flavors cannot pass the Non Woven Bag. It can impart some color of tea, it can give some taste of tea to the water . But it is still not the same ,perhaps the right analogy would be like having sex with condom, however, in this case an unsafe condom.
Further, on one side, we want to be fully organic, health conscious, hygienic and on the other side, we tend to ignore the marketing traps around us.
The good old way of using tea leaves and boiling them to have a refreshing tea cup is much nicer then using a tea bag. Why did they not go and invent coffee bags ?
Left over to the marketers , they would make a Thread and Call it God`s Thread and get it blessed by the Vatican or your favorite religious guru and each of us is wearing around us, as source of Good Luck.
Say no to plastics, say no to tea bags.
Controlled Drawing With Twisting - Sewing Thread Secret .
Well Thread is perhaps the largest Sewing Thread maker in Bangladesh.
The owner Nurul Bhai and his family are my very close friends. The story of Well Thread goes to early 20th century, wherein the father, started a small plant making sewing threads and was famously known in Chittagong as Sutli Wala
As a Home Industry with some basic machines, he would buy the raw yarn, then twist and color them in a pot and wind it on small cones and pack it on his back and sell to the market. Same is the story of Hassan Bhai in Egypt and Coats Owner, an Iranian Jew, who got settled in UK and made a global sewing thread empire.
Since my largest customer base around the globe is sewing thread makers, I know most of them personally. Whether it is Diktas in Turkey or Best Thread in China, all of these have grown year after year. Sewing Thread perhaps is the most profitable textile product line as I have never seen one single sewing thread maker going bankrupt. The only entry barrier is managing a large customer base and hence a large working capital. Infact, the only Textile Manufacturing business, which flourishes in Europe and US is still Sewing Thread
One of the biggest failures of sewing thread industry has been to change the business model into " Made To Order " Business. If Garment industry orders colors and cones as per their requirements, then other then black and white and some other color assortment , the whole business should practically run on Made to order. The Bazaar trade can also be switched to Made To Order, as long as the marketer is not greedy about dumping the production and showing false sales.
Well Thread is today even bigger then Coats in Bangladesh and has one of the most modern plant and a very diverse range of product.
Sewing Thread companies are relatively richer companies like Coats , A&E, Union Thread, Madeira , DMC, Well Thread, Vardhaman and countless more.
Another example is a small company, " Threads India" which has gone in to make a product range, which is technically the best in the world in Filament Based Threads. This company used Technology as its strategic Strength. Coming from a family of machine makers, they knew more on exploiting the machines and made very special machines to then produce Threads, which were most unique in the world. However, as they did not have the same marketing skills as Coats or A&E, they could still not position themselves as a global player.
One Such Technology was the Controlled Drawing With Twisting. I have never seen any sewing thread company in the world using such a machine. But this was their own design. Like I wrote in my first blog, technology in textiles is loaded on the machine and unless you are an expert textile engineer, you can never get the technology from the standard machine configurations. Many a times, you need to design your own machines and keep them secret. The result of drawing and twisting together is that the tenacity of the yarn zooms up and product then gets a PPF, which is unrivaled.
Write to me to design this machine for you. Machine Builders make only machines which have commercial scope and not for special applications.
The owner Nurul Bhai and his family are my very close friends. The story of Well Thread goes to early 20th century, wherein the father, started a small plant making sewing threads and was famously known in Chittagong as Sutli Wala
As a Home Industry with some basic machines, he would buy the raw yarn, then twist and color them in a pot and wind it on small cones and pack it on his back and sell to the market. Same is the story of Hassan Bhai in Egypt and Coats Owner, an Iranian Jew, who got settled in UK and made a global sewing thread empire.
Since my largest customer base around the globe is sewing thread makers, I know most of them personally. Whether it is Diktas in Turkey or Best Thread in China, all of these have grown year after year. Sewing Thread perhaps is the most profitable textile product line as I have never seen one single sewing thread maker going bankrupt. The only entry barrier is managing a large customer base and hence a large working capital. Infact, the only Textile Manufacturing business, which flourishes in Europe and US is still Sewing Thread
One of the biggest failures of sewing thread industry has been to change the business model into " Made To Order " Business. If Garment industry orders colors and cones as per their requirements, then other then black and white and some other color assortment , the whole business should practically run on Made to order. The Bazaar trade can also be switched to Made To Order, as long as the marketer is not greedy about dumping the production and showing false sales.
Well Thread is today even bigger then Coats in Bangladesh and has one of the most modern plant and a very diverse range of product.
Sewing Thread companies are relatively richer companies like Coats , A&E, Union Thread, Madeira , DMC, Well Thread, Vardhaman and countless more.
Another example is a small company, " Threads India" which has gone in to make a product range, which is technically the best in the world in Filament Based Threads. This company used Technology as its strategic Strength. Coming from a family of machine makers, they knew more on exploiting the machines and made very special machines to then produce Threads, which were most unique in the world. However, as they did not have the same marketing skills as Coats or A&E, they could still not position themselves as a global player.
One Such Technology was the Controlled Drawing With Twisting. I have never seen any sewing thread company in the world using such a machine. But this was their own design. Like I wrote in my first blog, technology in textiles is loaded on the machine and unless you are an expert textile engineer, you can never get the technology from the standard machine configurations. Many a times, you need to design your own machines and keep them secret. The result of drawing and twisting together is that the tenacity of the yarn zooms up and product then gets a PPF, which is unrivaled.
Write to me to design this machine for you. Machine Builders make only machines which have commercial scope and not for special applications.
Monday, March 29, 2010
Sewing Threads
Sewing Threads are my favorite.
One product, where you buy yarn in kgs and sell thread in metres. What could be more profitable then this.
Sewing Threads are simple to manufacture , but marketing of sewing thread is not the same as other textile products. It is largely a game of colors and logistics.
Now that the Garment Industry is well organized, the marketing of sewing thread has become relatively easier and profitable business.
The most common counts are 20s, and 40s in different plies and then color it and shape it and dump it to the customer.
However, the sewing thread industry should be prepared that sewing machines will soon be compatible to run larger cones and there would be no need to make the small y cones and other fancy cones. Many a garment makers have already started using 5 inches and 6 inches cones in South America and it would not take long before the trend catches elsewhere.
Also as most cone winders have now measured length delivery so it makes it all the more easier to service the garment makers. Time is coming, when garment makers will not follow the ticket system and shall order directly to the spinner or dyer for the shade and calculate the exact length required to make the garment and order exact number of cones.
As for lubrication, sewing thread has been fooling itself that Silicon Lubricants are the Ideal lubricants . Silicon is a heat dissipate sink , but does not have any antistatic properties or strong lubricating properties. I have changed many a sewing thread makers to use a better and cheaper alternative.
Lastly, sooner or later, the Industry will realize that a simple bonding agent is much easier alternative to join garments, then stitching all the way. Kodak did not see this obvious fact with its photo films and went extinct. The Industry should ensure the " Kodak " should not happen to it.
Filament Sewing Thread making is quite a bit of technology beyond simple twisting. Not many , including large Multinationals have this technology. Silicon Lubricants for filament yarns have zero results.
Most important, the sewing thread industry needs to be Carbon Compliant, as it is the biggest polluter . Read my blog : Plastic Dyetubes or Weapons of Mass Destruction. The pollution further extends to discharge of effluent, inefficient use of water etc etc.
One product, where you buy yarn in kgs and sell thread in metres. What could be more profitable then this.
Sewing Threads are simple to manufacture , but marketing of sewing thread is not the same as other textile products. It is largely a game of colors and logistics.
Now that the Garment Industry is well organized, the marketing of sewing thread has become relatively easier and profitable business.
The most common counts are 20s, and 40s in different plies and then color it and shape it and dump it to the customer.
However, the sewing thread industry should be prepared that sewing machines will soon be compatible to run larger cones and there would be no need to make the small y cones and other fancy cones. Many a garment makers have already started using 5 inches and 6 inches cones in South America and it would not take long before the trend catches elsewhere.
Also as most cone winders have now measured length delivery so it makes it all the more easier to service the garment makers. Time is coming, when garment makers will not follow the ticket system and shall order directly to the spinner or dyer for the shade and calculate the exact length required to make the garment and order exact number of cones.
As for lubrication, sewing thread has been fooling itself that Silicon Lubricants are the Ideal lubricants . Silicon is a heat dissipate sink , but does not have any antistatic properties or strong lubricating properties. I have changed many a sewing thread makers to use a better and cheaper alternative.
Lastly, sooner or later, the Industry will realize that a simple bonding agent is much easier alternative to join garments, then stitching all the way. Kodak did not see this obvious fact with its photo films and went extinct. The Industry should ensure the " Kodak " should not happen to it.
Filament Sewing Thread making is quite a bit of technology beyond simple twisting. Not many , including large Multinationals have this technology. Silicon Lubricants for filament yarns have zero results.
Most important, the sewing thread industry needs to be Carbon Compliant, as it is the biggest polluter . Read my blog : Plastic Dyetubes or Weapons of Mass Destruction. The pollution further extends to discharge of effluent, inefficient use of water etc etc.
Sunday, March 28, 2010
Twisting : Wasteful Power N Killer Sound
TFO Twisting is relatively new Technology. However, when it comes to the Machine Design, it is questionable.
First Twist : Between the Twist Tube and the Moving Spindle.
Second Twist : Between the package and the Moving Spindle .
In both the twist, the Moving Spindle is the Control Point. Higher the Speed of the spindle, more the production.
But, then Industry has found that beyond a certain speed threshold, the power consumption does not go up linearly, but geomaterically. So, here is a technology, which has inherent PPF limitations ( For PPF, read my post on Quality )
As long as the power cost are lower, this issue is not a limiting factor, however, as soon as the power cost does not justify the incremental benefit of productivity, the machine does not pass the Viability Threshold.
Machine makers did move recently in the direction of making smaller pot diameters to battle the high energy cost. But no sooner you go to a smaller pot diameter, the PPF of the Twisted Package reduces as the output is Knotted yarn, which the subsequent user does not want.
The machine makers did not see that the solution was in simply making 8 inches and 10 inches feed packages.
A 8 inches feed package machine will automatically give a 1.86 kg package without knot on a rather smaller spindle diameter, then a 6 inches package. And if it is 10 inches, then the spindle becomes far more smaller.
While Volkmann and Murata, both made smaller and smaller pot size and as low as 90mm, but not gone into designing a larger feed package simultaneously to make it a superior machine.
The argument given is that this will give a larger balloon and hence the power consumption advantage will get nullified. However, as per field experiments carried out by me ( We designed a 8 inches package and fed to a smaller pot dia, of only 135 mm and came up with a 1.86 kg package without knot) and we found that actually, the speeds could be taken up to 14,000 rpm with a productivity increase of 17% from a speed of 12,000 rpm and with no increase in power consumption. Plus the bonus of increase in efficiency in Assembly Winder.
Therefore, if One Knot is acceptable limits, then a pot dia of only 70mm is enough to take the speeds upto 20,000 rpm and bring in a productivity gain of around 100%. Buy the technology of hairiness control from me.
Though Volkmann does offer 8 inches feed package, but has never been able to successfully pitch it to the customers, on account of lack of facts and figures.
Further, why not have the balloon enclosed in a vacuumed environment to keep the balloon drag lowest.
Unfortunately, no work has been done in this direction. But general common sense would say, if you were to enclose the spindle in a vacuumed area, the air drag should be practically zero. Which would mean, enclose the spindle right till the balloon breaker guide and with a vacuum pump keep pulling the air out.
I have no experience with it, but can still say, that the balloon drag will significantly reduce and the power consumption drop.
Second.
The times of running spindles with Belt is over. Each spindle needs a simple motor drive directly coupled to the spindle. ( There are now motors avl to run at speeds of 100,000 rpm)
Third :
The take up does not need cams anymore. For a straight simple package, there are enough reversible motors available.
Fourth
The deafening sound of the machine can be better avoided by keeping the headstock outside the department and the main machine inside the department. ( Though, if individual motors are installed, this sound thing is naturally taken care). A good engineer will , however, also keep the Belt running below the floor level and cover the service area with a checker plate. The whole issue of Machine sound is covered. But only if the machine makers themselves have seriousness to advise the client for such simple solutions.
Fifth
Machines have to be Double Decker. Floor space is becoming very expensive and more and more mills have no room for expansion. This also permits more spindles being covered by the same operator,
Sixth
If power is such a major issue in Twisting, then why not provide on the panel a power meter. It cost now only Euro 100, but is a significant tool in the hands of the management to take the productivity up .
Seventh
Technology has to move further to Four For One Twisting. A Turkish Twisting machine maker has gone in to turn the take up drum and insert two twist. This gives a direct opportunity to make Four For One Twister. Two twist coming from the tail of the twister and two coming from the head of the twister.
Well, the biggest drag in innovation is sometimes the user himself. The user goes largely by Industry perceptions and less by his own experience. Unless and untill the user is ready to challenge the STATE OF BEING AND INNOVATE, most machine makers themselves cannot bring about any improvement.
First Twist : Between the Twist Tube and the Moving Spindle.
Second Twist : Between the package and the Moving Spindle .
In both the twist, the Moving Spindle is the Control Point. Higher the Speed of the spindle, more the production.
But, then Industry has found that beyond a certain speed threshold, the power consumption does not go up linearly, but geomaterically. So, here is a technology, which has inherent PPF limitations ( For PPF, read my post on Quality )
As long as the power cost are lower, this issue is not a limiting factor, however, as soon as the power cost does not justify the incremental benefit of productivity, the machine does not pass the Viability Threshold.
Machine makers did move recently in the direction of making smaller pot diameters to battle the high energy cost. But no sooner you go to a smaller pot diameter, the PPF of the Twisted Package reduces as the output is Knotted yarn, which the subsequent user does not want.
The machine makers did not see that the solution was in simply making 8 inches and 10 inches feed packages.
A 8 inches feed package machine will automatically give a 1.86 kg package without knot on a rather smaller spindle diameter, then a 6 inches package. And if it is 10 inches, then the spindle becomes far more smaller.
While Volkmann and Murata, both made smaller and smaller pot size and as low as 90mm, but not gone into designing a larger feed package simultaneously to make it a superior machine.
The argument given is that this will give a larger balloon and hence the power consumption advantage will get nullified. However, as per field experiments carried out by me ( We designed a 8 inches package and fed to a smaller pot dia, of only 135 mm and came up with a 1.86 kg package without knot) and we found that actually, the speeds could be taken up to 14,000 rpm with a productivity increase of 17% from a speed of 12,000 rpm and with no increase in power consumption. Plus the bonus of increase in efficiency in Assembly Winder.
Therefore, if One Knot is acceptable limits, then a pot dia of only 70mm is enough to take the speeds upto 20,000 rpm and bring in a productivity gain of around 100%. Buy the technology of hairiness control from me.
Though Volkmann does offer 8 inches feed package, but has never been able to successfully pitch it to the customers, on account of lack of facts and figures.
Further, why not have the balloon enclosed in a vacuumed environment to keep the balloon drag lowest.
Unfortunately, no work has been done in this direction. But general common sense would say, if you were to enclose the spindle in a vacuumed area, the air drag should be practically zero. Which would mean, enclose the spindle right till the balloon breaker guide and with a vacuum pump keep pulling the air out.
I have no experience with it, but can still say, that the balloon drag will significantly reduce and the power consumption drop.
Second.
The times of running spindles with Belt is over. Each spindle needs a simple motor drive directly coupled to the spindle. ( There are now motors avl to run at speeds of 100,000 rpm)
Third :
The take up does not need cams anymore. For a straight simple package, there are enough reversible motors available.
Fourth
The deafening sound of the machine can be better avoided by keeping the headstock outside the department and the main machine inside the department. ( Though, if individual motors are installed, this sound thing is naturally taken care). A good engineer will , however, also keep the Belt running below the floor level and cover the service area with a checker plate. The whole issue of Machine sound is covered. But only if the machine makers themselves have seriousness to advise the client for such simple solutions.
Fifth
Machines have to be Double Decker. Floor space is becoming very expensive and more and more mills have no room for expansion. This also permits more spindles being covered by the same operator,
Sixth
If power is such a major issue in Twisting, then why not provide on the panel a power meter. It cost now only Euro 100, but is a significant tool in the hands of the management to take the productivity up .
Seventh
Technology has to move further to Four For One Twisting. A Turkish Twisting machine maker has gone in to turn the take up drum and insert two twist. This gives a direct opportunity to make Four For One Twister. Two twist coming from the tail of the twister and two coming from the head of the twister.
Well, the biggest drag in innovation is sometimes the user himself. The user goes largely by Industry perceptions and less by his own experience. Unless and untill the user is ready to challenge the STATE OF BEING AND INNOVATE, most machine makers themselves cannot bring about any improvement.
Mr Spider : The Nano Spinner
As a child I was very fascinated to see that a little spider would weave a net intelligently around a spot. And then holding his guitar sing the famous poem to the flies " Will you walk into my parlor please " .
Little did I know that one day, I would go in to become a textile specialist and the spider would go in to become the first nano spinner.
For all those, who are not aware, Spider actually spins protein filaments and then weaves them so intricately that no human technology has been able to copy paste the same.
Little Mr Spider, the world has ignored learning from you that one single machine can actually spin and also weave and make a shape, which would catch at least fishes and make net garments for the feminine gender.
Mr Spider, you have been spinning Nano Filaments since time immemorial and we mortal human beings are still struggling to make a proper Nano filament, forget the weaving part of it, because we still have no solution to wind it.
But we don't even have a mind like you, which says, there is no need of weaving and as long as the extrusion goes into the environment, it would freeze and the strand would shape as per the design in our mind.
Also, New Zeland, Denmark and some other countries have been wasting their milk supplies, as could not find a better use beyond cheese and butter. We have succeeding in making protein fibers, but still don't know, how to spin it.
Mr Spider, which university did you take your Dip Eng ? How do you manage to make endless amount of protein filament and which computer program do you use for designing the web ?
Will you kindly write a blog on it. Only make sure that you don't write it from China, as google will not be able to take it any further. You already know well that the poor silk worm was identified by our Chinese brothers and rest is history.
So, in your case, we want that spider should not become the next insect to be industrialized . Don`t worry, we now have WWF taking care of such issues.
Only that the Chinese and Indians are known for copying, they could quickly copy your secret technology and it would become an infringement on natures own patents, so please use only Deutsch as the language for your presentation.
Nevertheless, one thing you have to appreciate that we have made you popular by using your web digitially and calling it world wide web or www.
Nature has most solutions, only if we have the vision to understand and capture them. We on the other hand are bent on destroying the environment. Read my blog on Dyetubes or Weapons of Mass Destruction.
Little did I know that one day, I would go in to become a textile specialist and the spider would go in to become the first nano spinner.
For all those, who are not aware, Spider actually spins protein filaments and then weaves them so intricately that no human technology has been able to copy paste the same.
Little Mr Spider, the world has ignored learning from you that one single machine can actually spin and also weave and make a shape, which would catch at least fishes and make net garments for the feminine gender.
Mr Spider, you have been spinning Nano Filaments since time immemorial and we mortal human beings are still struggling to make a proper Nano filament, forget the weaving part of it, because we still have no solution to wind it.
But we don't even have a mind like you, which says, there is no need of weaving and as long as the extrusion goes into the environment, it would freeze and the strand would shape as per the design in our mind.
Also, New Zeland, Denmark and some other countries have been wasting their milk supplies, as could not find a better use beyond cheese and butter. We have succeeding in making protein fibers, but still don't know, how to spin it.
Mr Spider, which university did you take your Dip Eng ? How do you manage to make endless amount of protein filament and which computer program do you use for designing the web ?
Will you kindly write a blog on it. Only make sure that you don't write it from China, as google will not be able to take it any further. You already know well that the poor silk worm was identified by our Chinese brothers and rest is history.
So, in your case, we want that spider should not become the next insect to be industrialized . Don`t worry, we now have WWF taking care of such issues.
Only that the Chinese and Indians are known for copying, they could quickly copy your secret technology and it would become an infringement on natures own patents, so please use only Deutsch as the language for your presentation.
Nevertheless, one thing you have to appreciate that we have made you popular by using your web digitially and calling it world wide web or www.
Nature has most solutions, only if we have the vision to understand and capture them. We on the other hand are bent on destroying the environment. Read my blog on Dyetubes or Weapons of Mass Destruction.
Quality : Simple is Sophisticated.
Quality in Textiles is the most misunderstood concept.
When I graduated as a Textile Engineer, the only thing I knew on Quality was that it should confirm statistically to the Standards/ specifications.
Therefore, if I am a yarn maker, and the yarn has a certain U%, RKM, neps etc etc, which is within the standard, then I am a great spinner.
No sooner, the yarn container reaches the customer, he shouts back and curses on the sub standard quality and one is confused, why did the quality fail, despite a clean bill of health from QC department .
As a line manager, I was always confused on what should be the sample size for checking to ensure that the bulk would confirm to the standards. Most management meetings, it was about, why the quality failed and the answer was ,sometimes the odd operator fault, most of the time the mixing of the yarns, odd twist failure or additional ply of yarn.
Finally, the Gyan Chaksu ( Third Eye ) opened and I understood that quality was not just a set of numbers, it was way beyond.
Quality could well be divided into:
Process Quality
Numeral Quality
Functional Quality
Visual Quality
Let us explore these aspects further.
Process Quality:
Process Quality is all about Process Integrity and is best mapped by Bench Marking.
Quality first is the organizational systems. If there are weak systems, no matter how good are your assets and how good are your inputs, the product quality will fail.
Building a robust system requires foresight into the failures and causes of failures.
Thereafter, Supervisory control is all about system confirmation.
Within the process quality, there are schedules for cleaning, maintenance, work practices, house keeping, standardization, discipline and above all passion for work, recording and tracking.
Something that is missing here is Bench Marking. Textile Industry still does not have Bench Marking as there are no Process Auditors on Best Practices.
Numeral Quality :
QC department religiously follows it and will pull out a report for any lot any time.
This is standard average performance guarantee cover of any product offerings of a company.
But these two functions are something which most companies are very good.
However, where most companies fail to see Quality is that there are Two Other major inputs of quality and unless and until these are sanitized , system will never guarantee a whole some quality.
Functional Quality :
Functional Quality is about Product Design, which would sustain functionality and extreme usage conditions. Let us call it Product Performance Factor or PPF.
If an automobile maker test his car for speeds, air bags, brakes, crashes etc etc, then he travels beyond the scope of Functionality in terms of standard driving to extreme conditions. Limits of failure are then the functionality threshold.
In Textiles, let us take an example of Yarn ; No matter, how good a yarn you have produced, but if it fails on the machines of the customer, then he would get up and complain. So, unless and until you are aware of the process and machines of the customer and his requirements, it is virtually impossible to comply with functional quality. Knitting yarn may work differently on Mayer& Cie machines then Laxmi machines. Laxmi machines might need a soft yarn with a lower twist or higher lubricity or better unwinding.
Even after having supplied many containers, the customer might get up and say, the last supply does not work on his machines. Despite no changes made in your process, it is usually intriguing , what went wrong.
Customer machine setting changes are beyond the control of a supplier and most of the time, the customer changes something in his process and the process weakens. These changes are never reported to the supplier and unless and until, the functional quality is made flexible, it would always get a complaint.
Example of Yarn : Flexible Functional Quality is directly linked to the Elongation of the yarn, tenacity, lubricity , unwinding properties and numeral consistency ( which is to say, consistent thick and thin places etc. )
Therefore Functional Quality is a designers function, where the Quality Paradigm switches from the Absolute number to a Functional Number . Say, the elongation request is for 7%, but knowing that the system will need a higher elongation, you would go back to the drawing board and set the production parameters to yield a higher elongation.
PPF is largely the Flexibility or the Degree of Freedom, the product provides. It is now your ingenuity to make a product which would endure the challenges of use, misuse, sub optimal use, lateral use or super use. Quality then moves to a Market Tangible Differentiator and gets automatically placed on the top of a value chain and creates a Natural Entry Barrier for the competition. However, this is Quality linked to Technology and Expertize.
The Designer Part of Functionality in Textile Production is largely missing as of now. More on account of the shape of business, which is commodity oriented then performance oriented.
Visual Quality : " Customers Delight "
The Most Important Part of Quality is Visual Quality .Let us call it VQ and draw an index VQI . No matter, what you produce, unless it looks good and feels good and is colorful and appealing, it will never stand out as an exclusive product.
For a yarn VQI would be : Shape of package, angle of wind, feel of the yarn , snarl of the yarn , reflectance, quality of paper cone, branding and visual hairiness. Give score to each of these based on what the market values most and relatively down.
Visual Quality is all together missing as a concept in Textiles.
It is only after the product reaches the Fashion stage that most of the textile gets valued as a Visual Delight . Unfortunately at no stage of manufacturing, people understand that any product , no matter how simple and insignificant is first judged by naked eyes and then moves forward.
Lastly and most important " Quality " has to be built only to the extent of what the customer needs and competition provides, specially in a commodity product, anything more or anything less is a total waste of time, money and effort.
The China Experience has shown that as long as the Price is Low, no matter, what quality you make, the buyer finds value. I have seen this also with some very big mills also, which keep the lowest prices and are the first to sell. No customer complains on their quality. Because at that price, he cannot find another supplier. But this model only generates Quick Turnover and is ok for companies with low working capital. For a serious mill, this model could be catastrophic.
However, for niche products, the quality may have another profiling. That needs Branding and Technology.
Do not over produce quality , just consistently produce quality. Six Sigma is state of mind and a way of life.
When I graduated as a Textile Engineer, the only thing I knew on Quality was that it should confirm statistically to the Standards/ specifications.
Therefore, if I am a yarn maker, and the yarn has a certain U%, RKM, neps etc etc, which is within the standard, then I am a great spinner.
No sooner, the yarn container reaches the customer, he shouts back and curses on the sub standard quality and one is confused, why did the quality fail, despite a clean bill of health from QC department .
As a line manager, I was always confused on what should be the sample size for checking to ensure that the bulk would confirm to the standards. Most management meetings, it was about, why the quality failed and the answer was ,sometimes the odd operator fault, most of the time the mixing of the yarns, odd twist failure or additional ply of yarn.
Finally, the Gyan Chaksu ( Third Eye ) opened and I understood that quality was not just a set of numbers, it was way beyond.
Quality could well be divided into:
Process Quality
Numeral Quality
Functional Quality
Visual Quality
Let us explore these aspects further.
Process Quality:
Process Quality is all about Process Integrity and is best mapped by Bench Marking.
Quality first is the organizational systems. If there are weak systems, no matter how good are your assets and how good are your inputs, the product quality will fail.
Building a robust system requires foresight into the failures and causes of failures.
Thereafter, Supervisory control is all about system confirmation.
Within the process quality, there are schedules for cleaning, maintenance, work practices, house keeping, standardization, discipline and above all passion for work, recording and tracking.
Something that is missing here is Bench Marking. Textile Industry still does not have Bench Marking as there are no Process Auditors on Best Practices.
Numeral Quality :
QC department religiously follows it and will pull out a report for any lot any time.
This is standard average performance guarantee cover of any product offerings of a company.
But these two functions are something which most companies are very good.
However, where most companies fail to see Quality is that there are Two Other major inputs of quality and unless and until these are sanitized , system will never guarantee a whole some quality.
Functional Quality :
Functional Quality is about Product Design, which would sustain functionality and extreme usage conditions. Let us call it Product Performance Factor or PPF.
If an automobile maker test his car for speeds, air bags, brakes, crashes etc etc, then he travels beyond the scope of Functionality in terms of standard driving to extreme conditions. Limits of failure are then the functionality threshold.
In Textiles, let us take an example of Yarn ; No matter, how good a yarn you have produced, but if it fails on the machines of the customer, then he would get up and complain. So, unless and until you are aware of the process and machines of the customer and his requirements, it is virtually impossible to comply with functional quality. Knitting yarn may work differently on Mayer& Cie machines then Laxmi machines. Laxmi machines might need a soft yarn with a lower twist or higher lubricity or better unwinding.
Even after having supplied many containers, the customer might get up and say, the last supply does not work on his machines. Despite no changes made in your process, it is usually intriguing , what went wrong.
Customer machine setting changes are beyond the control of a supplier and most of the time, the customer changes something in his process and the process weakens. These changes are never reported to the supplier and unless and until, the functional quality is made flexible, it would always get a complaint.
Example of Yarn : Flexible Functional Quality is directly linked to the Elongation of the yarn, tenacity, lubricity , unwinding properties and numeral consistency ( which is to say, consistent thick and thin places etc. )
Therefore Functional Quality is a designers function, where the Quality Paradigm switches from the Absolute number to a Functional Number . Say, the elongation request is for 7%, but knowing that the system will need a higher elongation, you would go back to the drawing board and set the production parameters to yield a higher elongation.
PPF is largely the Flexibility or the Degree of Freedom, the product provides. It is now your ingenuity to make a product which would endure the challenges of use, misuse, sub optimal use, lateral use or super use. Quality then moves to a Market Tangible Differentiator and gets automatically placed on the top of a value chain and creates a Natural Entry Barrier for the competition. However, this is Quality linked to Technology and Expertize.
The Designer Part of Functionality in Textile Production is largely missing as of now. More on account of the shape of business, which is commodity oriented then performance oriented.
Visual Quality : " Customers Delight "
The Most Important Part of Quality is Visual Quality .Let us call it VQ and draw an index VQI . No matter, what you produce, unless it looks good and feels good and is colorful and appealing, it will never stand out as an exclusive product.
For a yarn VQI would be : Shape of package, angle of wind, feel of the yarn , snarl of the yarn , reflectance, quality of paper cone, branding and visual hairiness. Give score to each of these based on what the market values most and relatively down.
Visual Quality is all together missing as a concept in Textiles.
It is only after the product reaches the Fashion stage that most of the textile gets valued as a Visual Delight . Unfortunately at no stage of manufacturing, people understand that any product , no matter how simple and insignificant is first judged by naked eyes and then moves forward.
Lastly and most important " Quality " has to be built only to the extent of what the customer needs and competition provides, specially in a commodity product, anything more or anything less is a total waste of time, money and effort.
The China Experience has shown that as long as the Price is Low, no matter, what quality you make, the buyer finds value. I have seen this also with some very big mills also, which keep the lowest prices and are the first to sell. No customer complains on their quality. Because at that price, he cannot find another supplier. But this model only generates Quick Turnover and is ok for companies with low working capital. For a serious mill, this model could be catastrophic.
However, for niche products, the quality may have another profiling. That needs Branding and Technology.
Do not over produce quality , just consistently produce quality. Six Sigma is state of mind and a way of life.
Saturday, March 27, 2010
Plastic Dyetubes Or Weapons Of Mass Destruction.
If you visit a Yarn Dyeing Plant, then you cannot miss that almost all the plants in US, Europe, S.America and now quite a few in Asia, use Plastic Dyetubes as package centre for yarn dyeing.
Package centres for yarn dyeing were historically cones, which got changed to stainless steel cylinderical dyetubes and that got moved further to Dyesprings and that got replaced with Plastic Dyetubes.
Technologically, Mantex Dyesprings are the Best Solution, as they expand the capacity of dyeing, reduce the cost of yarn dyeing, provide a quality advantage on account of its openness, eco-friendly etc etc. But then the market flirts with whatever new comes it way. Plastic were the Inthing at one time and industry was exploring all applications,which the plastics could capture and one such application they found was plastic dyetubes.
Dyetubes are actually pathetic in terms of productivity as they have to be stacked on top of one another, can not dye polyester as PP is not 130 deg compliant and ofcourse environment hazard for its disposal. ITMA after ITMA I kept shouting to the yarn dyeing industry for the hazards of using Plastic Dyetubes and none would listen. However, now the time has come, when the world is realizing how plastics and related carbon emissions are becoming a global threat.
Ironically, still very large segment of yarn dyers do not realize that plastic dyetubes are Self Inflicted Weapons Of Mass Destruction.
Let us study this case below
WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION NO 1
COMPRESSIBLE PLASTIC DYETUBES
Compressible Plastic Dye tubes Most Yarn Dyers in Europe and US import their yarns out of Asia on these ONE TIME USE dye tubes. This helps direct dyeing, without the need of making a soft package.RESULT Dye tubes are only 75% recyclable and 25% disposed into the environment.
Average weight of a standard dye tube = 45 gmsAverage
Non reclaimable plastic contributed = 11.25 gms
Plastic disposed per day with 5 tons of dyeing/ day = 47 kgs
Plastics disposed per year of 300 days working = 14 Tons.
Plastics disposed by 100 such plants in US or Europe or Asia = 1400 TONS
14 TONS OF PLASTIC PER YEAR / YARN DYEING PLANT OF 5 TONS / DAY
OR 1400 TONS PER YEAR FROM 100 PLANTS IN ONE CONTINENT.
PLASTICS DISPOSED IN LAST 20 YEARS INTO ENVIRONMENT ON ACCOUNT OF THE ONE WAY
PLASTIC DYE TUBES IS 28.000 TONS IN ONE CONTINENT
WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION NO 2
NON COMPRESSIBLE PLASTIC DYETUBES
Additional Carbon Emissions = 25% = 7.5 Tons of CO2/ 5 tons of yarn dyeing per day.
Additional Power consumption = 25%. = 10 cents per kg
Additional Chemicals and auxiliaries = 25% = 12 cents per kg
Additional Water = 25% = 5 cents per kg
Additional Labour = 25% = 5 cents per kg
Additional water of 2 litres per kg of yarn dyeing works out to 10KL for 5 tons of yarn dyeing per day. For 300 days of working, the extra consumption is 3000K.
This 3000KL needs extra power for circulation, extra chemicals and auxiliaries, extra heat load, extra effluent treatment and is fully wasted at the end.
The plastic disposal is still a hazard.
WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION NO 3
CASE STUDY OF SEWING THREAD INDUSTRY
Take the case of one large Multinational sewing thread maker having its spinning unit in China and rolling out polyester spun yarn sewing thread to its global dyeing and finishing operations.Say the capacity of this company is 200 tons of yarn dyeing per day ( actually much larger, but let me be generous )across its global operations,. Let us work out the Non Recylable plastic disposal of this company into the environment.
Plastic Disposal per day into the environment = 2.25 Tons.
Plastic Disposal per year ( 300 days) = 675 Tons.
Plastic Disposal in the last 10 years = 6750 Tons
Check the websites of any large MNC maker of sewing thread and read the Environmental Policy. Judge for yourself! This is only the plastic disposals equation. The secondary carbon emissions include the making of these plastic dyetubes.Transporting prewound soft packages into a container gives only 60% loading and this makes it still worse in terms of carbon emissions.Interestingly, the whole sewing thread industry across the world largely imports its spun polyester sewing thread yarns out of China on these dyetubes .
The impact of non recylable plastic disposal from such an Industry would account to more then a Million Ton each year.
Where is Greenpeace???
Package centres for yarn dyeing were historically cones, which got changed to stainless steel cylinderical dyetubes and that got moved further to Dyesprings and that got replaced with Plastic Dyetubes.
Technologically, Mantex Dyesprings are the Best Solution, as they expand the capacity of dyeing, reduce the cost of yarn dyeing, provide a quality advantage on account of its openness, eco-friendly etc etc. But then the market flirts with whatever new comes it way. Plastic were the Inthing at one time and industry was exploring all applications,which the plastics could capture and one such application they found was plastic dyetubes.
Dyetubes are actually pathetic in terms of productivity as they have to be stacked on top of one another, can not dye polyester as PP is not 130 deg compliant and ofcourse environment hazard for its disposal. ITMA after ITMA I kept shouting to the yarn dyeing industry for the hazards of using Plastic Dyetubes and none would listen. However, now the time has come, when the world is realizing how plastics and related carbon emissions are becoming a global threat.
Ironically, still very large segment of yarn dyers do not realize that plastic dyetubes are Self Inflicted Weapons Of Mass Destruction.
Let us study this case below
WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION NO 1
COMPRESSIBLE PLASTIC DYETUBES
Compressible Plastic Dye tubes Most Yarn Dyers in Europe and US import their yarns out of Asia on these ONE TIME USE dye tubes. This helps direct dyeing, without the need of making a soft package.RESULT Dye tubes are only 75% recyclable and 25% disposed into the environment.
Average weight of a standard dye tube = 45 gmsAverage
Non reclaimable plastic contributed = 11.25 gms
Plastic disposed per day with 5 tons of dyeing/ day = 47 kgs
Plastics disposed per year of 300 days working = 14 Tons.
Plastics disposed by 100 such plants in US or Europe or Asia = 1400 TONS
14 TONS OF PLASTIC PER YEAR / YARN DYEING PLANT OF 5 TONS / DAY
OR 1400 TONS PER YEAR FROM 100 PLANTS IN ONE CONTINENT.
PLASTICS DISPOSED IN LAST 20 YEARS INTO ENVIRONMENT ON ACCOUNT OF THE ONE WAY
PLASTIC DYE TUBES IS 28.000 TONS IN ONE CONTINENT
WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION NO 2
NON COMPRESSIBLE PLASTIC DYETUBES
Additional Carbon Emissions = 25% = 7.5 Tons of CO2/ 5 tons of yarn dyeing per day.
Additional Power consumption = 25%. = 10 cents per kg
Additional Chemicals and auxiliaries = 25% = 12 cents per kg
Additional Water = 25% = 5 cents per kg
Additional Labour = 25% = 5 cents per kg
Additional water of 2 litres per kg of yarn dyeing works out to 10KL for 5 tons of yarn dyeing per day. For 300 days of working, the extra consumption is 3000K.
This 3000KL needs extra power for circulation, extra chemicals and auxiliaries, extra heat load, extra effluent treatment and is fully wasted at the end.
The plastic disposal is still a hazard.
WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION NO 3
CASE STUDY OF SEWING THREAD INDUSTRY
Take the case of one large Multinational sewing thread maker having its spinning unit in China and rolling out polyester spun yarn sewing thread to its global dyeing and finishing operations.Say the capacity of this company is 200 tons of yarn dyeing per day ( actually much larger, but let me be generous )across its global operations,. Let us work out the Non Recylable plastic disposal of this company into the environment.
Plastic Disposal per day into the environment = 2.25 Tons.
Plastic Disposal per year ( 300 days) = 675 Tons.
Plastic Disposal in the last 10 years = 6750 Tons
Check the websites of any large MNC maker of sewing thread and read the Environmental Policy. Judge for yourself! This is only the plastic disposals equation. The secondary carbon emissions include the making of these plastic dyetubes.Transporting prewound soft packages into a container gives only 60% loading and this makes it still worse in terms of carbon emissions.Interestingly, the whole sewing thread industry across the world largely imports its spun polyester sewing thread yarns out of China on these dyetubes .
The impact of non recylable plastic disposal from such an Industry would account to more then a Million Ton each year.
Where is Greenpeace???
Friday, March 26, 2010
SSM : Paradise Won, Paradise Lost.
SSM is perhaps the Best Winding Machine under the Sun or is it ?
However, with such a class of product, it has been into Red for the last two consecutive years. No wonder the CEO got changed this year. Shareholders don't listen to impeding conditions and only want to see the growth trajectory.
FMCG companies, Banks, MNC, etc etc each of them year after year try to show growth to keep the shareholders pleased. No matter, how much the books have to be cooked or what funny things need to be done, otherwise the managers life is miserable. AIG, GM, Citi Bank, Enron, and now Toyoda have all shown that relatively risky decision are taken to keep the stock market in good humor for their stocks.
This reminds me of my own personal experience, when I first presented my budget for my little business and had shown some 9% growth over the previous year. I had a brilliant boss, ( in fact I had the privilege of working with many brilliant bosses, I must admit, each of them better then the other ) who advised me Atul, Future is not always Previous Year + 10%, but it is something which will show exponential growth. I did that year, 100% over my budget and he has a President created history for the company for his full business.
Now, the above story relates to the Power of Thinking. Wherein great managers do not move the company incrementally, but exponentially.
SSM was such a success story, where Beat Siegrist, ex CEO, created exponential growth for the company. He moved further to manage other businesses, and Herr Nadalini took the process forward, however, after Beat and then Nadalini departure never could get the company back to the same acceleration.
Let us dig into this interesting Case Study.
SSM specializes in Winding Machines and at one point of time, it was Rewinding Machines, Soft Package Winders, Assembly Winders, Gassing machines and later added Air Covering Machines. Then went in to take over Stahle and Hacoba.
SSM was one of the first winding machine makers to make a modular machine, where each position was like independent machine, precision winding technology for the first time came in for spun yarns, speeds went up from 400 metres per minute to 800 metres per minute or still higher. And above all the machine was rather simple and would make a very nice final package.
SSM had product offerings for both Filament yarns and Spun yarns. The Filament machine was any time much better with its flexible traverse and flexible crossing angle , and could run soft, rewinding or whatever application required winding. Spun machines had a propeller traverse and this was also an interesting change from the old system of wire guide or drums. The world flirted with these machines. If it was winding, then it was SSM. Fadis was a distant second and then there was no one.
SSM was a virtual monopoly as far as good winders were concerned across the globe. And when a company slips into this stage, it only breeds complacency and over confidence in its management. This is what happened to SSM. After having innovated and positioned itself on the Top, it forgot that, competition is always tracking the success and redefining itself.
It also forgot that the honey moon with the innovation is only for a limited period, then market wants the next innovation. Which SSM never planned.
Now, before I take up competition and what it did to SSM, let me analyze for the reader, whether the innovative technologies actually passed the Viability Threshold for the user or was it the hype of the brand.
Soft Package Winder for filament yarns : As a machine and its design, PW1 and now PW2 is a very nice machine, perhaps the best of the Horses, SSM has and it later successfully changed it to PW6 and made the spun yarn run on the same machines, which was quite ingenious and intelligent.
Viability Threshold Test : At a certain price, this machine was great. However, given that texturized yarns, which are the largest of the filament yarns, that get dyed, this was not the Ideal solution in terms of investment.
DTY yarns are by far the easiest to dye and a simple soft package winder, converted out of the take up of a texturizing machine, which Lohia or Himson sold in India and no other company in the rest of the world was the best solution for this application.
These machines would run at 800 to 900 metres per minute and had a texturizing take up, which means, a dyer could actually take up large packages and get a much higher effieceny in yarn dyeing . These machines are at crazy low prices. but again Lohia and Himson were nowhere to be mapped as a potential threat to this product line. So SSM enjoyed the position and Fadis was close second. It will not take long before Barmag finds out this application or Indian companies realize the potential of their winder.
SSM still is not aware of this threat, but is the biggest threat in this segment , when it comes to passing the Viability Threshold. With Stahle in its fold, SSM should quickly bring this model forward. However, for certain applications like Nylon or viscose yarns, or flat yarns or rewinding to pineapple cones , PW2 is still the best solution without a comparable technology.
Second is the spun yarn soft winder : Which is now PW6. Actually for spun yarns, as long as a dyer uses Mantex Dyesprings, there is absolutely no use of a precision winder. A good random winder is more then enough investment.
Visit any Japanese yarn dyeing plant and most of these have only random winder.
However, my favorite is always the example of Pacific Textiles ( with its visionary Technical Director, Dr Clemant Lam,) in Hong Kong, with its plants in Southern China and Sri Lanka and is now adding a plant in Bangladesh. This company has one of the best and large yarn dyeing and exports to US Top Brands. I tried many many times to sell a precision winder to him and he was unequivocal in saying that as long as a company uses MANTEX DYESPRINGS, there is never any need for a precision winder. Because Mantex Dyesprings bring in the same functionality of Density equalization , what precision winders will do with large investments.
And, I could not agree with him anymore. But then it needs the conviction and expertize of a Dyer Like Dr Clement Lam to run a dye house. Dr Clement Lam did his doctorate from UMIST UK and has 30+ years of experience in running a dyehouse. So, it is not just the enthusiasm to avoid a precision winder, but the expertize and genius of a dyer to use the optimal solution.
Therefore the PW6 actually does not pass the Viability Thrshold Test, however, till the world realizes , PW 6 still has a potential. But again as a machine, it is a very nice and versatile machine. Only if it was clubbed with MANTEX DYESPRINGS, it would have added the benefit of density equalization, expanded capacity of dyeing without additional capital outlay and lowered the operational cost of dyeing. I wonder, why did SSM, remove the presentation , it had for dyesprings along with its soft package winding machines. Atleast, there the Viability Threshold was borderline.
Assembly Winder : SSM failed in this segment. When I say failed, not that the machine failed, but the investment could never justify the viability threshold. None of its engineers could convince the buyer that a smaller pot diameter in twisting was the key to the investment into precision winder. ( Later, we will see, how the competition used this tool to corner and grow manifold) However, in Europe and in South America, it managed clubbing its drum winder as the solution.
Gassing Machines : The Investment Viability Threshold was not important, as the solutions were either Ritte or SSM and SSM is anytime a good choice.
Air Covering Machines : An excellent extension to winding , but was wrongly priced. Adding a few rollers and room for air jet does not make a machine 50% more expensive then the standard winder. SSM created its own barrier in viability. A very nice market, which could have been exploited with sensible pricing was lost with wrong pricing decision. SSM could have flooded the market with this product, but concentrated on the wrong segment and ofcourse a wrong price.
Re-winders etc have limited markets, so we will not discuss the threshold.
Stahle and Hacoba : No comments on viability threshold, because I always considered both these product lines superfluous to SSM.
Stahle is a niche machine, but the fact that the product had a limited market, the company went bankrupt. And was more synergistic for Barmag , then SSM.
SSM had no experience in texturizing and to start venturing into this segment would take a long learning curve. And now with Nylon as a focus of SSM for this machine is again deviating from its original niche.
Hacoba was again a sewing thread segment, which is a fragmented market, except for Coats , A&E and few more European players, the viability is doubtful. However, here again, there is atleast a room for growth in this market at sensible prices, given that garment manufacturing investment is increasing on year to year basis.
To sum up , the viability threshold for each of the product line is questionable, so as and when competition attacks, the chances of sales slipping away are highest.
This is exactly what happened to SSM. Let us now study the competition and its influence .
First Error:
SSM segmented the markets with its product applications and not as per the Industry Segment, which is to say, winders for knitters, winders for towel makers, winders for spinners, winders for Polyester plants, winders for home furnishing companies, winders for elastic makers, silk winders, winders for narrow fabric makers, winders for metallic yarns, winders for Industrial Yarns, winders for Technical Textiles and winders for special applications.
The result was that the sales team would only focus on the dyeing and sometimes rewinding segment of the industry. They could not travel beyond and see that the global industry was very well segmented by Product and not by application. If you visit the website of SSM, then it is like a notice board, ( Actually more like a railway time table ) where one should find his application, it is not about solutions for knitters, dyers, weavers, etc etc. Until and unless you are a textile engineer, you cannot spot the machine required for your application. Knowing well that most of the knitting, weaving and such post spinning areas are fragmented and medium sized companies, where the owner does not know, what is long staple or short staple or elastene, he quickly abandon and moves past and calls the local winder supplier to help him with his requirement.
Knitter would need air covering and may need rewinder and may need soft package winder and may be some special application machine.
So, if they had a sales rep, who was attacking only knitters, then one segment was already covered.
Similarly for weaver, there was a rewinder, because one and every weaver has left out packages and he needs a 6 spindle winder and if it has length measurement, then it is like sone pe suhaga. ( Gold Plated ). Therefore a special winder called " Weavers Delight " was not there. Only if a weaver would approach the machine maker and ask for such a winder, SSM would quickly offer one of the rewinder. But , if would have posted on the net, Weavers Delight, Price starts Euro 9990 for 6 spindles, then it would have created a whole new market for a very large untapped weaving segment. ( But this is one segment, no winding maker has exploited )
The extension of similar segment would open opportunities which were never linked to the product.
What I love about FMCG is that they have sales rep who is all the time in the field and visiting customers . And these sales reps are very low salaried and have very high incentives and the qualification is only enough to track the opportunity. The sales, anyway the manager would ensure. This concept is not there in Industrial Marketing .
Thus with a channel marketing of Agents, the way of marketing of each and every machine maker is spotting new projects , replacment and expansion projects. It was never about expanding the market itself.
The result is that SSM is now perceived as a Soft Package winder and Rewinder company. If the Industry segment finds a solution for itself in the winding offerings of SSM, then it is lucky for SSM, otherwise, it did never spot the opportunity itself.
Second Error : Under Estimating The Competition.
In markets, where capital goods industry is well developed, the competition profiling has to be very rigorous. Say for China and India, the situation for SSM is not the same as in Egypt, Bangladesh, Central Asia or S. America.
China, Taiwan, S.Korea and India on account of their highly Industrialized positions have the competence to track the global technologies and quickly bring forward a competing solution. No matter, how much foul is cried for the Copying, the reality is that the business in these countries is a real challenge for any machine maker. And to sell into such an environment, one needs a very aggressive sales positioning , as these are also some of the worlds largest markets . And interestingly , Indian, Chinese, Taiwanese and S.Koreans, then do not limit themselves only to their own domestic markets, they become regional and later global players.
SSM did succeed in China, but in reality, it was majorly in the South region, which was again the investments from Hong kong or in Hangzhou and some other small areas, where there was Taiwan investments. For all the other areas, it had marginal success, but still not so bad. In rest of China, it was the brand " Switzerland" that would sell and not SSM. ( Selling machines into China is another long story, I will write a blog soon)
In India, it did quite well, till a leading Indian winding maker started challenging the SSM product line. Year 2002, ( I had left SSM channel partner at this time ) the competition first found the gap in the spinning sector of SSM, and quickly moved forward to take away this segment. The irony was that SSM did not even know, what was happening in the market and before my departure, I had very strongly advised the sales manager that the southern region rep was extremely weak and he should not depend on him. They ignored my warnings and the result was that within 6 months, competition had sold around 500 spindles and within one year, they sold 1000 spindles, thereafter there was no looking back for the competition. The success was the effort of one single man in competition and failure of one single man in SSM. Despite SSM having placed its own sales manager alongside the sales rep, the quality and skill required to stop the competition was missing.
Competition is " Peass " a winding maker in India since last 40 years, so it is a strong brand and for them to capture the rest of the market was not difficult at all. However, the story did not end here. In SE Asia, I took over the marketing of this brand and for me it was very easy to sell, given that I knew the weaknesses of SSM. This meant, India and SE Asia was marginalized. Other markets like Bangladesh, Turkey, Egypt, West Africa and little in S. America were also quick to find value in this brand.
By the year 2007, Peass was at ITMA and there, it was now a run away success. The world had seen an Indian company with competitive offerings. And ironically the competition was always willing to tie up with SSM to find a common ground for success, but the opportunity was more seen by Schlafhorst and ultimately this company is now Peass- Schlafhorst . And what can be more interesting, that only division which makes profits in Oerlikon is Peass -Schlafhorst.
The lesson is " Never Underestimate The Competition "
The biggest failure of SSM was not about the competition low prices. But for SSM to have not been able to visualize that competition had only and only one product and all it required was to place a fighter brand at the same price band and kill the competition. However, this kind of foresight was never there in the management. SSM was in the same vicious circle of low price versus high price, as I wrote in my last blog.
Third Error: Not Exploiting the Modular Concept
The beauty of modular concept was that one never had to invest heavily and hence the smallest machine of less then chf 10,000 should have been targeted to one and every application area and industry segment. In fact, if chf 5000 was possible, then make it only 3 spindles and shove the machine to all of them. Many many of them would have then gone into extend the machine and the customer base of SSM would have gone up manifold.
We have already seen that as long as the value of product is low, everyone tries it for whatever it may be worth. Further, feels pride of owning a Swiss machine. It is all about getting a person started and once having tasted, he automatically comes back.
Fourth Error : Lack of Innovation
Herr SSM, Innovation is not about adding UPS to avoid a ring on the soft package, or adding a digitens or tensiso, or presitens or lubitex . The customer is only making simple yarn, which is most of the time is an input to the next process and any of these application is not making any difference to the customers revenue stream. Market values these as standard supplies for machine differentiation. These are cosmetic innovations. Like applying lipstick to a pig. But is still a Pig. ( Famously told by Obama )
SSM did not have any Textile Technologist on its board or management. The result was that, it could not ever find any further industry solutions with its product offerings.
Air Covering or the Slub attachment is a good application , but the thought process could not be taken further.
Herr SSM, if the Japanese can make MVS and shrink the process of simplex, ring spinning and winding, then they could see beyond the usual. Similarly winding is only a secondary application ( whether soft or rewinding or assembly winding ) and not a primary output , so its value will never be judged by the industry, till you could find primary applications like air covering.
Let me list out for you many such applications, where the value of winding machine changes from a secondary machine to a primary machine.
Herr SSM, hope you recall the famous ad campign of UBS bank.
What you see as winders, we see as potential Sizing Machine.
It does not take in 21st century "n" number or rollers to size cotton yarns, but it takes a smart resin application on the winder to make it strong enough to weave the yarn. We therefore see winder as the condensed smart sizing machine.
We see winder as the yarn dyeing machines condensing dyeing, drying and winding.
We see winders as the Machine changing normal tenacity yarns to High Tenacity yarns and give solution to technical textiles.
We see winders as the solution to make comingled and speciality yarns.
We see winders making Industrial yarns. Twisting and winding togather.
Making of Industrial yarns : There was no technology to make high deniers beyond 1100 deniers and I have now developed winders to make upto 5000 deniers and would come out with yarns upto 100,000 deniers soon. I will show these yarns in Bandungtex.
We see winders as Twist setting and conditioning machines.
Conditioned yarns on winder : See my product at Bandung Tex.
Nevertheless, you can buy all the above machine "application" patents from me.
We see winders as the yarn hairiness removal solutions and not gassing machines as the solution. See my yarns developed out of winder at Bandung Tex exhibition.
So, what you see as Winders, we see Technology.
The biggest opportunity of Innovation was when the world moved to compact spinning. SSM did not spot the opportunity that yarn hairiness was a forte of SSM and it could duck in the fire box into its winders or offer the fire box to the autoconers. Rieter and others made the best out of it.
Herr SSM, it needs the genius of a Textile Technologist, besides the management to run a technology oriented machine company.
In a world of Knowledge economy, it is the knowledge which is bringing about value to the organization, the commodity time is gone.
If Nokia can take away the market of canon and sony on camera and become the largest selling camera in the world, then it has silently intruded into the domain of camera makers and captured the global market.
It is upto you to see winders as sizing , industrial yarns, conditioning, twisting etc etc as your Brainware or be contented with fighting head on with other winders.
If only IBM would have seen the PC market rightly, it would have not collapsed on its mainframes.
Conventional Machines are like PC makers, the world will see innovative designers, who would sell designs on the internet and assemblers will make machines. It is time, that SSM changes and moves forwards and be the provider of the core components to these assemblers. Winding machine is all about the winding head, rest does not matter, any machine shop will do it for you anywhere in the world.
If the Japanese can fully make a machine in Japan itself and yet be successful, then moving production to China is not the solution. The solution is to create an assembler in India, China, etc etc and sent him the winding head .
And for technologies, until you really have technology geeks,, this is too big a dream to capture. I don't see that subtlety in SSM or for that matter in any European machine maker. This is what is "Innovating the Future ".
Well I am being arrogant here, but then there is no other person under the sun, who knows winding and its markets better then me.
Herr SSM, in the Indian subcontinent, we have a saying. " Jo Jita Wo Sikander " ( One who wins is Alexender the Great " and I will make an extension to it, " Jo Hara Wo Chukander " ( Who Looses is a cucumber )
Herr SSM, when your sales turnover in the year 2009 slipped from 82 million to 38 million with losses of 7 million CHF, Peass turnover moved up from 16 million to 22 million CHF and its profitability could have sent Zurich stock market to frenzy with its stock, had it been listed there.
Bitte lesen sie dies für die Möglichkeiten zur SSM und nicht als Kritik.
Aufweidersehen. Kunder ist immer richticg.
However, with such a class of product, it has been into Red for the last two consecutive years. No wonder the CEO got changed this year. Shareholders don't listen to impeding conditions and only want to see the growth trajectory.
FMCG companies, Banks, MNC, etc etc each of them year after year try to show growth to keep the shareholders pleased. No matter, how much the books have to be cooked or what funny things need to be done, otherwise the managers life is miserable. AIG, GM, Citi Bank, Enron, and now Toyoda have all shown that relatively risky decision are taken to keep the stock market in good humor for their stocks.
This reminds me of my own personal experience, when I first presented my budget for my little business and had shown some 9% growth over the previous year. I had a brilliant boss, ( in fact I had the privilege of working with many brilliant bosses, I must admit, each of them better then the other ) who advised me Atul, Future is not always Previous Year + 10%, but it is something which will show exponential growth. I did that year, 100% over my budget and he has a President created history for the company for his full business.
Now, the above story relates to the Power of Thinking. Wherein great managers do not move the company incrementally, but exponentially.
SSM was such a success story, where Beat Siegrist, ex CEO, created exponential growth for the company. He moved further to manage other businesses, and Herr Nadalini took the process forward, however, after Beat and then Nadalini departure never could get the company back to the same acceleration.
Let us dig into this interesting Case Study.
SSM specializes in Winding Machines and at one point of time, it was Rewinding Machines, Soft Package Winders, Assembly Winders, Gassing machines and later added Air Covering Machines. Then went in to take over Stahle and Hacoba.
SSM was one of the first winding machine makers to make a modular machine, where each position was like independent machine, precision winding technology for the first time came in for spun yarns, speeds went up from 400 metres per minute to 800 metres per minute or still higher. And above all the machine was rather simple and would make a very nice final package.
SSM had product offerings for both Filament yarns and Spun yarns. The Filament machine was any time much better with its flexible traverse and flexible crossing angle , and could run soft, rewinding or whatever application required winding. Spun machines had a propeller traverse and this was also an interesting change from the old system of wire guide or drums. The world flirted with these machines. If it was winding, then it was SSM. Fadis was a distant second and then there was no one.
SSM was a virtual monopoly as far as good winders were concerned across the globe. And when a company slips into this stage, it only breeds complacency and over confidence in its management. This is what happened to SSM. After having innovated and positioned itself on the Top, it forgot that, competition is always tracking the success and redefining itself.
It also forgot that the honey moon with the innovation is only for a limited period, then market wants the next innovation. Which SSM never planned.
Now, before I take up competition and what it did to SSM, let me analyze for the reader, whether the innovative technologies actually passed the Viability Threshold for the user or was it the hype of the brand.
Soft Package Winder for filament yarns : As a machine and its design, PW1 and now PW2 is a very nice machine, perhaps the best of the Horses, SSM has and it later successfully changed it to PW6 and made the spun yarn run on the same machines, which was quite ingenious and intelligent.
Viability Threshold Test : At a certain price, this machine was great. However, given that texturized yarns, which are the largest of the filament yarns, that get dyed, this was not the Ideal solution in terms of investment.
DTY yarns are by far the easiest to dye and a simple soft package winder, converted out of the take up of a texturizing machine, which Lohia or Himson sold in India and no other company in the rest of the world was the best solution for this application.
These machines would run at 800 to 900 metres per minute and had a texturizing take up, which means, a dyer could actually take up large packages and get a much higher effieceny in yarn dyeing . These machines are at crazy low prices. but again Lohia and Himson were nowhere to be mapped as a potential threat to this product line. So SSM enjoyed the position and Fadis was close second. It will not take long before Barmag finds out this application or Indian companies realize the potential of their winder.
SSM still is not aware of this threat, but is the biggest threat in this segment , when it comes to passing the Viability Threshold. With Stahle in its fold, SSM should quickly bring this model forward. However, for certain applications like Nylon or viscose yarns, or flat yarns or rewinding to pineapple cones , PW2 is still the best solution without a comparable technology.
Second is the spun yarn soft winder : Which is now PW6. Actually for spun yarns, as long as a dyer uses Mantex Dyesprings, there is absolutely no use of a precision winder. A good random winder is more then enough investment.
Visit any Japanese yarn dyeing plant and most of these have only random winder.
However, my favorite is always the example of Pacific Textiles ( with its visionary Technical Director, Dr Clemant Lam,) in Hong Kong, with its plants in Southern China and Sri Lanka and is now adding a plant in Bangladesh. This company has one of the best and large yarn dyeing and exports to US Top Brands. I tried many many times to sell a precision winder to him and he was unequivocal in saying that as long as a company uses MANTEX DYESPRINGS, there is never any need for a precision winder. Because Mantex Dyesprings bring in the same functionality of Density equalization , what precision winders will do with large investments.
And, I could not agree with him anymore. But then it needs the conviction and expertize of a Dyer Like Dr Clement Lam to run a dye house. Dr Clement Lam did his doctorate from UMIST UK and has 30+ years of experience in running a dyehouse. So, it is not just the enthusiasm to avoid a precision winder, but the expertize and genius of a dyer to use the optimal solution.
Therefore the PW6 actually does not pass the Viability Thrshold Test, however, till the world realizes , PW 6 still has a potential. But again as a machine, it is a very nice and versatile machine. Only if it was clubbed with MANTEX DYESPRINGS, it would have added the benefit of density equalization, expanded capacity of dyeing without additional capital outlay and lowered the operational cost of dyeing. I wonder, why did SSM, remove the presentation , it had for dyesprings along with its soft package winding machines. Atleast, there the Viability Threshold was borderline.
Assembly Winder : SSM failed in this segment. When I say failed, not that the machine failed, but the investment could never justify the viability threshold. None of its engineers could convince the buyer that a smaller pot diameter in twisting was the key to the investment into precision winder. ( Later, we will see, how the competition used this tool to corner and grow manifold) However, in Europe and in South America, it managed clubbing its drum winder as the solution.
Gassing Machines : The Investment Viability Threshold was not important, as the solutions were either Ritte or SSM and SSM is anytime a good choice.
Air Covering Machines : An excellent extension to winding , but was wrongly priced. Adding a few rollers and room for air jet does not make a machine 50% more expensive then the standard winder. SSM created its own barrier in viability. A very nice market, which could have been exploited with sensible pricing was lost with wrong pricing decision. SSM could have flooded the market with this product, but concentrated on the wrong segment and ofcourse a wrong price.
Re-winders etc have limited markets, so we will not discuss the threshold.
Stahle and Hacoba : No comments on viability threshold, because I always considered both these product lines superfluous to SSM.
Stahle is a niche machine, but the fact that the product had a limited market, the company went bankrupt. And was more synergistic for Barmag , then SSM.
SSM had no experience in texturizing and to start venturing into this segment would take a long learning curve. And now with Nylon as a focus of SSM for this machine is again deviating from its original niche.
Hacoba was again a sewing thread segment, which is a fragmented market, except for Coats , A&E and few more European players, the viability is doubtful. However, here again, there is atleast a room for growth in this market at sensible prices, given that garment manufacturing investment is increasing on year to year basis.
To sum up , the viability threshold for each of the product line is questionable, so as and when competition attacks, the chances of sales slipping away are highest.
This is exactly what happened to SSM. Let us now study the competition and its influence .
First Error:
SSM segmented the markets with its product applications and not as per the Industry Segment, which is to say, winders for knitters, winders for towel makers, winders for spinners, winders for Polyester plants, winders for home furnishing companies, winders for elastic makers, silk winders, winders for narrow fabric makers, winders for metallic yarns, winders for Industrial Yarns, winders for Technical Textiles and winders for special applications.
The result was that the sales team would only focus on the dyeing and sometimes rewinding segment of the industry. They could not travel beyond and see that the global industry was very well segmented by Product and not by application. If you visit the website of SSM, then it is like a notice board, ( Actually more like a railway time table ) where one should find his application, it is not about solutions for knitters, dyers, weavers, etc etc. Until and unless you are a textile engineer, you cannot spot the machine required for your application. Knowing well that most of the knitting, weaving and such post spinning areas are fragmented and medium sized companies, where the owner does not know, what is long staple or short staple or elastene, he quickly abandon and moves past and calls the local winder supplier to help him with his requirement.
Knitter would need air covering and may need rewinder and may need soft package winder and may be some special application machine.
So, if they had a sales rep, who was attacking only knitters, then one segment was already covered.
Similarly for weaver, there was a rewinder, because one and every weaver has left out packages and he needs a 6 spindle winder and if it has length measurement, then it is like sone pe suhaga. ( Gold Plated ). Therefore a special winder called " Weavers Delight " was not there. Only if a weaver would approach the machine maker and ask for such a winder, SSM would quickly offer one of the rewinder. But , if would have posted on the net, Weavers Delight, Price starts Euro 9990 for 6 spindles, then it would have created a whole new market for a very large untapped weaving segment. ( But this is one segment, no winding maker has exploited )
The extension of similar segment would open opportunities which were never linked to the product.
What I love about FMCG is that they have sales rep who is all the time in the field and visiting customers . And these sales reps are very low salaried and have very high incentives and the qualification is only enough to track the opportunity. The sales, anyway the manager would ensure. This concept is not there in Industrial Marketing .
Thus with a channel marketing of Agents, the way of marketing of each and every machine maker is spotting new projects , replacment and expansion projects. It was never about expanding the market itself.
The result is that SSM is now perceived as a Soft Package winder and Rewinder company. If the Industry segment finds a solution for itself in the winding offerings of SSM, then it is lucky for SSM, otherwise, it did never spot the opportunity itself.
Second Error : Under Estimating The Competition.
In markets, where capital goods industry is well developed, the competition profiling has to be very rigorous. Say for China and India, the situation for SSM is not the same as in Egypt, Bangladesh, Central Asia or S. America.
China, Taiwan, S.Korea and India on account of their highly Industrialized positions have the competence to track the global technologies and quickly bring forward a competing solution. No matter, how much foul is cried for the Copying, the reality is that the business in these countries is a real challenge for any machine maker. And to sell into such an environment, one needs a very aggressive sales positioning , as these are also some of the worlds largest markets . And interestingly , Indian, Chinese, Taiwanese and S.Koreans, then do not limit themselves only to their own domestic markets, they become regional and later global players.
SSM did succeed in China, but in reality, it was majorly in the South region, which was again the investments from Hong kong or in Hangzhou and some other small areas, where there was Taiwan investments. For all the other areas, it had marginal success, but still not so bad. In rest of China, it was the brand " Switzerland" that would sell and not SSM. ( Selling machines into China is another long story, I will write a blog soon)
In India, it did quite well, till a leading Indian winding maker started challenging the SSM product line. Year 2002, ( I had left SSM channel partner at this time ) the competition first found the gap in the spinning sector of SSM, and quickly moved forward to take away this segment. The irony was that SSM did not even know, what was happening in the market and before my departure, I had very strongly advised the sales manager that the southern region rep was extremely weak and he should not depend on him. They ignored my warnings and the result was that within 6 months, competition had sold around 500 spindles and within one year, they sold 1000 spindles, thereafter there was no looking back for the competition. The success was the effort of one single man in competition and failure of one single man in SSM. Despite SSM having placed its own sales manager alongside the sales rep, the quality and skill required to stop the competition was missing.
Competition is " Peass " a winding maker in India since last 40 years, so it is a strong brand and for them to capture the rest of the market was not difficult at all. However, the story did not end here. In SE Asia, I took over the marketing of this brand and for me it was very easy to sell, given that I knew the weaknesses of SSM. This meant, India and SE Asia was marginalized. Other markets like Bangladesh, Turkey, Egypt, West Africa and little in S. America were also quick to find value in this brand.
By the year 2007, Peass was at ITMA and there, it was now a run away success. The world had seen an Indian company with competitive offerings. And ironically the competition was always willing to tie up with SSM to find a common ground for success, but the opportunity was more seen by Schlafhorst and ultimately this company is now Peass- Schlafhorst . And what can be more interesting, that only division which makes profits in Oerlikon is Peass -Schlafhorst.
The lesson is " Never Underestimate The Competition "
The biggest failure of SSM was not about the competition low prices. But for SSM to have not been able to visualize that competition had only and only one product and all it required was to place a fighter brand at the same price band and kill the competition. However, this kind of foresight was never there in the management. SSM was in the same vicious circle of low price versus high price, as I wrote in my last blog.
Third Error: Not Exploiting the Modular Concept
The beauty of modular concept was that one never had to invest heavily and hence the smallest machine of less then chf 10,000 should have been targeted to one and every application area and industry segment. In fact, if chf 5000 was possible, then make it only 3 spindles and shove the machine to all of them. Many many of them would have then gone into extend the machine and the customer base of SSM would have gone up manifold.
We have already seen that as long as the value of product is low, everyone tries it for whatever it may be worth. Further, feels pride of owning a Swiss machine. It is all about getting a person started and once having tasted, he automatically comes back.
Fourth Error : Lack of Innovation
Herr SSM, Innovation is not about adding UPS to avoid a ring on the soft package, or adding a digitens or tensiso, or presitens or lubitex . The customer is only making simple yarn, which is most of the time is an input to the next process and any of these application is not making any difference to the customers revenue stream. Market values these as standard supplies for machine differentiation. These are cosmetic innovations. Like applying lipstick to a pig. But is still a Pig. ( Famously told by Obama )
SSM did not have any Textile Technologist on its board or management. The result was that, it could not ever find any further industry solutions with its product offerings.
Air Covering or the Slub attachment is a good application , but the thought process could not be taken further.
Herr SSM, if the Japanese can make MVS and shrink the process of simplex, ring spinning and winding, then they could see beyond the usual. Similarly winding is only a secondary application ( whether soft or rewinding or assembly winding ) and not a primary output , so its value will never be judged by the industry, till you could find primary applications like air covering.
Let me list out for you many such applications, where the value of winding machine changes from a secondary machine to a primary machine.
Herr SSM, hope you recall the famous ad campign of UBS bank.
You see a child playing with his grandfather, we see succession planning.
What you see as winders, we see as potential Sizing Machine.
It does not take in 21st century "n" number or rollers to size cotton yarns, but it takes a smart resin application on the winder to make it strong enough to weave the yarn. We therefore see winder as the condensed smart sizing machine.
We see winder as the yarn dyeing machines condensing dyeing, drying and winding.
We see winders as the Machine changing normal tenacity yarns to High Tenacity yarns and give solution to technical textiles.
We see winders as the solution to make comingled and speciality yarns.
We see winders making Industrial yarns. Twisting and winding togather.
Making of Industrial yarns : There was no technology to make high deniers beyond 1100 deniers and I have now developed winders to make upto 5000 deniers and would come out with yarns upto 100,000 deniers soon. I will show these yarns in Bandungtex.
We see winders as Twist setting and conditioning machines.
Conditioned yarns on winder : See my product at Bandung Tex.
Nevertheless, you can buy all the above machine "application" patents from me.
We see winders as the yarn hairiness removal solutions and not gassing machines as the solution. See my yarns developed out of winder at Bandung Tex exhibition.
So, what you see as Winders, we see Technology.
The biggest opportunity of Innovation was when the world moved to compact spinning. SSM did not spot the opportunity that yarn hairiness was a forte of SSM and it could duck in the fire box into its winders or offer the fire box to the autoconers. Rieter and others made the best out of it.
Herr SSM, it needs the genius of a Textile Technologist, besides the management to run a technology oriented machine company.
In a world of Knowledge economy, it is the knowledge which is bringing about value to the organization, the commodity time is gone.
If Nokia can take away the market of canon and sony on camera and become the largest selling camera in the world, then it has silently intruded into the domain of camera makers and captured the global market.
It is upto you to see winders as sizing , industrial yarns, conditioning, twisting etc etc as your Brainware or be contented with fighting head on with other winders.
If only IBM would have seen the PC market rightly, it would have not collapsed on its mainframes.
Conventional Machines are like PC makers, the world will see innovative designers, who would sell designs on the internet and assemblers will make machines. It is time, that SSM changes and moves forwards and be the provider of the core components to these assemblers. Winding machine is all about the winding head, rest does not matter, any machine shop will do it for you anywhere in the world.
If the Japanese can fully make a machine in Japan itself and yet be successful, then moving production to China is not the solution. The solution is to create an assembler in India, China, etc etc and sent him the winding head .
And for technologies, until you really have technology geeks,, this is too big a dream to capture. I don't see that subtlety in SSM or for that matter in any European machine maker. This is what is "Innovating the Future ".
Well I am being arrogant here, but then there is no other person under the sun, who knows winding and its markets better then me.
Herr SSM, in the Indian subcontinent, we have a saying. " Jo Jita Wo Sikander " ( One who wins is Alexender the Great " and I will make an extension to it, " Jo Hara Wo Chukander " ( Who Looses is a cucumber )
Herr SSM, when your sales turnover in the year 2009 slipped from 82 million to 38 million with losses of 7 million CHF, Peass turnover moved up from 16 million to 22 million CHF and its profitability could have sent Zurich stock market to frenzy with its stock, had it been listed there.
Bitte lesen sie dies für die Möglichkeiten zur SSM und nicht als Kritik.
Aufweidersehen. Kunder ist immer richticg.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
