China: The Price Keeper of The World!

I started travelling in China in early 90s and since then I have seen China changing from dilipated factories and outdated machines to a modern developed nation. My early memories of the textile mill in Shanghai was so pathetic that I could have not believed that the mill was running with zero quality systems and if the yarn got wound on the cone, it was already an acceptable product. Extremely bad working conditions, broken walls, broken ceilings, stinking bathrooms and work was done very casually.

And same, I saw in Tianjin, Beijing, Ningbo, Dalian. However, as time passed and I kept visiting more mills, the change was seen year after year. The Shanghai mill disappeared and came a flourishing office complex. Same with most mills in Beijing.  Nicer and bigger textile complex came up in Ningbo, Hangzhou, Shanghai, Guangzhou. Investments came up with modern machines from Europe and work standards came to International standards.

Now, ofcourse, China has become a leader in Textiles and not just textiles, almost everything under the sun comes out of China. However, the best part is not just about the production capacities, but also the quality has systematically improved.  Given that it has advantage of Economies of Sale, the prices are always attractive. The results is that today China has set the standards of Prices for all the products in the world.

If today, I offer a yarn or machine or fabric or clothing, the first thing people check is , how the price compares against Prices from China.

China has a magnet of Price and without marketing efforts, customers search for their supply chains within China and usually find a suitable supplier. No other country in the world has been so much successful in creating such a huge market for its products and services in such a short time of 20 years.

Despite the language barrier, China is a nice place to do biz. People are generally very nice and very hospitable and they try their best to offer a product or service, which would meet your acceptance.

For me, I am quite happy that for almost everything under the sun, not just textiles, the prices are kept in control by the Chinese, otherwise, these multinationals would take away all my little earnings with their fancy prices. Now to be competitive, everyone has to keep his prices very close to the Chinese prices.

Chinese companies are taking over giant companies in US, UK, Europe and at this rate, they will easily take over from Japan as the second largest economy in the world.

Good job China!

Mathematics of Hydroextraction

Basket Type Hydro

 Water removal from Textile Packages has always been a challanging task. In the 70s, it was only the basket type hydroextactor, where textile packages where horizontally kept and basket rotated on its axis to centrifuge the water. The improvement over the years was to have a spindle on which the yarn packages were loaded and then the basket spins.

Water removal from textile packages is again dependent upon the moistre regain and the abosorption properties of the yarn. In case of polyester, it can be 90% moistre removal and in case of cotton, it can be only 50% and viscose only 30%.

The interesting part of this technology was the mathematics, which shows the moistre removal rate and percentage of residual moistre.

Centrifugal Acceleration Governs The Rate Of Water Removal From Porous Package,

 This Also Defines When The Equilibrium Stage

Is Reached Between Surface Tension And Centrifugal Forces

The Governing Equation

C= 4o(2)f (2) r

Where f is the frequency of rotation of centrifuge

Within Bracket shows, to the power of the preceeding symbol

Variation of Centrifugal Acceleration is Cause For Terminal Retention of Water in a Package

Retention is Time Dependent : Water before escaping from Package should Move Through It To Outside Surface

Rate of Movement Depends Upon 

Balance Between Viscous Flow Forces

And

Accelerating Centrifugal Force And Restraining Capillary Forces

Large Capillaries Empty First and Small Capillaries Empty With Difficulty

The Mass of Retention In Capillary is Given By the Equation

Ahs = ltCosq / C

Where A  is the Area of capillary, l the peripheral length of capillary, h the height to which the capillary is filled with water, s is viscosity of the liquid, t , the surface tension and q the contact angle, C , the centrifuge acceleration.

Hence Mass Retention is Inversely Proportional To Centrifuge Acceleration

As C is increased, more capillaries opened and a stage is reached, when capillary retention is proportional to 1/ C

At any point in the Package, the rate of Movement of Moisture (u) in a centrifugal gravitation force (C) 

Is Given By    u = CK

Where K is the Permeability of the package

This is the maximum amount of water, that can be removed by Centrifugal Field Against Capillary Forces

In case of Cotton, it is 45%

Polyester Textured , it is 90 to 94%

 Acrylic : 90%

Nylon : 90%

Viscose : 30%

Polyester Sewing Thread : 90%

Based on the Above Numbers, it is now possible to Calculate the Spinning Time To Achieve the Equilibrium Stage For Hydro with speed variable.

Conclusion For Basket Hydroextractors

During Hydroextraction, water migrates from the Porous Package In Direction of Centrifugal Field. Rate of movement depending mainly on the Porous Structure of the Package, the water retention and the field strength.

As larger pores empty, retention reduces and rate of flow declines until balance is reached when capillary forces retain moisture within the material against the influence of the centrifugal forces.

As per Theory, the Porosity of Package and Pore Size Distribution is an important element of Hydro-extractors. Current Hydro-extraction system does not provide the element of squeezing the water initially out of the package and creating enough porosity within the package for easy removal of water.

Axis Type Hydroextractor

Unlike Basket Hydro , where at the Radial End of Basket, the Packages move with Basket.

The Axis Spinning spins the Packages on its own Axis.

In Basket Hydro, the Effect of variation of Centrifugal Field was insignificant for Moisture Retention.

In Axial Spinning, the centrifugal acceleration depends upon the spinning speed and also depends upon the size of the package.

Larger the Package, Greater The Acceleration

Maximum Acceleration At Outside 

Cmax = 4p(2)f(2)R0

Where f is freq. of rev, R0 is OD of Package

Within Bracket shows to the Power of Pie or f 

Where as the Average Acceleration within the package is given by

 Cav = Cmax 2/3 ( R1/R0  + R0/ R1+R0)

Where R1 is the ID of package

As OD of Package Increases, Avg and Max acceleration Increase for a Given Speed 

Acceleration Increases as Rate of Rotation Increases

But interestingly from the equation, as OD increases, the Cav reduces and hence the Water Retention in Packages Become Higher

Technically, one would expect that Retention Of Moisture In Axis spinning packages should be lower then Basket Hydro

But In Real Life Experiments it was seen that the Small Packages Dried 

More Then Large Packages exactly following the equation

This is explained as below

Moisture Is Distributed Evenly Through The Package

High Retention Zone Occurs At Outside Surface, 

Most Remote From Centrifugal Axis

Spot The Large Molecules At The End Of Package after Hydroextaction

Caused By Migrating Molecules To End Of Package Under Centrifugal Field

But Unable To Escape On Account of Surface Tension Forces

Result is Crooked Packages

For Same Value Of Cmax , effect of each zone retention on overall retention of moisture  will be Proportional to

Package Circumference / Cross Sectional Area

That is

R0/ C ( R0 (2) - R1(2))

Retained Water can be Divided Into Two Parts

That Dispersed Throughout the Porus Material

That Held At Or Near The Outside Surface

Rate Of Equilibrium In This Case Depends Upon

Porous Structure

Field Strength Within Package

Conclusion

Axis Type Hydroextractor Has A Major Shortcoming In Fluid Separation From Textile Material

Correction To System

It was First Done By Dr Frauchiger in Switzerland

Who Designed Package Holding And Pressing To Break The Boundary Layer And Break the Surface Tension to allow the large molecules removal.

Hydro with Fingers

Optimal Hydro,Compliant with Technology.

 In short, the Axis type Hydro has a major shortcoming and gives oval shaped packages. Yet is the most popular hydro sold in the world , because of its productivity.
The Dr Frauchiger hydro also has a high productivity, but extremely expensive machine, but worth the investment.

Markets are, where People Are!

China and India both have huge population.  Both these countries also have a huge area and both are one of the most ancient civilizations on planet earth.

The combined population of these two countries would be say 2.7 billion. The global population of 7 billion has around 40% people from India and China.  And to this number, if I was to add further the Chinese from Taiwan, Philippines, Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia etc, it would easily come to 50% of the global population to be Chinese or Indians. Which means 1 out of every 2 persons in the world is now either an Indian or a Chinese.

Interestingly, both these communities have seen new found wealth and both have almost the same middle class attitude towards spending wealth to get a taste of better life.  The ever increasing middle class is creating markets for goods and services for almost anything and everything.  Never before has the economy seen such an expansion like in the last decade.

But it is not the spending habits of the people, which is changing the economy of these countries, but the magnitude of the number of people. Spending in Europe or US or North America could be many times higher then Asia, but the total number of people are too small to be be aggregated to show an improvement of GDP more then 1%.

The American and European brands regularly see more growth in China and India, then the rest of the world. The markets for almost each and every product has zoomed in these Asian markets. Imagine, if only 1% of the total population in China or India was a multimillionaire then it already had more millionaires then the total population of the full country like Belgium, Switzerland, Holland etc.

For whatever it is worth the largest markets for almost everything will now remain as India and China for the next many decades. Both these countries also have typical behavioral pattern in purchasing. Either they buy the most expensive or they buy the least expensive.  Markets are generally driven by perceptions and less by evaluation or value offerings.

Markets are, where People Are!

3D Printed Yarn

It is only in my last post that I wrote about 3D garments and now is already available a 3D yarn printer.

Tim Elmore got successfully funded by Kickstarter and has come out with a  very novel invention, wherein a  ABS yarn is extruded out of a 3D printer . Though only of 1.75 mm and 3 mm dia, but it is a good start.  This becomes the proof of concept that the future will be small yarn printing machines, which will roll out enough yarn for a small company with very low investment.

All it would need is feeding of a chip and out comes the yarn. Further, with master batches, one can have colors as desired.

It will not really take long, before other polymers like Polyester, Poly-amide , PP get into this application. Further, if the take up winder can be made to rotate on its axis, the yarn can come in twisted state. The thru put of the machine is small and hence slow speed winding and very easy possibility of twist insertion at the time of direct extrusion. May be there will be a need of an intermediate roller, where the cooled down yarn takes a wrap, before going to the take up twister.

The current invention of Tim gives a thruput of 2.5 to 5 Lbs per day,  but with a scaled up model, this can be very much increased. Have a look at Tim`s Invention

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/833191773/filastruder-a-robust-inexpensive-filament-extruder

Again it is a Mechanical Engineer who is coming out with Textile solutions and as usual the textile community is slow in catching up with new inventions.

In the next 10 years, this machine will become the most popular machine with most weavers and knitters as they don't have to depend upon the yarn supplies anymore from distant countries. Shove in the polymer and you are up and running . Attach a 3D knitting machine and pops out a ready to wear garment. May be the local retail branded showroom will become the garment factory giving fresh hot, ready to wear garments.

Textile 3 D Printers

The Polyester and Nylon chip makers should feel extremely pleased that it is only now a matter of time before a 3 D Printer application will be rolled out for people to have their own garments printed out of a machine.

All it would take is a polyester chip, which will be fed to the printer and then the software makes a garment, which will be as your size. You can always scan your own body for the measurement and key in the details.

Few hours later, out comes the ready to wear garment.  What more, it will be as per your design and colors. Because the 3 D Printer can also put in a kind of Jacquard design and colors as per your choice.

You view the garment on your screen and approve for its shape, size, colors and everything else and out comes the garment. No stitching, no washing, no dyeing , no other fuss.

The first will be the easy garments like socks, stockings, gloves , inner wear and it will then go to all the complex garments.

For your next party, you will visit a garment printer and view various designs and press the start button.

Interestingly, the Adidas shoe is the first 3 D shoe, which gets out of such a mold. However, I still don't know, if it is a printed product or molded product. But at-least the thread makers have lost their Nylon bonded thread market forever now.

But you could well print your own sports shoe in few hours.

Polyester chips are around USD1 a kg and a garment normally is not more then 400 gms. Which makes the material cost as 40 cents and then the inks around another 50 cents and thereafter the printing cost.

With say less then USD5, you will now have a nice colorful 3D garment .

The only challenge will be to give the crimp to the extruding polymer. But a 3D printer can also give a crimping effect .

For applications like tents, hose pipes, geo textiles, agro textiles, etc, the printer can print the polyester along with the metal.

It is an interesting world in Textiles waiting to explore.

Non Woven Garments

Time has come, where the Non Woven Garments will flood the market.

Some of the easy applications are

Socks
Stockings
Inner Wear
Sports wear
Han kerchief
Napkins
Towels
Home Furnishing like Curtains
Non Woven carpets
Wipes
Hygiene products
Medical Applications like Buds and Dressings
Interlinings
Special will be Composites, where carbon fiber will get mixed up with non woven fibers for structural applications .


And the list is limited to the Imagination of the person.

The manufacturing will be simple as there will be a simple mold  where the non woven fibers will be placed and locked up.

Thereafter, Ink Jet printed and you are up and running.

Whole New Market is now ready to get Branded Non Wovens.

Art Of Essential Questioning

 Last night a friend of mine said I had overtones of Management Guru in my talks with friends and customers etc. He was not actually the first one to say this. There are quite a lot of people to tell me this.

I started auditing the issue and discovered that it was a part of my training to keep questioning till I had a satisfactory answers. And this I had learnt in my last job, where each of the projects and proposals and manufacturing and marketing issues were grilled and super grilled and in a big forum and one had to be ready with all the correct answers. Lest one was asked to go back and do his homework and then again present the case.

The same was part of my Management Education, where each presentation was ruthlessly questioned by the peers and the professors alike.

Guess, that is where I picked up the " Art Of Essential Questioning" .

The way our schooling is that most of us never go through interactive questioning in the class for many many fears and above all the fear of asking a very stupid question. The system carries on till the last technical degree .

Then you enter a job and asking questions to considered lack of skill and knowledge. No one ever questions anything around him for good order sake. Boss knows the Best.

The net result is that, when you start questioning these technicians or managers and they don't really have a satisfactory answer, because they themselves never ask the difficult questions either to their own self or subordinates or to their superiors or the suppliers or for that matter anywhere. Then they take an offensive stand against you for either being arrogant or trying to teach them management or intruding into their business. It is not considered awakening of rationality or finding the right answer.

A smart marketing guy goes answering questions all his life. He learns by sitting on the other side of the table, all his life.  He gets an opportunity to see and capture hundreds of new methods, machines processes on account of his accessibility to clients biz.  And it is only the smartest companies, who take the information from the marketer and exploit the same into their biz. But the smartest companies first ask , one hundred relevant questions. Unfortunately, this art of Essential Questioning does not exist at all.

Each time, I have a meeting with my client, where I am selling million dollar machines or projects, I ask the clients to keep the questionnaire ready and also give them the FAQ list to draw the question list. Yet, most unfortunately, rarely do clients have the right questions.

I was given a consulting assignment by a very renowned International Textile Company, where they wanted me to develop a Global market of Greige sewing thread . I then opened the market of Germany, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Japan and Brazil for them within 3 months. But since they themselves did not go through the process of first doing the right homework , by asking the right questions. The whole effort and Euro 200,000 was lost . Of-course when I snubbed them, I was rated arrogant and teaching them management.

When I go to sell the machines, none of the customer ever draws out a list, asking

• Deliverable s of the Machine : How do they compare with International market demands.
• Flexibility of the Machine: What flexibilities does the machine have to cater to the changing needs of market.
• Design of the Machine : Does it save space, power, labor against other offerings . 
• Critical components : What are the critical components of the machine and where are these sourced from.
• Failure rate :  Normally, what parts fail and what is the failure rate. How much was your spares sales in the last three years?
• Competencies : How many Graduate engineers you employ and how many Diplomas and how many fitters etc.
• Capabilities :  Does anyone have a masters degree and does any one have a Ph.D in the core capabilities of the product being made by the company. Or the company is just a Topo master of copying and offloading the machines in the market.
• Experience : How many years of experience does the company have in making that product.
• Technology : Quiz the company on technology issues and see, if they know rightly, what current technologies are being used . Why another technology should not be used against the current offering of the supplier.
• Infrastructre : What kind of machines do they have for making the product. In a certain town in India, there are 10 TFO makers and not one of them has one single machine to make any part of the machine. But outsource the full machine , pack and sell. Great Biz model, but very poor product delivery against a company, which makes all the critical components and tests religiously all the outsourced parts.
• Quality : What kind of quality systems are used as visual online inspection for full lot ? The kind of test done to pass a product ? The Management systems and practices etc. Mind ISO9000 series is a totally useless certification and it is a total waste of time to have one or recognize one. 
• What is the total capital employed in the biz. If public company ,ask for the balance sheet to see, if it strong enough or a paper tiger.
• How many employees are in the biz.
• Who are your top 10 customers. What machines and how many spindles have been sold to them.
• Competition :  How they compare themselves with the nearest competitor in all the above. How many of the competitors have gone bankrupt in the last few years and why.
• Factory Visit : Will he allow the factory to be seen. This is the most important part to evaluate a supplier. Because more and more companies do not have any factory nowdays ,or they have a very poor factory, but come up with Big marketing talks. I lost an order of 30K springs in Europe to a company in India. I asked the supplier to visit that factor and my factory. After visiting, the order was transferred to me. 
• Lastly, the most important is the residual value of the machine after 5 years. Technology is changing at a very fast pace and hence imminently, one would budget for usage of machine not more then 5 years. Therefore to calculate the DCF, one needs to know the residual value of the machine.
• Comparison of performance of a machine to machine working after  3 years. New machine, all work well , but it is only after 2 years, one gets to know the exact performance issues. I had one used Swiss coiling machine which worked for 30 years and then I bought a New Indian coiling machine at one third the price. After 2 years, the machine was all junk. Initially  everything worked well, but as time passed, one after another thing started failing. Finally machine was scrapped. Did not even get any residual value out of it.

There are hundreds of questions, which one first has to address, before investing into a product.

But most interesting is not about the questionnaire on purchasing.  Like I wrote in my last post that Top Level Textile company Material Manager was only interested in the cheapest price, irrespective of what product quality, you were delivering . After I told him that we use a Rs1 crore( USD200k)  coiling machine to make a very precise Dyespring for you, He remarked. " I don't care, if you sit in a five star and make something for me " I was shocked. Now, when I explained to him the importance of technology to get precision in product and it comes with a certain price.  I was immediately rated arrogant and teaching him management.

On my dear friend, I happen to discover that he was investing into a product line, which could be well taken by others with core competencies and at half the price and questioned him on it. He did not like this and ultimately of-course, he did have a good convincing argument that his investment into the product line was worth the effort. But not before rating me arrogant and Management Guru Overtones. This one is dedicated to all my dear friends, whom I question for the value of questioning.

The irony is that when you tell someone that there is more then what he knows and he needs to get to the right perspective by doing his homework. Immediately, the illiteracy of the person fights back with personal remarks .

I love criticism and open to people coming and telling me that there are still unanswered questions in your product or proposal or offerings. But never ever have I rated anyone Arrogant, or teaching me management, if I did not have an answer to his question. Infact, I had great respect for him that he was one, who did open a blind spot of mine.

Therefore, while " Art of Essential Questioning " is important to arrive at key decisions and these questions can be gruesome and most difficult, but be sure that the other person does not start feeling like a mickey mouse, because he did not have an answer. Then he will certainly get back to you with retort-ion of arrogant , teaching management, too big for his shoes etc etc.

No wonder, I am rated arrogant by so many of my own contemporaries , because I never stop putting up difficult questions and of-course difficult questions don't get you many friends . But not asking difficult questions does ruin many a biz , many a jobs and much of time and sucks away resources, because prudence was not exercised at the first place. Choice is yours. Rate others arrogant or take it as an unanswered or partly answered valid question.

I would say, I am aggressive and I changed to aggression at much later age in my life. I found it was far more helpful to manage things, then with compromises.  Most compromises fail and are only sub optimal temporary solutions. In one of my earlier blog , I had written about the 50: 50 Managers, who are neither here , nor there.  Sometimes, this aggression is subtly taken as arrogance. Let there be this positive jealousy, but let the courage of conviction flow.  

The Lost Civilization : European Textile Machines

Last ITME in Mumbai, I was there browsing again the new technologies in Textiles and then came the announcement that Oerlikon has sold out its natural fibre processing machines division to Jinsheng  group.

Oerlikon would have certainly done that sooner or later. It was never their business at the first place and had only acted as an equity investment company to await the right opportunity for offloading. I will not be surprised, if the man made fibre machine division is also spun off to a suitable suitor .

Textile is a processing technology and Machines are where the Process Technology is loaded. Machine making is not a simple workshop assembly, but a complex design and mathematical calculation to arrive to the material and shape specifications. It needs a very high degree of sophistication and capability to make world class machines.

Germans and Swiss have been world class machine makers for the last 200 years and machine making is in their blood. Whether, it is a simple watch to a complex CNC machine. The best always rolled out of these two countries.

Now, this whole Industry of Textile Machine Making has been kissed good bye and send packing to China. Which was actually the other end of spectrum in machine making.

Well, thanks to the supply chain management of Asian Textile companies that was not willing to invest a little higher into European Machines. The supply chain is altogether lost. The skill , the design capability, the precision, the new solutions, the flexibility is all gone forever.

At ITME Mumbai, if one was to really see any machine worth its salt, it was the Trutzcheler stand, where they displayed the carding and the blow room.  It was such a piece of engineering marvel. But only the remnant of what is now left out in Europe. Though,  I would also appreciate that SSM, despite getting moved to  China has still kept very high standards of quality and the machine does not look Chinese in any way.

In one of my last post, where in I wrote about " Europe does not , how to sell Textile Machines " . I also listed some of the weakness these companies had shown to penetrate the Asian markets.

But, now I would blame the Asian consumers to have pitched the prices so low that the whole supply chain has been lost forever. I am not surprised on this. It is not just that European textile machines have gone missing , but also the good Asian companies will  face the same consequences, where the user pinches the few cents to buy a cheap product.

Last month, I was with the materials manager of one of the largest textile company of India and I was shocked to see the behavior of the materials manager, who argued that he did not care, what went into making a superior product or no matter , what technology was used or what management practices were being observed . He was only interested in the low price as what a mistry type workshop was offering. He further went in to comment that , he wanted European Quality with Chinese Prices.  This is the level of thinking of a very well educated supply chain manager. No wonder, if a Top company has this approach towards its supply chain, there is very little chance of either European or a good Local companies to survive.

European quality comes with European prices and Chinese quality comes with Chinese prices. There is no such thing as European Quality with Chinese prices. Except that the managers feel very proud in buying cheap or very cheap products and saving money for their companies in short run and screwing up in the long run.

It is a little strange that while for personal use, most Asians would jump on the top brand and empty their pockets to starvation  However, when taking decisions for their own companies, the heroism is in buying the lowest price product. Low price is generally low quality.

In case of machines and accessories, these are long time work horses. A cheap machine or accessory runs for 6 months or 1 year very good and thereafter for all the years, you keep putting money into it.

Anyway, European Textile Machines will be a lost Civilization. Though on weaving, there are still some companies surviving .