Logistics

If in the Service Industry, something moved to the scale of perfection, then it was logistics. Here is one industry, which has been so good, that picks up consigment on a simple call, makes available the tracking of the consignment and delivers promptly.

In Europe, the only industry which thrives and grows is Logistics. More and more manufacturing got shifted to Asia, which ensured that the Logistics company had a larger roll to play for prompt refilling of shelf spaces in the retail markets.

At any given time, if you see around yourself in Europe, then it is largely the trucks and boxes moving goods from point A to Point B.

The extension of the same logic should have been supply chain standardization. Wherein the company could track its suppliers production online and take deliveries on either daily basis or weekly basis. This would have ensured total wiping out of working capital and most companies would have worked on suppliers money.

Visit a Supermall and you will find the same brands being sold by each of them with hundreds of these packets are stacked in linear shelves. This is practically the cost of carrying inventory of thousands of supermalls , and many a times, when the retailer is the same chain. The supermalls actually could have extended the store into a virtual store and offered deep discounts for slow moving products with home delivery. And sweet discounts for FMCG. This would have opened another channel of distribution. The logistics companies would have got themselves cobranded with the store

Technically, this is a waste and sooner or later, a virtual retailer without any overheads of rent , salaries, warehouse, delivery vans etc will outbeat the system and will deliver directly from the manufacturers warehouse to buyers home. Passing the savings directly to the consumer. If pizza can be delivered, so can soap and cola and so can tomatoes and potatoes. We all saw in our childhood, the milk bus delivering milk bottles enroute. Exactly, as what we see with the demise of Travel Agents, we would see the demise of big retailing, where Amazon will find more value in delivering detergents and colas, then books and CD. It is only the shopping experience, which virtual sites have to rebuilt, however, given the next generation of kids hooked to video games, will find online stores with sexy sales girls more charming then the real time stores.

For the textile industry, cotton, polyester, and all other industrial consumables have a huge logistics cost in the supply chain and delivery cost in the sales chain. In the good old days, the government in order to promote the railways, would run a railway track right to the middle of the mill and the railways would deliver cotton, coal etc etc. But railways connected to the industries is now a gone concept. However, with the oil price rising, one had to rethink on long distance hauling by railways and short distance deliveries by trucking. If only railways would be privatized in most parts of the world, one would see it as a good alternate to trucking . Infact , only if railways be given for the goods business to logistics companies, they would change the shape of railways and inland deliveries. Anycase, most logistics companies have planes for international deliveries, so trains for local deliveries should be the logical extension.

Logistics companies have so much more business coming their way. Over a time, they would be the largest companies in the world in terms of sales turnover and growth rate.

Interestingly, logistics companies are also the best source for Data Mining on International imports and Exports . Which for confidentiality purposes have though not been exploited, however , generic products can still be valued as commercial througput for the researchers.

European Vs Asian Machines/ Model Vs Wife

Mr MM Chaudhary ( Hereafter MMC) my ex colleague recently had a genius of a sales presentation.

How humor and wit works in favor of business is a classical example below.

Mr Chaudhary sells a simple humble Asian winder, which is 30% of the price of European Winder. His customer asked him, how he should decide, because he likes the European machine, but wants the Asian price.

MMC came out with a brilliant answer. If you are looking for a wife, then buy the Asian machine and if you are looking out for a Model, then buy the European machine. The model will be to show to the world, will have higher maintenance, poor performance ( In bed ) visually attractive, but physically weak, high resale value. On the other side, Asian machine will be like wife, shall do all the work, come out with nice production , low maintenance cost but will have low resale value etc.

Customer was so impressed that within minutes he signed a million dollar contract with him.

The moral of the story is that this Model Vs Wife dilemma crosses us almost everyday with our purchase decisions and how many times, do we take a sensible decision.

Recently, a customer asked me , if she should buy a German brand made in Germany or made in China . The price difference being double. I said no one will ask , if the production was made on machine made in Germany or Made in China, but they would still ask, what machine you have . So Brand will automatically cover her apprehensions, if any.

Drum Size For Larger Traverse of 165mm

In my post on Cone Size Error, I had spoken on the cone size to be modified to have better loading of a container , hence lower logistic cost.

The other better solution is ofcourse, increasing the traverse of the winding machine from end to end. This will ensure a larger package content and better efficiency in both winding and weaving. The logistics cost is automatically offset .

Most winding machines have a traverse of 6 inches, but the actual traverse is between 150 to 155 mm. All it needs is to have a drum of traverse 165 mm. This automatically then takes care of the cone size of 170 mm, leaving 2.5 mm on both ends.

The best results of this will be seen in an assembly winder, where the feed package goes into TFO. Say, drum winder supplies 900 gms package with 152 mm tube for 135 mm package dia pot. However, as soon as the tube size is changed to 165mm, the content automatically goes upto 1kg. which is 11% increase.

The flyer on the TFO can be adjusted to take up the tube of 165 mm. Similarly for large pot the content would be much larger.

Sometime, it is only these little common sense inputs that can make a huge change in your product offerings and efficiency of the system.

Textile Finish !

No matter, how expensive clothing you buy, the grace and charm of it is lost within the first 5 washes.

Somehow, the fabric finishes were never strong enough to sustain regular laundary. If a good fabric appeal was to be defined by

Texture
Handle
Feel
Drape
Reflectance
Novelty
Luxury
Hairiness

Then most fabrics would fail after the first few washes.

Two main reasons.
First, the quality of water and detergents, both are questionable. Levers and Proctor and Gamble , both could never make a detergent, which could retain the original qualities of the fabric finish. Inevitably , all your white shirt, become yellow over time. Partly on account of hardness of the water, partly on account of poor detergent quality.

However, the other flaw has been the finish quality of the fabric. After dyeing, the crease , handle and other finishes are imparted at the stage of Stenter. Most of the time, the chemicals at the application temperature just vaporize and only leave behind a small coating on the surface of the fabric. This coating gets washed away and hence the poor resultant quality.

Unless, the yarn or fabric finishes are applied at the stage of dyeing, the result will always be questionable. In case of dyeing, the dye diffusion in cotton takes place right till the secondary walls of the cotton fibre. It is only this time that the finishes can also move to the inner walls and retain their effect. Also, the grilling 8 hours dyeing cycle ensures that besides the dyes, the finish will find a suitable place on the yarn or fabric.

In case of polyester, it is still much easier. At the temperature of 130 deg, polyester is already very friendly and receptive to encase any dyes or finishes, willing to settle in its chain.

There are now many very good companies making good finishes, but the application chemistry has to be tweaked.

Yarn Hairiness

One of the biggest challenges for the Textile Industry is the Yarn Hairiness. With the increase in speeds, the productivity has gone up, but so has the yarn hairiness gone up.

Yarn Hairiness is such a mess , that on all modern looms, at high speeds the hair on the yarn is pressed first by the Reed Force and bulges out , giving a nice pilling effect . Even with the best of the fabrics, the pilling has now become a very big problem.

The yarn hair, unless singed always cause pilling and give a pathetic look.

Given the new technologies of heat and temperatures, it should have been possible to remove the hair either at the time of spinning on Ring Frames or during winding.

All it needs is a temperature source which would burn off the extra hair before the yarn winds. Singeing machines by itself is a process and is quite cumbersome. Needs fire burners, exhaust etc etc. A simple heater tube maintaing a temperature enough for the extra hair to get shaved would have been an idle solution.

Such a tube could have been fixed before the winding drum and with simple suction, the extra hair would have been removed from the system.

Another concept was to ensure that the protruding hair be pressed back into the yarn stream either with rollers or with air nozzle. In case of compact yarns, the compactness only marginally improves the yarn hairiness. It is still not an idle solution.

In case of air nozzle, the results are insignificant. The system did not take off at all.

Composites

While co polymers have been around for quite sometime. The composites have still not found a good market space.

Within the yarn spectrum, the comingled yarns exist, however, for apparel purposes the comingled yarns did not have any appeal.

For the first time, the composites are getting identified. This is the unique opportunity for the textile industry to explore all the areas of applications of such textile composites and position themselves into the Industrial Space.

The Textile composites would be like Teflon yarns with polyester yarns for the purpose of making fire proof furnishings. Carbon yarns with nylon yarns for making industrial ropes and fishing nets, glass yarns with carbon yarns for making safety belts, polypropylene with carbon yarns for making safety belts etc etc.

There are other composites like making fabric layers of one substrate and bonding it with another layer of another substrate. This will have defence applications.

Similarly with hollow yarns, it would be possible to develop filtration media.

However, the development of such composites has to be only done indigenoulsy by the company using its own R&D. Unlike for cave man textiles the composites industry will be highly technical and much advanced.

Technical Textiles is the future.