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 .

Organic Pillows: Orgasmic Hug!

Last time, I wrote on cotton pillows as a superior product, but not have been exploited by the marketers.

Interestingly, since then "Organic has become Orgasmic".

Organic cotton combed sliver with its yellow cheesy look is the ideal filling into the pillow.

Whatever said, pillow is the must Hugged Product in the life time of a human being. The Hug has to be as natural and fetish as possible.

Polyester pillow hugging is like hugging petroleum jelly. Organic cotton pillow hugging is like hugging your little lively pet.

 Organic combed cotton pillows with its high moisture regain also give liveliness to the pillow .As in the air conditioned environment  the pillows will absorb all the moisture  and keep a body of the pillow.

Further, it improves not only the quality of the sleep. But also enhances the dreams network as rather then the heat from the polyester pillows, you will now get the cool out of the cotton pillows. Technically, this should keep the head light and lose. Therefore, in place of fights and arguments in dreams, now you will have love and leisure in dreams.

Dakimakura is a Japanese word for "Hug Pillows"  Used mostly by the youth as a security object.
( God alone knows, what it means, but that is what wiki says ) More of a Love Pillow with embedded pictures.

I was watching an Australian TV program last week. Wherein an ingenious marketer had put the expiry date of the pillow on it. " This pillow is due for change in Aug 2013" Wow, concept. Now the product continuously reminds you about the next purchase. ( More applicable for  Dakimakura where, the expiry date will be much shorter. Who wants to sleep with the same picture for long , when the next one is only a click away) Enjoy your pillows anyway.

Last year, much against the protest of my family, I threw away all the polyester pillows out of my house. Infact, I gave one to my little dog "Tuk Tuki" and she also refused to sit on it. Huh! I wonder, why the stuffed toys are still polyester or viscose stuffing's and not organic cotton stuffing's.

Next time, you get a bad dream. Look at your pillow again. 

Imaging Technology :End of Uster And Classimat Testing

The end of Uster, classimat testing and other other such numeral values to the evenness of the yarn is not so far.

All it would take is a Hand Phone to image out the yarn and the first visual will directly compare against the good yarn visual. The faults will now be visible faults and not a simple number.

The Imaging Technology can now see through the structure of the yarn and give a graphical display of   the evenness of the yarn.

Yarns will then be classified as Class I, Class II and Class III spinning , depending upon the visual co-ordinates of the image. The image analyzer will further classify for a given length, the axis parrellization   , the nodes and the troughs.

The Yarn Hairiness will now become the most central quality parameter, as this will show up distinctly

The new online test results will not have thin places and thick places or neps, but the Delta value of the width of yarn in Mu values, which is above and below the mean value of the yarn. The evenness will then be a percentage value of say 95% even and 5% uneven. Rated as Class I yarns.

For one time, the big machine makers should feel happy that now visually their machine performance can clearly demonstrate the improvement in yarn quality . The spinner will also feel happy that he can  clearly compete against other spinners on visual delight.

The imaging cameras will be installed right after the fault clearer. 

Of course, one can program the system to stop the machine, if consistently the set parameters get exceeded to ensure that only Class I yarns get made.

In case of yarns for dyeing, one will be able to visualize the porosity of the yarn, the depth of the color and the uniformity of the color.

The fluid imaging technology is already there and this can be exploited now to reuse the dye-bath by uploading the dyes to the desired level and adding the auxiliaries and running the same liquor again for the next batch and so on.  This can save millions of dollars to the dye house and of course huge eco saving. However, by its own self  I don't think dye house have the intelligence to understand all these new technologies, till someone offers a plug in system.

Mathematics of Dyeing

For very long, I have been working to find out mathematically, the Material to Liquor Ratio for Optimum Dyeing. Finally, I crack the code.  Sharing some insight of my New Book
 " Mathematics of Dyeing "
 And as in my one of the earliest post, where I published " Yarn Dyeing Machines, Fraud of the Century"  Herein the same gets proven mathematically

Pictorial View Of Your Favorite Dye In Package Dyeing

Where Br : Brownian Motion. F( A) : Adhesion to Yarn. F(D) : Drag From The cross flow 

F(F) : Frictional Force,  F(L) ;Hydrodyamanic Lift Force, F(y) : Drag from dye liquor

For small particles
F(L) < F(Y) and hence are retained by the surface of the yarn by Van Der Waals Adhesion Forces F(A) and are not swept away.


Study this picture very carefully. 
The Dye molecule is trying to enter the yarn and the various forces acting on the dye particle

All these forces can be mathematically calculated.
Eg

Resistance Coefficient of Boundary Layer of Yarn

Pressure Differential = Beta x Flow Rate x Viscosity of dye liquor

Where Beta is the Resistance Coefficient

Similarly all the other Forces can be calculated for the Dye Particle to find its way into the yarn capillaries

The Diffusion Coefficient of the Dye which can be calculated from


 Weisz Zollinger Model

D = Do PT ( sigma0/ sigma)

Where P is porosity
Sigma0 is the concentration in the external solution ,when equilibrium is achieved
Sigma is the initial concentration
Do is Diffusion coefficient in free water calculated as below

Do = 3.6 Sq Rt 76/M
 ( M is the mass of the dye particle)

In order to calculate the final uptake of the Dye Into Yarn

Porosity of package can be  calculated from the Packing Density of yarn

The Porosity will then defines the uptake of Dye Into the Yarn

The Intake of Dyeliquor Into Yarn can be calculated from the equation


L= a T kh

Where a is the relative surface area
T is the count of the yarn in Tex
Kh is the constant ( depending upon wetting energy ) Square Root fibre volume density x fibre fineness

The saturation point of equilibrium is calculated from the partition coefficient.

With all the above equations and one dozen more, one can now use mathematics to find out exactly, how much of water is required to exhaust the dye into the capillaries of the yarn.

The Rate of Reaction is given by
Rate = - Delta A/ Delta T
Since concentration of the dye is dropping with the reaction time, the rate of reaction is negative for the dye. But positive for the Product

Rate of Dyeing : k x Df x Ds

where k is the coefficient of dyeing
Df : Adsorption Isotherm of dye uptake in yarn
Ds : Adsorption Isotherm of dye left in liquor

Essentially, one can calculate exactly the amount of water required for the dyeing of the yarn and exactly the amount of dye, which will diffuse into the yarn core and not leave any trace of effluent .

Which means, one can dye yarn package or for that matter any textiles in a bio reactor like rice cooker, with the specified water and Ph and Temperature and Dyestuff. And the water with dye will be adsorbed into the yarn without a trace of effluent .


Dyeing is therefore Diffusion in an Asymptotic Process and depends upon Time Elapsed and Not on Quantity Of Liquor

This Material to Liquor Ratio theory is applicable only when the partition coefficient of dyestuff is poor and undissolved dyes cannot migrate into the package.

Therefore, Material to Liquor Ratio is not a function of Machine. But is a function of Partition Coefficient of Dyes.

Further, study carefully that if pump should actually bring the dye liquor to a steady state and flow should be very weak or extremely slow for the molecules to be not forced away from the vander waal forces which are trying to move the dye into the yarn.

All this bull shit of high powered pump and centrifugal pump and axial flow pump does not matter. What matters is that the liquor should reach each element of the package and be there in a steady state. Finally displacing the depleted liquor with fresh liquor and so on, if required. That is why the best results are achieved with pump speeds of only 5 liters per minute of flow.

At Mantex Technologies, I am now developing a system to actually capture the colors as they get matured in the machine and give an online Delta E value. Thereby providing an opportunity for the dyer to make corrections while dyeing itself

But of course, the best is yet to come ,when machine will be a bio reactor with dyes getting fully adsorbed.

Nano Dentures

Last week, I was  browsing for venture capitalist, who would be willing to invest into my new product line.

The way, the VC work is that though they call themselves Risk Investors, however, generally, they invest into water tight already invested biz, which is making cash profits and has only issue of funding to scale up the supplies. Then they jump and take the opportunity. Rarely, does a VC support the biz model from a drawing  board stage to Global scale ability stage.

Interestingly, despite the diligence into biz models and funding, most of the time biz fail as some of the  simplest issues are ignored.

Here is an interesting case : A German Nano venture invested into a Denture Biz as below

Where Students of Singapore University designed a special bio polymer to replace the steel wires conventionally  used on the dentures.

Well, the students certainly need to be applauded to create this unique piece . Super Invention Indeed.

However, for a nano VC, whether this makes biz sense, one has to really think "n" times.

The denture USP is the white biopolymer which replaces the steel wire and hence the color merges with the teeth. However, the simplest of the solution is to take Silk yarn, twist it and then take calcium substrates and from within the calcium block run the twisted silk yarn .

Silk is a protein yarn, hence no issues of foreign body , again calcium is the same material as that the teeth are formed, hence again no rejection issues. Plus the color merges with the teeth color.

Silk has same strength as that of steel and besides that it is highly elastic. This gives ductility to give a form as required.

The Silky Denture will cost not more then USD10 per piece and will have a global market, with no issues of cyclic sales or cash flow constraints and strong positioning in the market against steel dentures or biopolymer dentures.

But surely, no VC supports such a simple solution. But, if you show enough complexity, which is barrier to entry for others, then without looking at the simple competition, which can displace the investment, the VC justifies all its investment with supporting high tech arguments and global sales and unique positioning in the market etc etc till it finds out that an ingenious Chinese has come out with a simple solution of the same copied product.

Well the same VC, did it not even bother to reply my email , because my solutions are Intelligent , Simple, Low Cost and Scale able and does not pass VC funding Criterion.