In the second half of 2022, in a garment factory in Hangzhou, the salary of a worker can reach 350-400 yuan/day.
This is against the background that the overall situation of the clothing industry this year is average. At this time in previous years, a skilled garment factory worker could earn 450-500 yuan/day.
In the long run, the rising labor costs in the textile and garment industry have put greater operational pressure on this industry with “people” as its core competitiveness. The main reason behind this is the reduction of industry employees. “People are in short supply.” “.
In addition to high recruitment costs, the fragmented demand from downstream consumers is transmitted to the middle and upper reaches of the industry chain, requiring companies in fabric research and development, fabric circulation, and clothing manufacturing to meet the market pace of small orders and fast turnaround, which also gives the traditional textile and apparel industry The large-scale production model has brought shock.
“I have a strong sense of crisis now. Without digital transformation, the company will definitely have no future.” Cao Yiai, general manager of clothing manufacturing company Xuanyi Youxuan, told Digital Times.
The textile and clothing industry chain consists of raw materials – spinning – weaving – printing and dyeing – fabric circulation – clothing manufacturing – clothing brand operations and retail. Going upstream in the industrial chain, like Cao Yiai, business owners such as Feng Deming, general manager of Xinhai Shengtian, a printing and dyeing factory, and Shi Chuangong, general manager of Xinshixing Textile, a yarn mill, have also realized that digital and intelligent transformation is a decisive step. The antidote for taking your business to the next level.
In general, the value of digital intelligence transformation is reflected in two aspects:
One is to improve the production efficiency of the factory, and use technology to turn the production experience of “old masters” into standardized processes, which allows more new workers to complete production activities accurately and efficiently in a short time, and improves the overall quality level of the product. ;
The second is to improve the management level of enterprises. Digital and intelligent technology can open up information in all aspects of production, which can reduce the response resistance between various links to a large extent, thereby improving the operating capabilities of enterprises.
For enterprises in the textile and apparel industry chain, the demand is urgent, but it is also difficult to make up their mind. Once an enterprise chooses digital transformation, if it is not appropriate, it may cause more losses in time and money, which makes “don’t want to The atmosphere of “transfer, dare not transfer, cannot transfer” has enveloped industry enterprises.
Industrial upgrading, enterprise transformation
In 2016, traditional e-commerce companies such as Taobao and JD.com began to explore the new model of “live streaming + e-commerce”. By 2020, the GMV of live streaming e-commerce exceeded 1 trillion yuan.
Among them, there is one consumer product category that deserves to be at the top in terms of the number of live broadcast users watching and industry turnover – that is women’s clothing. Up to now, the clothing industry represented by women’s clothing is undergoing profound industry changes with the changes on the demand side.
The rise of live streaming e-commerce and the rapid improvement of the logistics system have minimized the time difference for Chinese consumers to “what you see is what you get”. While the live broadcast e-commerce industry is running at a high speed, China is also experiencing consumption upgrades. Consumer demands are becoming increasingly personalized and diversified, which means the supply of products is diversified.
Compared with the traditional model in the past where clothing manufacturers planned product styles six months in advance and then carried out large-scale production, stocking, and sales, it has now transformed into a model in which small batches of clothing are put on the shelves first, and then additional orders are added based on market feedback. The time from designing a piece of clothing to being put on the shelves is greatly shortened. This kind of clothing production model with multiple batches, small quantities and fast delivery is called “small order and quick response” in the industry.
Clothing styles are increasing, and clothing fabrics are richer in color and material. All these changes are reflected in the production process, and they also increase the difficulty of production in factories along the industrial chain.
For traditional clothing manufacturing enterprises, it involves multiple processes such as typesetting, plate making, cutting, sewing, post-processing, and inspection. “If we still rely on traditional manual punching and manual statistics, it will not only be inefficient, but also prone to errors. This will lead to unbalanced factory production capacity, order delays and other consequences.”
At the same time, the “small order quick response” was transmitted to the upstream fabric production, printing and dyeing and other links, and also caused a series of chain reactions. Take Xinhai Shengtian, a printing and dyeing factory with more than 400 employees, as an example. In the past, fabric merchants would predict popular styles based on market orders and then stock up on goods. Tens of thousands of meters of fabric of one color were often produced. “There are no such lists now. On the contrary, there may be hundreds or thousands of colors for a product now, and the demand for fabrics of different colors also varies from hundreds to thousands of meters.”
<br /After installing the cloth-matching robot owned by Xinjiang Technology, through "AI + big data + Internet of Things" technology, the workload of finding fabrics that may have taken several days in the past can be shortened to just a few minutes.
Based on previous cooperation, and knowing that Zhijing Technology has deployed digital intelligent services for all upstream and downstream links of the industry chain, and is working hard to promote intra-industry collaboration – therefore, after Zhijing Technology launched the Yifei system this year, Cao Yiai Invested again in the digital transformation of factories.
Cao Yiai told Digital Times that Zhijing Technology has a very mature process from the early stage to factory research, making solutions based on the real needs of the factory, training factory employees, and then quickly responding to customer needs and changing products after the system is running.
Now, in addition to cooperating with Zhijing Technology’s Baibu and Yifei in the fabric sourcing and production processes, Xuanyi Youxuan can also obtain orders online through Zhijing Technology’s Tiangong platform. “We are a strategic partner of Zhijing Technology’s Tiangong Platform. Now basically 80%-90% of orders come from Tiangong Platform.” Cao Yiai told Digital Times.
Li Yaping, co-founder of Zhijing Technology, told Digital Times, “One of the major advantages of the Tiangong platform is the “cloud factory” model, which promotes efficient collaboration from orders to production. Tiangong can target the production advantages and production capacity of each cooperative factory Supply, quality standards and other characteristics, the orders on the intelligent distribution platform are connected in series, allowing factories in the industry chain to share production capacity. This not only helps partners increase orders, but also improves the efficiency of the supply chain and promotes the speed of small orders. opposite.”
Xinhai Shengtian is in a similar situation. In recognition of Zhijing Technology’s Feixuo Intelligent Spinning, Xinhai Shengtian will, on the one hand, recommend high-quality customers it cooperates with to join the Baibu platform, and on the other hand, it can also receive orders for Feisuo Intelligent Spinning’s intelligent distribution based on its own production capacity. .
Digital intelligence brings not only cost reduction, efficiency improvement and quality improvement, but also enables them to make real money.
Li Yaping, co-founder of Zhijing Technology, told Digital Times that digital intelligence in the textile and apparel industry is not separate, but interconnected under the transmission of the industrial chain. But at present, more than 90% of the companies in the industry are small, medium and micro enterprises. These companies themselves do not have the ability to self-research on digital intelligence, let alone talk about industry integration, so they rely more on the collaboration of external forces.
The blueprint for digital intelligence in the textile and apparel industry is to link each link to form a closed loop, influence each other, and link each other, so that enterprises in the industry can develop sustainably in the new era.
This is also the logic behind Zhijing Technology’s continuous improvement of its product matrix. At present, Zhijing Technology provides a series of digital intelligent services to upstream and downstream enterprises in the industry. The upstream “Full Cloth + Flying Shuttle Intelligent Spinning”, the midstream “Baibu”, and the downstream “Tiangong + Yifei”, in logistics There are “Zhijing Smart Warehouse Logistics Park” and so on, which connect various links and improve the efficiency of the supply chain.
Go to the Midwest to find better solutions
In this interview, we also discovered that another trend in the entire textile industry is industrial transfer. Many interviewed companies in the industry chain told Digital Times that due to the rising costs of production factors, they expect to migrate from the eastern coastal areas to the central and western regions in the next 1-3 years.
Feng Deming told Digital Times that there are many reasons for the migration to the inland: one is the pressure on environmental protection, which has been increasing in the developed areas along the eastern coast; the second is that energy and land costs are getting higher and higher; the third is that the cost of energy and land is getting higher and higher; It also has something to do with the labor environment. Labor costs in the west are relatively cheaper.
However, inland relocation is also full of unknowns for enterprises. Although cities in central and western regions have great advantages in terms of labor costs, land costs, and water and electricity costs, for small, medium and micro enterprises, if they move alone, they will face difficulties in terms of funds, These uncertain factors such as development are exactly the same as the original question of whether to carry out digital intelligence upgrades. Zhijing Technology provides a new idea.
Because it serves the entire industrial chain and has insight into industry trends, Zhijing Technology has deployed smart textile industrial parks in Yibin, Sichuan and other central and western regions in the past two years, making sufficient preparations to promote the collective transfer of the textile industry.
In promoting the construction of industrial parks, Zhijing Technology is based more on the advantages of its own industrial Internet platform. By cooperating with multiple parties and combining various resources, it can collectively transfer many small, medium and micro enterprises in need, thereby promoting the scale effect of the regional textile industry. Collaborate with industry to ultimately reduce production costs and improve supply chain efficiency.
Feng Deming also said, “We plan to develop in the western region in the next three years. By then, we can directly copy the digital intelligence capabilities here.”
From traditional production to intelligent manufacturing, from working alone to industrial collaboration. From the perspective of Digital Times, the development of the entire textile industry is ushering in a new stage of development, and the statement that “the textile industry is still very traditional” is gradually being abandoned.
Recently, the development of the entire textile industry is ushering in a new stage of development, and the statement that “the textile industry is still very traditional” is gradually abandoned.
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