SIEMENS AG "The clothing industry is the last trillion-dollar industry that has not been automated," says Eugen Solovyov, project manager of a Siemens laboratory in San Francisco, which has been working on automating clothing production since 2018. High profits beckon: the data platform Statista estimates the value of the global clothing market at 1.52 trillion dollars.
The idea of using artificial intelligence (AI) and robots to bring back more production from overseas gained momentum during the pandemic - supply chains faltered and the risks of dependence on distant factories became more apparent. If manual production in China and Bangladesh could be bypassed, clothing production could be increasingly reintegrated into Western consumer markets. However, many clothing manufacturers are reluctant to comment on this issue because it could raise fears that textile workers in developing countries will suffer as a result. A spokesperson for Levi's confirmed that the company had been involved in the early stages of the project, but declined to comment further.
ROBOTS STILL LACK FINE MOTOR SKILLS FOR SEWING
Unlike car parts or plastic bottles, which retain their shape when processed by a robot, fabric is elastic and has an infinite variety of layers and structures. However, robots do not have the dexterity of human hands: although robots are getting better and better, researchers believe it will be years before they have fully developed their ability to process fabrics. But what if enough work steps could be carried out by machine to compensate for at least some of the cost differences between Western countries and low-cost foreign factories? This is precisely the focus of current research efforts.
The work at Siemens arose from the idea of developing software to control robots that can process all types of flexible materials, says Solovyov. The company partnered with the Advanced Robotics for Manufacturing Institute in Pittsburgh, founded in 2017 and funded by the Department of Defense, to help traditional manufacturers use the new technology. In the process, they came across a start-up company from San Francisco that is taking a promising approach to solving the fabric problem. Instead of teaching robots how to deal with limp fabrics, the start-up Sewbo stiffens the fabric with chemicals so that it can be treated like a car bumper during production. The finished garment is then washed to remove the stiffening agent.
"Pretty much every piece of denim is washed after production, so this fits into the existing production system," says inventor and company founder Jonathan Zornow. As part of the research work, the Robotics Institute in Pittsburgh funded the jeans company Levi's and the small US uniform manufacturer Bluewater Defense with 1.5 million dollars to experiment with this technology.
ALTERNATIVE APPROACHES AND FIRST PRACTICAL STEPS
Bluewater Defense boss Eric Spackey was involved in the research work with Siemens, but is skeptical about the Sewbo approach. "Adding a stiffening agent to the garment just adds another process and increases costs," he says. For jeans manufacturers who already wash garments as part of their normal operations, however, it could make sense. But there are also other efforts to automate sewing factories. Georgia-based startup Software Automation, for example, has developed a machine that can sew T-shirts by pulling the fabric over a specially equipped table.
The first step, however, is the introduction of robots in clothing factories. Sanjeev Bahl opened a small jeans factory called Saitex in downtown Los Angeles two years ago and has been studying the Sewbo machines. He is now preparing to install his first trial machine. As Bahl gives a tour of his factory, he points to the workers at the old machines and says many of those jobs are ripe for the new process. "If it works, I don't think there's any reason not to produce jeans on a large scale in the USA again."
(Report by Timothy Aeppel, written by Philipp Krach, edited by Patricia Weiß. If you have any questions, please contact our editorial team at berlin.newsroom@thomsonreuters.com (for politics and the economy) or frankfurt.newsroom@thomsonreuters.com (for companies and markets).)
