Strengthen the real economy and make Qingdao famous | Textile and apparel: new value of data-driven reengineering industry

Textile and apparel: new value in data-driven reengineering industry

Qingdao’s textile and garment industry is undergoing an industrial change that extends from production and manufacturing to technical design and brand marketing

Labor and land costs continue to increase, and many cost-sensitive orders “run” to Southeast Asia; Environmental protection The “Sword of Damocles” hangs high, and the market The main body adjusts to the situation; the rise of trade protectionism and the impact of the global epidemic have led to a new round of market fluctuations… However, every ancient industry that has undergone changes does not lack the experience of evolution. At a time when digitalization is becoming the watershed between “traditional” and “emerging” industries, the textile and apparel industry is also ushering in another rebirth.

In the past two years, two types of people have gradually increased in Qingdao’s textile and garment industry: engineers and designers.

Textile and garment factories are becoming a battlefield for engineers’ “digital transformation”. There are no workers in the huge printing and dyeing workshop, replaced by various conveying pipelines and automated equipment. There are no tailors in the clothing cutting workshop, and laser scanning can be used to create products with just one click.

In the eyes of more and more designers, the advantages of smooth external circulation allow new fabrics and fashionable colors to gather here. Qingdao is a city that can inspire creative inspiration.

Qingdao’s textile and apparel industry is undergoing an industrial change that extends from production and manufacturing to technical design and brand marketing. Due to data-driven updates and iterations, the industrial chain and supply chain are becoming more robust. The “leggy” industry is deeply rooted here, and is intended to play a more active role and create new value in Qingdao’s journey of deeply integrating into the new development pattern.

“Digital revolution” in the workshop

Mechanization and automation have brought industry into the era of machine production. As a result, manual production has become “traditional” and machine production is called “emerging”. With the gradual maturity of digitalization and information technology, manufacturing workshops that only use mechanization have been labeled as “traditional”. Digital factories and smart factories that use emerging technologies have become today’s emerging industries.

Keenly capturing every trend change can be said to be one of the characteristics of the textile and apparel industry. This time is no exception. A “digital workshop revolution” is emerging in Qingdao.

If Kute Intelligent proposed the concept of large-scale personalized customization in 2003, many companies in the industry still believed that intelligent manufacturing was far away and would not quench the immediate thirst. The epidemic has brought about too many unexpected things, which has made more and more companies eager to give it a try. One of the most direct reasons is the difficulty in recruiting workers. In fact, it is not difficult for one or two years, but more difficult every year. Therefore, business operators have to think about whether they can replace people with machines to reduce the labor gap.

In the past three years, whether it is the leading enterprise or the backbone of the textile and garment industry, intelligent transformation and digital transformation have become a consensus. A number of large and medium-sized textile and garment enterprises in Qingdao, such as Jifa, Kute, Xueda and Haoer, have basically completed the intelligent transformation and upgrading of their factories, and have achieved integrated flexible manufacturing of weaving, dyeing and sewing, C2M personalized customization, and mass entrepreneurship and innovation-driven collaboration. Design and other classic cases of intelligent manufacturing that are well-known in China.

Nowadays, there may still be some people who “dare not do it” and some people who “can’t do it” in smart manufacturing in Qingdao’s textile and garment industry, but almost no one is “unwilling to do it.” A textile company owner lamented: “I never thought that engineers would become the ‘hot meat’ in textile factories. We want to renovate factories, but the business of smart equipment manufacturers is so good that we don’t have time to take orders.”

Manufacturing factories “grow” a design ecology

The digitization of the manufacturing site of textile and garment enterprises compiles printing and dyeing seam operations and consumer preferences into data, which flows on the production line. The continuous accumulation of big data forms new production factors, causing the value of each link on the “smile curve” to change accordingly, and narrowing the distance between design supply and consumer demand.

As a representative of technological innovation enterprises in Qingdao’s textile and garment industry, Jifa Group is making every effort to move upstream of the value chain. According to Chairman Yang Weidong, digital and intelligent transformation have solved the “hardware” problems that affect technological innovation. This year, Jifa Group will build an open science and technology innovation platform – Jifa Innovation Center – around the R&D and design of knitted fabrics. Yang Weidong said, “On this platform, external designers and internal technical talents can jointly participate in the research and development of fabrics, and the research and development data will be opened to the entire industry. and tools will form a new organizational culture that appreciates, enjoys, and rewards innovation.”

As a representative of Internet + platform enterprises in Qingdao’s textile and garment industry, the industrial Internet ecological development promoted by Kute Intelligence is ushering in an accelerated period of implementation. On May 17, Kute’s children’s clothing brand “Magic Factory” was officially launched. According to the plan, the company will also establish sweatshirts and other casual products.Smart clothing production line, entering the sweatshirt market. Chairman Zhang Yunlan believes that the empowerment of the C2M industrial Internet ecological platform is two-way. It not only provides quick response services to consumers’ personalized needs, but also becomes a creative realization platform for independent designers. Zhang Yunlan said: “Kute has a very mature system from research and development to ready-made clothing. At present, we have established a designer entrepreneurial platform and believe that we can realize the dreams of more and more designers in the future.”

Opening up is a huge advantage for Qingdao’s development, and it also contains the greatest potential for the development of Qingdao’s textile and garment enterprises. “Improving the company’s design capabilities through the acquisition of overseas design studios and improving the company’s research and development capabilities for cutting-edge fabrics through international cooperation are the development paths that powerful Qingdao textile and garment companies have explored in recent years.” Guo Guo, Secretary General of the Municipal Textile and Garment Industry Association Ruijiang introduced that in order to adapt to the new development pattern of “dual cycle”, technological innovation and design empowerment have become “advanced choices” for more and more large and medium-sized textile and garment enterprises.

Connecting with “New Retail”

It’s time to re-understand Qingdao’s textile and garment industry.

“Qingdao enterprises that focus on foreign trade were greatly affected by the international financial crisis in 2008. From 2010 to 2012, with the support of policy guidance and good industrial foundation, their performance bottomed out and rebounded. Since then, with the major changes in the macroeconomic situation at home and abroad, the entire industry has been in a deep adjustment and transformation cycle, and finding new solutions is a common topic for enterprises.” Guo Ruijiang said that the vertical integration strategy is the first choice of large enterprises, but Qingdao The opportunity for more than 3,000 small and medium-sized textile and garment companies to take advantage of digital transformation depends on the marketing side.

In the Qili Building in Shinan District, Qili Group, together with the Municipal Industry and Information Technology Bureau and the Municipal Textile and Garment Industry Association, jointly initiated the establishment of the Qingdao Clothing e-commerce live broadcast incubation base. Relying on Qili’s efficient supply chain capabilities to connect the needs of more association member companies, “Internet celebrity” anchors can achieve one-stop product selection, live broadcast, quick return order supply, warehousing, logistics and other services here.

In Jimo International Trade City, eight projects related to online marketing were signed together in April last year. In line with this, Jimo District plans to build a 60,000-square-meter Qingdao Internet celebrity live broadcast base. Connecting with new retail operation resources and expanding market sales channels with Internet thinking is the “Jimo plan” to help the local textile and apparel industry transform and upgrade.

In the century-old Bauhaus art district of Textile Valley in Shibei District, a “collection tribe” of more than 30 Chinese and foreign original designers, led by two “Golden Summit Award” designers Chen Wen and Wu Xuewei, has taken shape. What attracts “big-name” designers to settle here is the new retail business model that takes advantage of the integrated resources of the National Fabric Museum, rich fashion activities, and the organic integration of “offline experience and online transactions.”

The successful path in the past can no longer support future development. In the trend of the Internet of Everything and the Intelligent Connection of Everything, the company’s own strategy, business and organization need to be re-examined. In compliance with the logic of transformation and upgrading from extensional expansion to connotation development, Qingdao’s textile and apparel industry is striving to advance towards an integrated innovation ecosystem in the digital economy era.

AAA

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