The automation and intelligent equipment on the tall and the high makes the textile industry a member of the high-tech industry, and provides a more effective solution for the industry to further attract talents and solve the bottlenecks such as recruitment difficulties. It is undeniable that intelligence has become a trend and an irreversible trend. "Made in China 2025" pointed out that smart manufacturing will become the main direction of Chinese manufacturing. It is worthy of recognition that in recent years, China's textile industry has achieved gratifying results in smart manufacturing.

 

Intelligent manufacturing is the trend of the times

With the continuous increase of labor costs, textile enterprises are increasingly demanding the automation and intelligence level of equipment. In this context, smart manufacturing is becoming a breakthrough and focus of the industry's new round of transformation and upgrading. It can be seen from ITMA ASIA+CITME 2016 that the exhibiting equipment has greatly improved in terms of automation and intelligence. For example, the sizing machines exhibited at the 2016 Textile Machinery Exhibition have applied a large number of technologies such as Internet technology, cloud technology and information processing to improve the intelligence level of equipment. In addition to exhibiting automated single machines, Japan Tsudakoma Co., Ltd. also made a three-dimensional animation simulation of the sizing and weaving process intelligent weaving workshop.

For example, the automatic wear-through equipment that everyone is concerned about, in addition to a large number of non-contact optical detection technologies, realizes the automatic pick-up of the untwisted yarn, and also adapts to the requirements of complex technology such as color yarn management and warp-piercing; At the same time, the human-machine interface and management software have been improved, which provides a good equipment foundation for the modern production and management of the weaving workshop.

 

Intelligentization is changing traditional production

In fact, smart technology is transforming the traditional textile industry, and some companies have begun to try to intelligentize part of the manufacturing process. Although some enterprises have not replaced large-scale or newly-automated complete sets of equipment, the upgrade of equipment through key links has also significantly improved product quality and production efficiency.

 

The advancement and thinking of intelligent manufacturing

To a certain extent, the intelligentization of equipment has solved the problem of insufficient labor and improved the competitiveness of China's textile industry. However, in the process of developing intelligence, there are still certain problems, which deserve to be considered and discussed by the industry. On the one hand, many entrepreneurs believe that the current simple machine substitution in the textile industry is not intelligent manufacturing. In the true sense, intelligent manufacturing replaces human brain decisions with accurate calculation and judgment of big data, while investment like machine substitution is for textiles. Whether the industry is worthwhile is worth discussing. A series of costs such as machine investment, maintenance and upgrade are not low. Whether textile enterprises can digest such expensive investment is also a problem that cannot be ignored. On the other hand, as a labor-intensive industry, intelligence can stimulate local investment and promote industrial upgrading. On the other hand, it means that a large number of workers may lose their jobs. How to solve the contradiction between the two is worth further exploration.

For intelligentization, the current government-level guidance direction includes the following four points: establishing demonstration zones; improving intelligent manufacturing standards; promoting smart manufacturing supplier alliances; and developing Internet+, big data and artificial intelligence. At present, the intelligentization of the textile industry has achieved some gratifying results. At the level of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, between 2015 and 2017, a total of 12 projects were included in the “Smart Manufacturing Pilot Demonstration Project”; from 2016 to 2017, a total of 6 projects were included. Intelligent Manufacturing Integrated Standardization Project; 10 projects were included in the Smart Manufacturing New Model Application Project.