'Textile firms adopt IT & machine building Industrie 4.0'

14 Oct '16

3 min read

In the run-up to ITMA ASIA 2016, Nicolai Strauch, press officer VDMA Textile Machinery, spoke to VDMA member companies exhibiting in Shanghai in October about their efforts and achievements around the topic Industrie 4.0, the interconnection of state-of-the-art information technology and manufacturing processes, its automation and function integration.

Andreas Hannes, marketing manager, Sedo Treepoint said, “The systems we offer for textile dyeing and finishing includes many Industrie 4.0 features like RFID readers that register in the dye house or in the finishing section the contents of radio tags or robotic dispensing systems that supply the precisely constituted dye mix just in time.”

Expressing his views on Industrie 4.0, Jan Siebert, head of Rieter Business Group Machines & Systems said, “The mill management system SPIDERweb is a pioneering step for Rieter towards Industrie 4.0 for optimising the spinning mill. With the mobile app, the Mill Manager has firm control of the data of his operating facility at all times.”

Andreas Schellhammer, CEO of H. Stoll, manufacturer of flat knitting machines, said, “With our new “Production Planning System” (PPS) our customers are able to comprehensively control, plan and optimise their production. As a result, for example, they will become more responsive to the increasingly shortening collection cycles of fashion companies. PPS enables quick disposition, efficient machine utilisation and overall production optimisation.”

Talking about the Internet of Things in the nonwovens industry, Andreas Lukas, managing director, Andritz Küsters said, “One of our solutions in this context is a monitoring system that helps production managers to improve textile performance of their line by generating production reports that show all the parameters. Recipes can be reproduced quickly and operators receive the relevant production information in real time.”

Arno Gärtner, managing director, Karl Mayer said, “The control-technology-related basis, called KAMCOS 2, is a new automation platform, offering a man-machine interface with the same sort of operating functions that are used in smartphones and tablets all over the world nowadays. The operation of this new automation platform is based on a modern real-time data bus.”

Explaining adoption of Industrie 4.0 in the dyeing sector, Jürgen Brockmann, director, Thies said, “In many factories, dye is still brought to the preparation vessel in buckets by the operators – to ensure that the correct mixture is supplied for dyeing the next batch. We systematically continue to compress tasks in all production workflows as well as in the finished products. The new machinery line also takes care of all upstream and downstream process steps.”

Wilhelm Langius, division head, Neuenhauser Maschinenbau, developers of automated handling and transport systems for fibres said, “As automation became increasingly widespread in natural and chemical fibre spinning mills, it gave rise to an enormous leap in productivity.” (GK)

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