Portugal's Smartex.ai launches Fact for textile factory management

Described as the ‘modern textile factory’, Smartex Fact offers manufacturers a comprehensive, all-in-one solution that significantly uplifts factory operations. With its ability to offer real-time visibility, enhance quality through automatic roll grading, and provide instant production notifications, stakeholders can access and manage their operations from anywhere in the world, at any given time.

Now manufacturers do not need to be on-site to monitor factory processes. With Smartex Fact, one can seamlessly grasp the factory's overnight happenings over a morning coffee. This innovation heralds a new era, pushing manufacturers to bid adieu to outdated manual management methods and wholeheartedly embrace digitalisation.

One of the pervasive challenges in the textile manufacturing sector has been grappling with inefficiencies, frequent quality concerns, and the incessant need for manual inspections. These hurdles often result in inflated costs and reduced competitive edge. Smartex Fact's debut addresses these pain points head-on by offering automated insights into machine data, roll production statistics, and overall quality.

Users can also personalise settings for quality control and even utilise a 'fast track' option for Grade A rolls (high-quality rolls that can go straight to your customer without any manual inspection). With data-driven decision-making at their fingertips, knitting manufacturers can now elevate factory operations, ensure consistent quality, boost overall efficiency, and outpace the ever-evolving competitive landscape of the textile industry.

With the automatic roll grading feature, Smartex Fact enables users to set up their own quality standards to determine the automatic grading of knitted rolls based on the severity of detected defects. With a defined grading system in place, users can ensure uniform quality standards throughout the production process, thanks to Smartex Core’s AI-driven quality control. Typically, in the case of knitted fabric rolls, only about 10 per cent undergo inspection.

Every roll will undergo automatic inspection and grading, with Grade-A rolls receiving a fast-track label that can be printed and applied to rolls with Smartex Loop, so the user always knows where to focus their attention.

With Smartex’s Digital Factory page, users gain a complete overview of their factory including the number of machines currently running and rolls produced on that day. Furthermore, Smartex’s My Machines page provides in-depth, precise data about the performance of every machine powered with Smartex within a factory, including RPM speed and operating time. Users will have the tools to comprehensively assess each machine's performance empowering them to fine-tune machine operations, boosting both quality, and productivity across their factory.

On top of the importance of speed and performance, Smartex places a high priority on quality. The My Rolls page grants clients access to a whole month of their production history. Here, users can zoom into each roll's production details to assess quality and even review where defects were detected in the digital roll map.

Users can stay in the know with real-time notifications tailored to their priorities. Whether it is machines operating at a lower RPM, excessive machine downtime, or the identification of poor-quality rolls, users will receive timely updates. As a result, they can make data-informed decisions around increasing RPM speed, inspecting lower-quality rolls, and responding to other machine-related issues.

"Our new product takes manufacturing and quality control to the next level. With Smartex Fact, users will be able to know when rolls don’t meet the requested quality or when production issues arise. And with the platform being easily accessible via desktop or any smartphone, it is basically your textile factory in your pocket," said Gilberto Loureiro, co-founder and CEO of Smartex.ai.

Fibre2Fashion News Desk (DP)