The global apparel market outlook looks positive and promising and the Indian apparel manufacturing industry, leaving COVID-19 woes behind, has responded well to become early beneficiary in the new business landscape. Some factories are on an expansion spree as they are witnessing significant increase in orders or in enquiries, and some factories are going lean and agile to restructure themselves so that they become more efficient and profitable. In either case, factories are opting for relevant technologies across manufacturing supply chain, particularly on sewing floor, and the fact is not hidden from leading sewing technology brands.
China’s Jack Stock is one of the frontrunner that has sensed the reviving Indian apparel manufacturing industry in its early stage post-COVID and has planned to support the factories with its pin-pointed strategies and well-adopted technologies. The leading apparel manufacturing technology group recently organised a webinar for India which is its second largest market after China and explored the possibilities of collaborating with its existing clients to deploy its newest technologies. The webinar was attended by over 170 people that include Jack’s existing clients, agents and some association members.
Cathy, General Manager (International Trade department), Jack Stock; Leo, Director (India), Jack Stock addressed the attendees, while Rajeev Bansal, Vice President, Indian Industries Association; who is also General Secretary of NAEC; MD, Celestial Knits & Fabs Pvt. Ltd; and Board Member of Associations like FIEO, AEPC and NMA; and Sanjay Janghala, Business Head, Maral Overseas joined as Jack’s clients. Apparel Resources was the exclusive media partner for this webinar.
Jack brings new technologies to the Indian market…
Collaborations and acquisitions are one of the much adapted strategies for Jack to capture larger chunk in the market share. Over the years, it has acquired renowned companies such as Germany’s Bullmer, Italy’s shirt automation specialist MAICA and Italy’s jean automation specialist Vibemac… Only recently Jack has added cloth inspection technology and hanger systems as well in its portfolio to offer a complete manufacturing solutions to factories. And rightly so as its share in sewing machinery market of India stands at 22.73 per cent in H1 ’21, as revealed by the company.
During the webinar, Eric, Regional Sales Manager (India), Jack Stock disclosed the collaboration with LINTSENSE to open up new areas of intelligent cloth inspection. Over the years, the cloth inspection machine has seen advancements and has become a special equipment for the inspection of fabrics before production of the garment takes place.
However, Jack’s cloth inspection machine is claimed to be much advanced one as, after accumulating data, it forms the self-learning ability – that’s called Machine Learning (ML), that helps factories automatically inspect and classify the fabric, count the defects of the inspected fabric before storing the entire detailing for future access. It integrates a variety of image processing technologies and the line scan uses an industrial camera to ensure the stability and anti-interference of imaging and detection.
“The ability to inspect cloth is further improved, and provide cloud data service to customers. This machine focuses on advancing this cloth inspection process to help apparel industry save enormous cost,” shared Eric.
Apart from cloth inspection machine, Jack has also informed the attendees of the webinar about the Jack IoT’s readiness to make factories ‘smarter’ and more ‘digital’. Launched back in January 2020, this IoT took time to accelerate in the Indian market due to partial halt caused by COVID-19. However, all this time, Jack’s engineering team worked to make it more advanced and workable. A garment factory has 4 main zones – fabric storage and cutting; production; finishing; and dispatch. And, there are a lot of processes carried in each of these zones which involve enormous data that needs to be managed and controlled. “This helps track unclear order progress, obtain quality in process, increase production and operator efficiency, all in real-time,” commented Eric.
Jack IoT Software application comes in two forms – Jack MES and Jack Mobile App.
It uses a gateway to transfer data from IoT sewing machine to cloud and using the same gateway the partner factories can transfer data from IoT sewing machine to their local servers. By default, the data is transferred to cloud but, if customer requests, Jack can assist them in transferring their data to local server using a MQTT protocol/edge system which it has developed in-house. This MQTT edge system merges the original OneNET IoT mode partly and reduces the time of module development.
According to Eric, there are two kinds of management data that Jack IoT takes care of – (1) Production Management data such as factory’s utilisation rate, factory’s line efficiency rate, trimming times etc.; and (2) Equipment Management data such as equipment status (on/off/errors), maintenance status, quick repairing report, oil changer reminder etc. Eric also revealed that equipment parameters can be adjusted remotely as well using Jack IoT!
“One of the leading downjacket exporters in the world, Jiangsu Bosideng Garments Co., Ltd.’ two units have deployed our IoT in 1,000 sewing machines out of total 2,000 machines in 24 sewing lines and has seen tremendous changes in the production excellence,” informed Eric.
Another technology that Jack has brought for the Indian market right after launching it in China is ‘Hanger System’ that Jack has recently added to its basket. What’s interesting is the integration of this hanger system (along with the Bullmer cutters) with the IoT because of which the real-time monitoring of the entire shopfloor processes has become easier for the factories.
Jack is completing its product lines, ranging from fabric inspection to fabric spreading, cutting, sewing, ironing, packaging and storage. “Combined with management software, like MES, IoT software, warehousing systems, Jack is determined to provide a complete solution for its clients,” said Eric.
India shows a lot of promise to Jack as a group…
During H1 ’21, Jack’s turnover valued around US $ 500 million, noting a year-on-year increase of 114 per cent, and remained far ahead of its Japanese counterparts.
The net profit of Jack valued US $ 40 million across product portfolio (sewing machines, cutting machines, hanger system, sewing equipment, etc.), which is 206.87 per cent higher than the profit recorded in H1 ’20. China constitutes about 60 per cent market share of Jack’s revenues and India comes at second spot with US $ 30 million worth of turnover and over 22 per cent of the country’s market share. “We are seeing expansion in the Indian market and the number of over local staff has increased more than 40 till H1 ’21 who are working in 5 offices across India,” shared Eric.
Markedly, Jack has been one of first technology companies that helped its Indian agents/dealers fight the second wave of COVID-19 in April-June ’21 period. The Group says many of its agents, distributors and employees residing in the country got infected, and it’s the responsibility of Jack to take care of its members. As outbreak became serious, Jack team decided to help the Indian agent’s teams to take immediate measures and assisted them with hundreds of oxygen concentrators, blood oxygen meters and around 1,000 boxes of anti-epidemic drugs urgently that have been delivered to India via international express delivery.
Following the shipment of required material to India, Ruan Jixiang, Founder of Jack Stock, also released letter of condolences to the Indian citizens appreciating the help offered by various countries and the vaccination drive of the Indian Government.
Webinar ends with a lot of positivity…
Jack showed a list of its top clients in India both in sewing machine segment as well as in spreader/cutter segment that includes factories such as Shivank Udyog, Opera Global, Pinnacle Clothing, Modelama, Sahu Exports and Radiant among others that have installed over 1,000 sewing machines all from Jack. After a demonstration of its cutting edge technologies and clients’ details, Leo, Director of the India market of Jack, stepped up and commented, “I have witnessed the successful development of Jack in ever-flourishing India garment manufacturing industry. The factories here are gradually opting for the technology and aren’t reluctant to go for investment in high-end automation anymore. We vow to make this industry more productive with our solutions.”
