In India, about 75% of the sweaters being manufactured are basic in nature, while the rest are more complicated Intarsia and Jacquard designs requiring high-end specialised machines. While there is a section of knitters who are mixing high-end machines for intricate panels with more basic machines to produce basic panels to get better ROIs, for others this only means decrease in quality and loss of business.
For the manufacturers mixing different machines for better ROIs, the justification is simple – with a right mix of machines (high- and low-end) — the company according to them can reduce their production costs and overheads by almost 50%. Impressive no doubt, but not all agree to the logic. Industry stalwart, Mukesh Gupta, CEO, Cleantech, is very vocal in his views against the concept of mix and matching of different machines in a single product. “Knitting is defined by the two parameters of shape of the knitted loop and stitch length of the same, and no two machines even from the same company can produce two identical knitted loops. Hence, the difference in the fabrics is perceivable by the human eye, i.e. making the quality of the overall garment questionable,” he says.
Gauge of a machine defines the space between individual needles (sometimes known as ‘pitch’) and according to Gupta, machines of different make, even of same gauge, do not have the same pitch. Therefore, the shape of the “Knitted loop” cannot be identical from different machines. Further, the concept of “stitch length” or the length of yarn in a “knitted loop” cannot be easily measured on flat knitting machines; therefore it is impossible to produce identical fabrics on different machines. It is also impossible to knit identical fabric on two identical machines. Due to both the above mentioned phenomenon, the variation in the loop structure further varies the overall look of the garment, which cannot defeat the human eye. This also can arise due to different tension settings onthe machines, giving rise to ‘Barre’ effect.
However, even Gupta adds a rider…, “All these variations are more prominent in case of coarse count yarns; however there are chances of tricking the human eye in case of finer counts exceeding 40’s, similar to the type of yarn used by flat knitters in the Delhi-NCR region,” concludes Gupta.
Manglam Apparels first added three Stoll 32 colour Intarsia fully computerized machines in 2010 and soon expanded its capacity by adding 9 more Stoll Intarsia machines this year, taking its capacity to 25,000 flat knitted garments per month. – Vimal Singhla MD, Manglam Apparels
There are a few knitters who are mixing machines for optimal operations like Boutique International, headed by Ramandeep Singh that has a total of 20 computerised flat knitters, 4 from Shima Seiki and the rest from Cixing, i.e. 20% high-end computerised and the rest 80% cost-effective basic machines from Cixing. “Initially we were doing flat knits on hand flat knitting machines, but now due to shortage of labour have started shifting our production from manual to computerised knitting machines. And moreover buying the right mix of computerised machines has enabled us to reduce our knitting cost per piece by Rs. 50, which is great,” says Ramandeep.
The right choice when selecting machines is invariably dependent on the buyer profile of the company and how quality is perceived by the company… but many factors have to be taken into consideration like productivity, downtime, labour input required, service/maintenance requirements, durability and ROI. After all, the buyer does not place an order based on what machines a company has, but eventually what quality of product is delivered. It is the prerogative of the knitters to select the machines best suited to their operations.
