Textile economy
The global economy is facing the step into the fourth industrial revolution. Driven by the internet, real and virtual worlds are merging. The current paradigm shift under the heading of “Industry 4.0” is meant to sustainably activate the digitalization process of the industry. This seminal strategy aims to prepare the industry for the future of production. It is marked by a distinct individualization of products under conditions of a highly flexible (large series) production with shortened time to market, which efficiently using material and resources.
Intelligent monitoring and decision-making processes are supposed to make companies and value chain networks controllable and optimized in real-time in the near future. This is based on the ready availability of relevant information by networks of all machine technologies or processes that are part of the creation of value, and on the ability to derive an optimized value addition from the available data at any time. This enables the generation of real-time-optimized and self-organizing, cross-company value chain networks, which can be optimized further with regards to various criteria like cost, availability and resource usage (material, staff, energy, etc.).
In order to fully exploit the advantages of Industry 4.0 for the textile industries in the medium term, research considering the following points is conducted at the ITM:
- conduct of a thorough actual state analysis on real production processes and installed machine technologies,
- development of concepts for the compression and evaluation of work and process data,
- derivation of models for the company-specific interaction, and determination of connections and interactions of a wide variety of information,
- development of mathematical algorithms and concepts for the evaluation of product- and process-relevant information, and
- derivation of cause-effect relations, establishing clear troubleshooting guides and efficient running of existing processes.
Furthermore, concepts and studies for energy, information and material optimization are created at the ITM, as well as economic feasibility studies along the entire textile process chain.
Energy measurement and balancing of textile processes
The overriding aims of all research efforts at ITM in the area of textile economics are activities in flexibility, resource efficiency and ergonomic design, as well as integration of staff, clients, and business partners into business and added value processes.
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