Piacenza
Successfully producing textiles in Europe and how to keep it that way
On a global scale, the EU27 are the the world’s 2nd largest exporter of clothing (25.9%) after China with 38%. In the highest value segment of the market, 7 of the 10 major textile and clothing industry groups are from EU countries, e.g. Louis Vuitton (FR), Hermès (FR), Prada (IT), Gucci (IT), Hugo Boss (DE), Armani (IT), Benetton (IT). The textile and clothing industry in the EU27 has a turnover of 179 billion Euro, 146.000 companies, of these 90% are SMEs, and 1,8 million workers (EURTX14).
If EU SMEs can maintain their advantages, textile and clothing will remain one of the most promising EU manufacturing sectors, and even achieve a high rate of re-shoring of production back to the EU.
The close relationship between fabric designers and clothing stylists aiming for more customized and/or exclusive fabrics already requires a high level of skills of the operators involved. In the future, the adoption of virtual prototyping tools will increase this tight collaboration. It will lead towards a fully virtual clothing design, greatly increasing the speed of the design and production process. Since fabrics are a semi-finished product, improvements are mostly focused on the surface properties like soil release, antibacterial and UV protection recently developed for example by Nanomaterial adoption and plasma finishing.
To maintain their current lead, EU textile manufacturers must abandon the traditional organization model, where each company of the value chain (weaving, spinning, finishing) works on a pure supplying model. In the present, fast evolving textile and clothing market, actions to answer unpredictable demand must be taken very quickly and require a high level of diffused collaboration. This is only possible with data sharing, standardization, trust, and privacy and confidentiality preservation.
The Piacenza use case offers monitoring of production via mobile devices and the collaboration between supply chain partners during design and development of high-end fabrics for the textile markets.
