New Product development in textiles and apparel industry1 Director General, Northern India Textile Research Association, Ghaziabad, U.P., India |
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Received 05 September 2021 Accepted 20 September 2021 Published 20 October 2021 Corresponding Author Arindam
Basu, arindambasu_dr@yahoo.co.in DOI 10.29121/IJOEST.v5.i5.2021.227 Funding:
This
research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public,
commercial, or not-for-profit sectors. Copyright:
© 2021
The Author(s). This is an open access article distributed under the terms of
the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution,
and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are
credited. |
ABSTRACT |
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Product
development is key to survival of any industry with change of time. This
article discusses about the process of new product development in textile and
apparel industry. Major points considered during this process are demand of
customers, availability of new raw materials, sustainability, economic
viability and responsibility towards nature. Engineering of products is a
complicated issue here due to natural variability of textile materials,
limitations of fibres available and use of old conventional machineries in
many cases. |
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Keywords: Textile and Apparel Industry, Spinning, Weaving, Knitting, Nonwoven,
Artificial Neural Network 1. INTRODUTION It is a common practice
for any industry to develop new products continuously for its improvement in
market share and sometimes due to question of survival. Textiles and apparel
(T&A) industry is no different from them hence they need to develop new
products involving innovation. The complication about T&A industry is the
components are produced largely in different companies. For example yarns are
the products of spinning industry, fabrics are the products of weaving, knitting
or non-woven factories, fabrics are dyed, finished in another factory and
garments/ finished products are made in different factories. There are a
limited number of companies where all these processes are performed under one
shed or under the control of same management. This makes innovation more
difficult as one cannot innovate only one part of the products without
knowing the properties required/ achieved in the final products which go to
the customers. 2. Market research Many find market research a tool for guidance for new product
development. In traditional market research, one asks the customers about
their wishes and needs and what they think about a specific product. With
these kinds of direct questions, traditional market research methods such as
customer surveys often yield disappointing results when it comes to the
search for innovation. One often hears a quote attributed to Henry Ford: “”If
I had asked |
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people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.”
Christinsen
Christensen (1997) called changes that seep into
market as continual product and process renewal as ‘incremental change’, such
as the introduction of new fibres, yarns and fabrics using spandex to lycra or
elastane. Disruptive technology creates a new value proposition in the
consumer’s mind that overturn the perceived value of existing products. One
such example is the introduction of man-made fibre in the last century. It led
to a completely new generation of fibres and applications as well as entirely
new set of textile companies in the market. The concept of disruptive
innovation has changed the basic concepts of strategy Frumkin et al. (2012). Strategy is traditionally rooted
in supply and demand conditions, and in concepts such as market share and
competitiveness against existing rivals in market place. This is not applicable
when disruptive innovation makes both an existing company and its competitors
irrelevant. Traditional concepts need to be replaced by a concept such as “Blue
ocean” strategy Kim and Mauborgne (2005). This suggests that companies can
create a space that did not previously exist, a blue ocean, in contrast to more
traditional companies operating in an established market, the red ocean. The
red ocean is everything that currently is in existence.
3. Product development
In
conventional industry like textiles and apparel industry the product
development can be broadly classified into four categories:
·
The
first and most common is to develop fabrics or apparels based on a sample
supplied by the customer;
·
The
products designed by fashion designers or professionals using their own
imagination and predicted market trend;
·
Replacement
products using newly developed raw materials which give better performance or
lower the cost of production
·
The
fourth one is development of products using latest raw materials, technology
and knowledge, which market has not seen earlier.
It is
very common that customer provides a sample, which he/ she might have collected
from market, or from one more supplier, to the manufacturer. Sometime marketing
team of a company collects some products from market, which he feels has got
good demand. Once it is supplied to the factory the R&D team analyses
various physical and chemical properties such as ends per inch or wales/courses
per inch, yarn count, blend components and percentage, yarn twist, tensile
properties, shade etc. Based on those values yarns and fabrics are being
produced, dyed or printed, finished and again compared with the original one.
The cost is calculated and finally a decision is taken regarding supplying of
the desired product to the customer and pricing of the same. In the case of
technical textiles and performance textiles the performance properties are also
assessed before reproducing the desired product. For example Company X wants to
develop on fire retardant textile product which has got demand from an agency.
It will procure samples of similar product either from market or the customer.
It will test fire retardant properties, tensile properties, heat conduction and
fuming properties before going for the conventional required fabric and yarn
quality parameters. Then it will be ascertained whether the FR properties has
been inducted by chemical finishes or using inherent FR fibres during spinning
of yarn. In case of chemical finishes the FR properties after a number of
washes will be assessed to see its durability. Then the layers of fabrics will
be separated if the final product is made of multiple layers, which is very popular,
will be analysed separately for reproduction. In this type of product
development innovation has not big role.
The
second group of product development needs inventions. The inventions can be
subdivided into low level inventions, with low risk or high level inventions,
with high risk. With both options the commitment to develop the innovation
comes down to market knowledge, technical experience and gut feeling Starbuch (2012). As a part of innovation process,
protection of intellectual property should be considered. A good and proven
route is to use a lab book at commencement of invention, recording the idea,
time and place with any witnesses present, and then following the patent protection
process.
Generally
for selecting a solution following points are considered:
·
Feasibility –
to check whether the idea is feasible
·
Fit (Strategic and cultural) – the idea must fit the vision, strategy and
culture of the company.
·
Desirability –
the idea must have a customer benefit
·
Business viability – an idea with business viability is one where the income is higher than
the expenses.
·
Scalability
·
Sustainability – the idea must be successful in long run, it must have a long lasting
economic, social and ecological benefit
·
Adaptability –
in a dynamic changing environment, one’s idea must be adaptable.
A key
principle in the product development is empathy i.e. putting oneself in the
position of the customer or user so that one can explore the person’s feelings,
emotions, thoughts, intentions and actions. With empathy one not only
establishes distance to oneself but also build up proximity to the potential
customers. Quickly one should learn from mistakes and establish a culture of
experimentation in the company. Teflon was discovered because a chemist experimented
with refrigerants and stored them for too long Muller-Roterberg (2021). Customers will view a new
potentially innovative offering in the context of the available products and
determine if the given counter has under-satisfied or unsatisfied needs that
are better fulfilled by the new product. Each consumer will evaluate new
offerings in terms of whether or not it outperforms the currently available
products and is consistent with the value proposition expected from the given
brand Bowonder et al. (2010). If the answer is yes the new
offerings will have greater perceived value to the customer. The fire fighter’s
suit used to be made from fire retardant fabrics earlier but understanding the
problems faced by the fire fighters during operation such as heat, sweat the
new products have been developed using tri-layer material. The top layer or
outside layer is made of flame retardant fabric which will protect the fire
fighters from catching fire, the middle layer is made of heat resistant fibres
which will not allow heat from fire to go inside and the bottom layer is made
of moisture absorbent fibres which will absorb the sweat which in actual life
increases due to heat and excitement. Some companies have moved one step ahead.
According to them why fire fighter’s suit should be boring and only consider
about functionality. They introduced fashion element without compromising the
ergonomics aspect. Innovation in textiles and product development has resulted
in significant growth in the ‘shapewear’ segment of the apparel market.
Shapewear products utilise textiles that contain a percentage of elastane or
latex for compression. Shapewear builds on the historic costume of waist
clinchers and bustlers.
Given
the increased market demand for environmental consideration, using green
technologies, reducing carbon footprints and employing sustainable practices
the textile industries continues to advance technologies toward the goal. Use
of recycled polyester, recycled cotton yarn, organic cotton as components in
the existing products are popular now.
In the
case of fashion designing the designers study the choice of stars, if they are
making the garment for a specific star. Also they study the trend and gather
knowledge about the properties of fabrics made of different materials so that
they can choose the material depending on his/her requirement. It is known that
the environment issue has taken a front seat now considering the damage already
done to the nature by human being. The fashion designers consider them also
while designing their products. The main value addition factor is their
creativity and artistic outlook which depends on their guts. One need not to
explain how much value is added in their products as compared to conventional
products.
4. Engineering of textile fabrics
Developing
a textile product as per the required properties is a complicated issue.
Chemical finish and fabric properties play most important role in deciding the
final product quality. Again the fabric quality is affected by the yarn quality
and yarn quality in turn depends on the fibre quality and process parameters.
Hence engineering fabric as per the required quality needs to consider all the
properties and process parameters of raw materials i.e. yarn and fibre. With
progress in science, new fibres, technology and finishing techniques
traditional design knowledge has become inadequate to fulfil the need of the
consumers. A methodical approach to designing has become necessary Chattopadhyay (2008). A large number of researchers
worked on finding the scientific methods for engineering of fabrics and yarns Basu et al. (2002), Behera (2011), Basu (2011), Das and Ghosh
(2015), Chattopadhyay et al. (2004).
Basu et al. (2002) engineered fabric properties using
artificial neural network. The ANN allowed them to predict the fibre properties
and spinning process parameters while using air-jet spinning process. With
globalization there is increased need to reduce product lead times. Activities
must be performed in parallel to ensure sufficient attention is paid to market
needs and manufacturing technologies during the design process for successful
product development Behera (2011). Designing of textile products is
still based on traditional techniques, experience and intuition. Compared to
modelling from first principle and other techniques, computational methods can
be a powerful tool to model the nonlinearities and complexities involved in
prediction of fabric properties. Others Basu (2011), Das and Ghosh
(2015), Chattopadhyay et al. (2004) have utilised ANN and other latest mathematical
tools to engineer yarn qualities or predict the fibre properties and spinning
parameters required. It is very clear that development of these models needed
knowledge on the textile processes and fibre properties. A large volume of
database has to be created to improve the accuracy of the models. The models
involve Artificial Neural Network, Fuzzy Logic and/or hybrid modelling. For
development of technical textiles where performance is the main criteria
scientific method need to be followed. For achieving the desired properties one
has to decide the raw materials, technology of production etc. For certain
products nonwoven fabrics give better result considering the required
properties such as filters, absorbing materials etc. And in some other cases
where high strength is required woven or warp knitted fabrics are preferred.
Kothari et al used artificial network modelling for prediction of thermal
transmission properties of woven fabrics Kothari and Bhattacharjee (2011). It is claimed that the feed
forward back propagation ANN can predict the thermal insulation of the fabrics
based on fabric construction parameters like weave, yarn count, thread density,
weight and thickness as input. The network can be used to predict the thermal
insulation of woven textile fabrics based on these parameters before they are
manufactured.
The
success factors for creating new products are the following:
·
Simplifying
products and processes
·
Starting
where others left off
·
This
quote is from Thomas Edison: “Most of my ideas belonged to other people who
never bothered to develop them”. Innovations are not created in vacuum; they
are based on experience, insights, knowledge and the approaches of the other
people.
·
Observing
everything and everyone in every possible place
·
Experimenting
with ideas
·
Networking
·
Overcoming
obstacles to creativity
One
should be able to think keeping most of the obstacles away from his/her mind.
The whole thinking of others and set up will be changed if a successful idea
brings a good product. Many times people start thinking about product development
keeping the existing set up in mind, which is non starter.
5. Replacement of non textile products
with textile products
While broadening the use of textile materials the technologists have developed various products to replace some of the non textile products. Here also the conditions remain same that is the new product should match with the replaced product as far as the properties are concerned or may be better or they should be cheaper with similar properties. Also there may be social reasons which force people to change the habits. Due to awareness and constant appeal by the animal lovers the use of fur has reduced drastically and those are replaced by fur produced from textile fibres. Similarly in many places use of leather has been replaced by synthetic textile products One more example is use of Astroturf in grounds, replacing natural grass. Many of the sign posts presently are made of warp knitted fabric, which is much lighter than metal, the quality of printing is much better and don’t rust in rain. The bullet proof vests/ jackets are much lighter due to use of Kevlar or other para-aramid fabrics in it without affecting the performance. In building construction technical textiles have penetrated deeply because of its various advantages such as light weight, high strength and resilience etc. They have resistance to chemicals, sunlight and pollutants. Designers have become successful in designing technical textiles which have replaced other materials such as steel, wood etc such as use of awnings in airport and stadium, blades of wind power turbines etc. So designing these products need the knowledge on the fibres characteristics, technologies available and main purpose of the structures which these materials need to perform. These are the products where textiles were not used earlier.
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