Investigation on Fujian: Chinese Textile Industry that Cannot be Underestimated
May 15, 2018 ｜ by Flora
On March 5th, Sun Ruizhe, President of China National Textile and Apparel Council, Cao Tingrui, Director of Textile Department, Consumer Products Industry Division, Ministry of Industry and Information Technology of the People’s Republic of China, etc. went to Changle, Shishi, and Xiamen in Fujian Province to investigate some enterprises related to such industries as chemical fiber, cotton spinning, filament weaving, and dyeing and printing. On the one hand, they intended to understand the realities of industrial development, and on the other hand, they hoped to have a better understanding of the difficulties and voices of enterprises.
Changle: Statistical data makes the performance of textile output value greatly diminished
Changle, Fujian was selected as the first stop of investigation.
The investigating group found that the underestimation of output value of China’s textile industry here is particularly prominent.
It is well known that in the composition of China’s textile industry, small and medium-sized enterprises account for more than 90%, but the submitted statistical data are only the data of above-designated enterprises.
In Changle’s research, such a message is also found that in Songxia Town, Changle District, there are a total of 225 (including 30 enterprises above designated size) textile enterprises with the gross output value of 7 billion yuan (including more than a billion in printing and dyeing), accounting for 32 % of the town’s output value, but since it only requires to submit the statistical data of output value of above-designated enterprises, the output value of Songxia Town is only less than 1 billion yuan. This situation has led to a serious underestimation of the output value of China's textile industry. This is just a reflection of the situation in one town, then the data of provinces and cities and even the whole country may need to receive more attention.
According to the investigation, the industrial development of Changle, Fujian has two major characteristics:
First of all, automation and digitization deeply integrates the industry. In the production workshop of Fujian Jingfeng Technology Co., Ltd., all sorts of tracks are interwoven in the entire production workshop, where there are no piles of goods and materials or busy workers, but everything is in good order.
According to the reporters, Jingfeng is the first chemical fiber enterprise in the country to realize a full set of automation from batch charging and ex-warehousing, and its automation production workshops with the investment of more than 200 million free the enterprise from the industry difficulties of recruitment, human cost and other industries, and also make its management more standardized. Meanwhile, as there is no interference of human factors, the quality of products is more stable. The leading application of this kind of fully automatic equipment will give a powerful impetus to the automatic production and intelligent process of the industry.
Secondly, Changle, Fujian makes great efforts in the subdivision area. The reporters have learned in the investigation that the outputs of polyamide in Changle’s Hengshen and Jingfeng rank first and second respectively in the country with more than 30% of the country’s market shares. However, Hengshen, which could have relied on scale to score a success, is not burdened with scale but continues to look for segment markets. For example, the profits of Hengshen’s spandex products in 2017 have accounted for about 3/4 of the company’s total profit. At the same time, there are also the fields of dope dyeing and warp knitting, pan heads that the company will focus on in the next step.
From this, we can see that China’s chemical fiber industry has entered a rational stage of development, enterprises no longer rely on scale to win victory, but rely on the development of new markets to achieve profit growth. Particularly, entrepreneurial thinking begins to change, many enterprises can get rid of the shackles of family enterprises and hire professional managers to make all kinds of professionals gather in enterprises and industries.
Dyeing and printing is not merely an important link of the textile industry, but an indispensable supporting industry for industrial development, but in recent years, the continuous upgrading of environmental pressure has also brought numerous obstructions to Changle dyeing and printing enterprises. In this regard, Sun Ruizhe pointed out that, “dyeing and printing is not only one of the core links in the textile industry, but a key field that can reflect role of the textile industry in improving social image. At present, socialism with Chinese characteristics enters a new historical position, and the textile industry also puts forward its own new positioning: technology, fashion and green, if there is no further breakthrough in the printing and dyeing industry, technology, fashion and green will be obviously lack of powerful support.”
Shishi: Initiating “Textile and Clothing Court”
In the government work report during this year’s “two sessions”, as the “construction drawing” for annual economic and social development, “reform” is a high-frequency key word. And in the process of investigation on Shishi, we have also witnessed the reform results of many textile industries.
“Textile and Clothing Court” is the name of an agency we have heard for the first time in the investigation on Shishi textile and clothing industry, which is also the new achievement obtained by Shishi in the reform process.
It is learned that this is the first “Textile and Clothing Court” initiated in the country, the government has invited the court to the professional market to mediate industrial disputes, and what is even more surprising is that in the court with only a few square meters, cases can be filed on the same day, and its efficiency can be self-evident.
In fact, there are public service platforms everywhere in Shishi Clothing City and International Textile City, including China Textile Information Center Shishi Branch, China National Textile and Apparel Council Testing Center, Shishi Textile and Clothing Industry Alliance, Shishi CTAES Clothing and Accessories Industry Research Institute and China Fabric Sample Warehouse, and it can be seen that the government and industry organizations are working together to write a new chapter.
In recent years, Shishi textile and clothing industry has suffered a tremendous shock, and the speed of industrial development has slowed down to some extent, but through hard exploration, pioneering and innovation, the industry has gradually stepped out of the deep valley of development and presented a series of good changes, and its economic aggregate has continued to expand. In 2017, the output value of the textile and clothing industry above designated size reached 52.87 billion yuan, an increase of 8.5% and accounting for 49.3% of the total industrial output value above designated size; industrial transformation and upgrading continued to accelerate, and new development trends were highlighted. Shishi textile and clothing industry has achieved fairly good development in terms of rapid response, fashion-orientation, private customization, E-commerce trend, machine exchange labour and expansion of overseas markets.
During the investigation in Shishi, the investigating team also made new discoveries:
First of all, textile enterprises gradually change from processing enterprises to distribution enterprises. “Only one style of pants has millions of orders”, the merchants of Shishi YOUNG ENTREPRENEURS VILLAGE introduced to the investigating group. Here, it is precisely the main battlefield of breeding E-commerce. According to the person in charge of the market, Shishi YOUNG ENTREPRENEURS VILLAGE has brought together more than 500 men’s brands, “the top 74 Taobao men’s wears are from Shishi.” The transformation from processing enterprises to distribution ones has made many enterprises taste the sweetness. JJLKIDS was originally a processing enterprise of incoming materials, but now, the enterprise has not only become a brand experience merchant with 1200 stores, but realized zero inventory through joint construction and sharing with franchisees; while Lianbang Sanhe is constantly getting rid of the stale and bring forth the fresh, devotes great strength and large sums of money to develop healthy materials represented by “Tai Chi Stone functional fabrics”, insists on taking the route of high-end market and achieves a series of successes.
In the next place, enterprises pay attention to lean management and micro innovation. Shishi Gangyi Dyeing and Finishing Weaving Co., Ltd., through the water, electricity and steam online monitoring and collecting machine networking system, makes it impossible for front-line staff and foremen to complete the monitoring of energy consumption of producing machines and non-producing machines via the readings of flowmeters and integrating instruments while management personnel and policy makers can monitor the energy consumption of all machines and conduct analysis through the ERP system.
According to the relevant person in charge of Ganyi, the company launched ERP in 2016. By comparing the data before and after the launch, it is found that energy consumption of water, electricity and steam has undergone an obvious change: in 2015 before launch, 314.96 tons of water were consumed in one myriametre, while in 2017, the consumption of myriametre water was only 111.82 tons, 64.5% lower than that in 2015; the consumption of myriametre water was also decreased from the previous 2538.87 degrees to 2032.34 degrees, down by 20%; the consumption of myriametre water of steam was reduced from the previous 50.16 tons to 37.76 tons, a decline of 24.7%.
Shishi Juxiang Dyeing and Finishing Co., Ltd. has achieved great improvement in enterprise efficiency through “micro-innovation” in management as well as lean management. For instance, the enterprise reduces the consumption of dyes and water resources by reforming low bath ratio dyeing machines and tank bodies. The person in charge of the enterprise said that through a variety of “micro-innovation” technical transformations, the enterprise can realize 80% of the output in the past only with the operating rate of 50%.
The reporters have learned that by means of independent research and development, sharing cooperation and the like, the enterprise has received a total of 45 utility patent licensing and 1 invention patent, and all of its patents have been applied to product production. Over the past three years, the company has cumulatively developed more than 40 new products, new technologies and new processes.
In addition, Yonthin CNC Technology Co., Ltd. has adopted technical transformation to improve the company’s computer embroidery machines, which has not merely added the function of making vamps by the equipment, but enabled the vamps to be more stereoscopic, posing a challenge to flat knitting machines and circular knitting machines.
In the future, in view of the current problems and bottlenecks in the development of Shishi textile and clothing industry, Shishi will also focus on the key links of “dyeing and finishing enhancement, fabric research and development, garment design”, break through the bottlenecks of low-end processing and manufacturing, create the coordinated development mode of “small chain” and “small cluster” and emphatically improve the fashion taste, brand quality and quick reaction capability of the textile and clothing industry.
After investigating Shishi, Sun Ruizhe commented that, in the face of the new situation of textile industry development in recent years, the textile industry in South Fujian has quietly set off an industrial revolution characterized by innovation, exploring a road of structural adjustment and industrial upgrading of the textile industry.
In Sun Zherui’s view, the textile industry, as the traditional manufacturing industry, is being re-positioned, enterprises have also significantly increased investment in technical transformation, the high-end textile industry chain keeps growing, and gradually becomes the fashion industry that promotes cultural creativity and leads lifestyles. He said that in the future, Shishi textile industry will also advance towards the “two highs and one low”, that is, high output, high quality and low cost, so as to achieve high-quality industrial development.
Xiamen: Fashion sample of city-integration
Intelligent manufacturing, gets a vivid interpretation in Xiamen.
The investigating group successively came to Xiamen Wingtas Group Co., Ltd. and Longshan Industrial Park for investigation and survey, and paid a field visit to Longshan Cultural and Creative Industrial Park Headquarters, Ji Wenbo’s Studio, Yang Zi’s Studio, etc., where they deeply realized the intelligent manufacturing of Xiamen textile and clothing industry.
Xiamen Wingtas Group Co., Ltd. is the company subordinate to Woke Group founded by Wu Zhiwu, President of Xiamen Textile and Clothing Industry Chamber of Commerce, and the investigating group visited the company’s intelligent manufacturing demonstration base.
Here, the reporters saw that Wingtas has successfully introduced the world’s most advanced equipment into its technology development department and production workshop, four intelligent production lines in its production workshop have realized production automation, automatic cutting promotes the productivity to be doubled, and the input of finishing automatic and intelligent equipment has realized the production and management of the enterprise to be intelligent and information-based, provides the most efficient, powerful real-time production data information for production planning and execution of the enterprise, which greatly improves the efficiency of production management, enhances the production capacity of the company and realizes the expected goals for group development.
On the first floor of Longshan Cultural and Creative Industrial Design Center, an A-3 paper-sized stereo box keeps making buzzing sounds. This is a maker center with 3D printing as the core - “3D Dreamy Town”, and these machines are closely linked with the textile industry.
Here, clothes can be first designed by the designers, and then models are built based on the design drawings, which can be printed through these 3D printing equipment. And before the design drawing for each piece of clothes is printed, it is necessary to input the data of models’ figures into computers, then tailor and customize the clothes, and the printed clothes are unique and close-fitting. Printing fashion will become the trend of the future, and maybe one day you will wear 3D printed clothes.
In addition to 3D printing, city-industry integration here has also left a deep impression on the investigating group. The park has built a multiple of state-owned and private enterprise operating projects with a total investment of about 500 million yuan, transformed 21 plants and has more than 590 settled enterprises, the park has accumulated the output value of billions and recruited more than 4000 employees.
Longshan Cultural and Creative Park Fashion Industry Service Platform is a public service platform that is built specially for textile and clothing creative design enterprises. The platform is led by fashion design and supported by cultural exchanges and brand communication, and introduces the advanced concept of WeWork with the advantage of specialized industrial operator. Moreover, with the use of “Internet +”, it promotes the agglomeration of fashion design, industrial design, graphic design and other related industries, and builds a comprehensive fashion industry service platform that integrates training incubation, creativity design, exhibition display, communication promotion, professional services, commercial facilities, public services and other functions.
At the same time, Longshan Cultural and Creative Park attaches importance to introducing leading projects, and at the end of 2016, it introduced Xiamen Hepburn Clothing Co., Ltd., which is currently the only pure hand-made suit manufacturing enterprise in Fujian, and was selected as the business suit manufacturer for the ninth meeting of the leaders of BRIC countries; introduced the designer Ji Wenbo who had received the “Goldentop Award” - the highest award for fashion design, to enter the Grand Master Building, built the 9th - 11th floors to be “JIWENBO fashion agencies” while renovating and transforming the first floor as well, and created the fashion life experience hall that integrates high-grade garment retail, high-grade customization and creative music restaurants as a whole.
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