Uster Technologies introduced solutions based on automation and artificial intelligence integrated in their innovative technologies at ITMA 2023. The company attracted attention, also from the most important textile manufacturing companies, for their new 360Q and Fabriq Assistant. Sivakumar Narayanan, Executive Vice President Marketing & Business Development at Uster Technologies explained their innovations and also their experiences at ITMA 2023 to Textilegence.
Narayanan said that ITMA 2023 is an important platform for meeting the industry and for looking forward to new possibilities towards a better textile world. He noted that they have had quite a strong traffic on their booths, especially in the first four days and stated that they have welcomed many visitors from various countries, many of them from Turkey, India, Pakistan, the Middle East and South America. He added that the visitors’ number from China and South-East Asia was below their expectations, and he thinks that this is because of the visa issues.
Uster 360Q empowers spinners to profitable yarn production
Sivakumar Narayanan mentioned that they use to develop new technologies as a result of a deep understanding of customers’ needs and discussions with quality managers – and a lot of market research on top and they observed that many mills do not have the needed personnel resources. He said that also considering the lack of knowledge and the fact that the number of textile graduates is insufficient, mills want to automate, simplify, and make sure that the knowledge is there in the system and not in the minds of people. He continued: “Uster 360Q is a solution suite to enable the mill to be more successful, meaning to make better-informed decisions that have a real impact on their profits, customers and people. Consultants or anyone else can’t offer support to the mill around the clock. Instead, spinners need to be empowered to be able to do their work more efficiently in different ways. So, knowing about the background, Uster provides mill staff with the knowledge and the information necessary so that they can actually do their job much better. That is the idea behind 360Q.”
Based on first market experiences, Narayanan, pointed out that most spinning mills could try to save a part of the 2 to 8 million dollars that is taken out as waste (assuming a mill of 50,000 spindles). He said: “The approach of Uster 360Q is to first make sure that the quality is at the right level and consistent. Once spinners can produce the quality satisfying their customers, we work with the mill managers to see how we can reduce the mixing costs and waste while still achieving the same quality. After that, we explore with the mill managers to fine-tune the remaining optimization potential.”
He added that they already had some trials in a few Indian mills and now they are trying similar approaches in other key countries including Turkey: “We are now trying to set-up 2 to 3 mills, where we go through the same process. First of all, we learn how Turkish mills operate including their most important needs. And after that, we will adapt our offering to match the Turkish mills’ situation and only after that step we’ll introduce the product officially to the Turkish market.”
In response to a question, if this offering will not bring all mills to a similar quality level, Narayanan pointed out that the quality requirements are different for the various mills because the end customer needs are constantly changing besides the industry and technologies. He further noted: “This is continuing to happen and will continue to happen in future. So, we do not have to assume that the quality is going to be similar.”
Fabric inspection becomes stronger with AI
On the fabric inspection side, Uster showed the Q-Bar 2, which is the on-loom inspection system ideal for technical textiles applications. Sivakumar Narayanan said that Uster released Q-Bar 2 for 4 major applications in the technical textiles area. Uster also launched at ITMA 2023, the Uster Fabriq Assistant, an AI-driven software. In this scope, he explained the benefits of AI as follows:
“As a matter of fact, machine recognition systems are taking a lot of defect pictures. With AI, we have trained the model, so that it can reliably define which of the defects are disturbing. So, the job is automated substantially and the human can therefore focus on making sure the customer gets the fabric in the right quality. The value added by the person is shifting: Instead of looking at thousands of images every day, he can rather focus on improving the fabric in the next step. Defect classification is what Fabriq Assistance does.”
Narayanan said that Uster participated at ITMA 2023 with a strong and attractive booth concept, and they are very pleased with the visitors’ interests, concluding: “We will also be presenting in a bigger way at ITM 2024 in Istanbul next year. We eagerly await to meet the global textile industry and Turkish textile manufacturers again in Istanbul.”