India with 52 million spindles is the second largest yarn producer in the world. The Indian spinning industry currently faces the following major challenges that impact its global competitiveness:-
* Profitability
* High volatility in raw material cost
* Human resource availability
* Changing consumer preferences demanding continuous product innovations
* Sustainability
On examining the average age of spinning machinery in India, it is observed to be in the range of 10-15 years, this is significantly longer than the usage of machines in other leading countries. Therefore, replacing obsolete machinery and outdated technology is the need of hour for the Indian spinning industry to continue to be a leader and to cater the needs of the downstream industries in the global arena.
Lakshmi Machine Works (LMW) has been focusing its efforts to take the Indian spinning industry forward, on a modernization journey. Over the years, LMW has been constantly designing and delivering its line of products focused on product innovation, automation, digitization and sustainability to address the key challenges.
Product Innovation & Sustainability for improving profitability
For better profit margin the spinners have to overcome challenges like high volatility in raw material & yarn price and the rise in labour cost particularly during the period of weak demands, it poses a great challenge as mills cannot pass on this increase in cost of production.
The constant challenge on profitability can also be overcome by focusing on modernizing with new technology machines and capitalizing new opportunities as well. A judicious investment decision on investing in capital goods is to be made to get maximum yarn realization and lower running costs which will help spinners to get the required profit.
The flexibility in ring spinning machines to produce regular and value-added yarns like compact, slub, multi count, multi twist, SIRO, Injection yarns, etc add an edge for spinners to meet this challenge effectively.
The compact yarn demand has increased multi fold in recent years. It supports high speed weaving and knitting and also improves the economics of all such downstream processes. Hence Compact yarn is being considered as the basic requirement in all downstream processes and also makes the yarn as premium with all these benefits. By investing in compact the spinners can gain the following benefits,
* Quality improvement – Increase in profit margin
* Waste optimization – Raw material saving
* Increased productivity with available resources
Automation
Though India’s labour resources rank second in the world, the availability of skilled work force is still a major challenge. The widening gap between industry requirements and skill levels of available workforce is expected to increase in the coming years. The cost and effectiveness of training and retaining of existing workforce continues to be a major challenge for the Indian spinning industry. In this context, LMW views automation as an enabler. LMW has been working to reduce manpower needs in the spinning industry by rolling out innovative solutions such as the Auto blend, bigger cans for card and drawframes, lap and roving transportation systems, auto doffer speedframe, spindle monitoring systems and Auto piecing in Ringframe.
Digitization
Remote diagnostic and Artificial Intelligence have started determining the market. Adapting these concepts have become inevitable for manufacturers and LMW has the utmost responsibility in integrating these concepts with our machine systems. These challenges could all be met via automation and IoT concepts, which in turn are the main focus areas of LMW.
The comprehensive modules in Spin Connect simplifies the entire spinning process by completely eliminating guess work at all the levels, and empowering the management with the right data and analysis to execute technical and business decisions.
The Spin Connect monitors and supports routine production and maintenance activities. The platform’s data analytic capabilities creates actionable intelligence, such as
* Monitoring real-time energy consumption
* Mapping it with historical data to gain valuable insights.
* Bale Management System
* Machine health monitoring modules
* Maintenance management system
With the adaption of the above mentioned modern changes, we are sure that the Indian spinning industry can overcome the major challenges and will reach newer heights.