By Industrial Print Magazine Staff
Part 2 of 2
Automated cutting can enhance a manufacturing facility’s efficiencies seemingly overnight. Eliminating challenges like unnecessary human errors, speeding up production to account for just-in-time demand, and addressing increasing requests for smaller run sizes, automation is a game changer in just about any industry. When it comes to textiles, finishing devices for garments, décor, and more are useful.
This two-part series focuses on garments and how manufacturers in this space benefit from automated textile cutting machines. For example, the first article spotlights Freedom Rave Wear, a festival fashion company based in San Diego, CA. It thrived after bringing its printing and cutting in house with the purchase of a TUKAcut laser cutting machine from Tukatech Inc.
We follow its story with a look at one of Bangladesh’s top ready-made garment manufacturers.
Software and Hardware
Urmi Group produces active wear, nightwear, and formal wear for some of the world’s largest brands including Decathlon, Marks & Spencer, Puma, and Uniqlo. In business since 1984, the manufacturer began with 50 sewing machines and today employs over 11,000 people in four factories to produce 160,000 pieces of clothing daily.
Despite its many successes, the company’s manual patternmaking, nesting, and cutting processes were limiting its reach and making it difficult to keep up with demand. Manual processes were not only slow, but dependent on employees—it opened up room for error as well as lack of continuity between jobs.
Automation means many things from the software to the hardware components, and to overcome challenges, Urmi Group turned to Lectra and its portfolio of solutions, including Modaris for automated patternmaking, Flex Offer for nesting, and VectorFashion for fabric cutting.
Modaris, Lectra’s fashion-specific CAD software suite, has all the tools needed for making, grading, and preparing a pattern for production. Automating the patternmaking process allows Urmi Group to create perfect patterns with fewer iterations.
Flex Offer, a cloud-based, automated nesting solution, enables manufacturers to reduce fabric expenses with powerful automatic cloud processing for increased precision in material consumption. Urmi Group’s management team is now able to monitor and improve fabric consumption and efficiency.
An automated nesting process also reduces dependence on workers’ skill levels.
Finally, VectorFashion, Lectra’s Industry-4.0 compliant, automated multi-ply fabric cutting solution, provides the accuracy and speed necessary to improve productivity and quality. The device reaches high speeds of cutting on all types of fabrics, including knits.
The combination of all three solutions enable optimal productivity, minimal waste, significant material savings, and accelerated delivery times to customers.
“Our confidence in Lectra is based on Lectra’s commitment to continuous innovation. The strength of this relationship and experience with Lectra’s solutions are the reasons that Urmi Group’s management team turned to Lectra to help them overcome their challenges,” says Asif Ashraf, managing director, Urmi Group.
Joint Methodology
In 2021, Lectra and Urmi Group celebrated 15 years of partnership. The two companies share a joint interest in automated workflow and growing efficiencies in manufacturing.
Apr2022, Industrial Print Magazine