'Textile industry should bank on IT for enhancing quality'

Though the Indian textile industry is going through a phase of modernisation and large investments are being made for quality enhancement and increasing productivity, the industry is yet to recognise the role of information technology in improving productivity, according to S V Arumugam, chairman of the Southern India Mills' Association (SIMA).

IT could play a major role in increasing production, managing multiple operations and meeting the demands of a seamless supply chain, but textile entrepreneurs seemed to undermine the role of IT, he said.

Inaugurating 'Comptex 2006', the fourth edition textile conference for competitiveness jointly organised by SIMA and the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), Arumugam said that the implementation of IT tools with textile sector specific facilities such as supply chain management, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and data capturing systems would help improve quality and productivity.

With Asia becoming a textile manufacturing hub and India facing strong competition from China, implementation of IT tools would be crucial in the future, he said.

The textile spinning process involved several round-the-clock processes before it reaches the end consumer. So the possibility of deviations and variations in quality, efficiency and production was high.

Online quality and production monitoring systems across the entire spinning sequence not only paid back but also could save substantial quantity claims, even to the tune of 30 per cent, he added.

"But the cost of implementing ERP systems today is on the higher side, and this factor prevents many spinners from going for it. However, there are many small players who exclusively develop the software for the textile industry in a cost effective manner. This would enable the mills to go in for the integrated packages," he added.

In his speech, Sridhar Varadharaj, chairman of Comptex 2006, said that reorienting the textile industry towards meeting the challenge of new age marketing was the objective of the two-day conference.

"IT helps identify deviation in quality and production which in turn helps the textile mill to supply its customer with the product of right quality at the right time," he added.