Softwear Automation
158 FOLLOWERS
SoftWear Automation is disrupting the $100B sewn products industry by replacing sewing labor with cutting edge robots. SoftWear Automation strives to be the first & sole supplier of general case robotic sewing machines that are capable of automatically sewing garments both accurately and reliably.
Softwear Automation
1y ago
Tomorrow’s successful apparel companies will be those that take the lead to enhance the apparel value chain on two fronts: nearshoring and automation. It cannot be just one of them and it must be done sustainably. Apparel companies can no longer conduct business as usual and expect to thrive. Due to the Internet and stagnation in key markets, competition is fiercer than ever and consumer demand is more difficult to predict. Mass-market apparel brands and retailers are competing with pure-play online start-ups, the most successful of which can replicate trendy styl ..read more
Softwear Automation
3y ago
SoftWear Automation CEO Palaniswamy Rajan tells us how made on demand manufacturing can solve supply chain problems and cut emissions.
Watch the Interview here.
The post Bloomberg Green: How to Have a Green Christmas appeared first on Softwear Automation ..read more
Softwear Automation
3y ago
SOFTWEAR AUTOMATION is a robotics company that wants to make T-shirts. “We want to make a billion T-shirts a year in the US, all made on demand,” says SoftWear CEO Palaniswamy Rajan.
The company launched in 2012 with help from the Georgia Tech Advanced Technology Development Center and a contract with Darpa. The length of time it has taken to get to this point isn’t surprising. Machines have proved adept at many steps in making clothes, from printing textiles to cutting fabric and folding and packaging finished garments.
But sewing has been notoriously ..read more
Softwear Automation
3y ago
Artificial intelligence (AI)-based sewbots and automation in apparel is not leading to nearshoring and shorter supply chains in developed countries yet, but experts have said that day may come.
The use of artificial intelligence (AI)-style ‘sewbots’ that can replace human sewers and other robotics look set to transform the apparel supply chain and facilitate reshoring or near-shoring to developed countries currently reliant on lower income outsourcing hubs, maybe thousands of kilometres away from buyers.
Online merchants and small new brands owned by millennials are already driving reshoring b ..read more
Softwear Automation
3y ago
The environmental impact of textile production is well documented, with the industry as a whole ranking second only to oil in terms of global pollution levels. Massive energy and water use, together with sky-high levels of discarded chemicals and landfill waste are all key drivers in the calls for closed-loop production.
With AI and smarter automation processes now being introduced to optimize production and manage stock levels, which in turn have eco-benefits, it has been suggested new technologies could also help to reduce the industry’s massive global footprint in other ways.
Dr. Claire Ler ..read more
Softwear Automation
3y ago
Robots might still sound futuristic to some, but automation technologies are already being widely used in many industries comprising from manufacturing, assembly, packing, and packaging to earth and space exploration, surgery, weaponry, laboratory research, and mass production.
According to the International Federation of Robotics, it is predicted that three million industrial robots would be in use by 2018, and that by 2020 the worldwide stock of operational industrial robots will increase from about 1,828,000 units to over 3 million units. This represents an average annual growth r ..read more
Softwear Automation
3y ago
Humans automatically and constantly adjust hand movements to the ever-changing alignment of cloth. Robots just freeze
Menswear entrepreneur Harris Quinn wrote a thoughtful piece at Wired recently on the mixed success of efforts to automate sewing via Sewbots, for example, developed by SoftWear Automation CEO Palaniswamy Rajan:
One reason that sewing lends itself so well to the grinding labor of sweatshops is that it is very difficult to automate. That’s because cloth is pliable and constantly moving. The Sewbots face unexpected hurdles:
But no ..read more
Softwear Automation
3y ago
Independence Day brings the country together to cheer all things American. And while the textile industry can, despite COVID, celebrate an increase in stateside manufacturing, apparel makers have their manufacturing, save for a handful of categories. But at a time when the fashion industry is still recovering from the losses suffered during the pandemic, makers and retailers could benefit from manufacturing at least some of their clothes in America.
American-made goods are overwhelmingly popular, says Christie Grymes Thompson, chair of advertising, marketing, and cons ..read more
Softwear Automation
3y ago
The sewing process has often been described as the “last mile” of apparel manufacturing automation. In this interview, Palaniswamy “Raj” Rajan, Chairman & CEO, Softwear Automation, talks about how sewbots, and in particular the sewbots the company is manufacturing, have the ability to automatically manufacture T-shirts today in amazing quantities, with a few toward being able to expand this capability to other apparel types in the future. He also shares projections about when the technology will be more commercially available.
Watch the Interview here.
The post Softwear Automation Sewbots ..read more
Softwear Automation
3y ago
Automation and artificial intelligence are revolutionizing the American workplace as machines perform tasks once unique to humans. The changes are affecting everything from picking goods off warehouse shelves to customer service calls to balancing a company’s ledgers. That is also forcing schools and colleges to rethink how they train — and quickly retrain — future workers and those whose jobs become obsolete.
Palaniswamy “Raj” Rajan, the chief executive of Atlanta-based SoftWear Automation, which designed the Sewbots, said new textile jobs will require more brain, less back. “We want people w ..read more