Asset management is a systematic process that involves deployment, operations, maintenance, upgrading, and disposal of assets in a cost-effective manner.

The asset is counted as a resource owned or controlled by an organization that has an economic value, it is expected that the asset will provide benefit in the future.

Anything from tangible to an intangible item can be considered as an asset if it capable of producing positive economic value.

Textile Industry: Introduction

According to Wikipedia, the textile industry is primarily concerned with the design, production, and distribution of yarn, cloth, and clothing.

The textile industry is believed to be as old as human civilization. In earlier times, the clothes were only made of cotton but today they are made with silk, rayon, nylon, filament yarn, viscose, staple, polyester, etc.

Moreover, instead of a hand process, highly modernized techniques and computerized looms are used for cloth production.

When the textile industry started, it was limited to cloth weaving only but with time the industry has explored and included ginning, reeling, spinning, weaving, processing, sizing, printing, and garment manufacturing to their operations.

Global Textile Market

The global textile industry is currently worth nearly US $3 trillion, including all the major operations like production, refinement, and sale (for both natural and synthetic fibers).

There are almost 20 million to 60 million people work in this industry, making it the largest working industry in the world.

The Statistic shows that China topped the rank of global textile exporter with the value of approx. The US $119 billion, contributing 37.6% of the global market share. China is the world's leading producer and exporter of textiles and garments.

Whereas, the US is the leading producer and exporter of raw cotton, taking the place of top importer of raw textiles and garments.

While the European Union contributing 23.5 % of the global market share and export value of the US $74 billion, it becomes the second-largest textile exporter in the world.

India is also amongst the top textile producing countries in the world exporting the US $18 billion as per 2018 data.

Assets and Equipment involved with Textile Industry

Machines in the textile industry are used in the processing of fabrics, textiles, and other woven and non-woven materials. They are further used in processes like spinning, weaving, warping, and dyeing.

Following is the list of machines used in the textile industry, for different purposes.

1. Machines for Production of fiber/thread/yarn

• Woolen Mill Machines
• Thread Winding Machines
• Bleaching/Dyeing Machines
• Scutching Machines
• Carding Machines
• Spinning Machines
• Yarn Gassing Machines

2. Machines for Production of Textile

• Knitting Machines
• Crochet Machines
• Lace Making Machines
• Weaving Machines
• Tufting Machines
• Quilting Machines
• Cloth Measuring Machines
• Cloth Cutting Machines
• Industrial Sewing Machines
• Monogramming Machines

3. Machines for Textile Apparel

• Cutting and Finishing Machines
• Embroidery Machines
• Sewing Machines

Segments involved in Textile Industry

There are four major segments within the textile and apparel industry. Depending on these segments, machines and equipment are used as per the objective.

• Sourcing of Raw Material - Centralized sourcing
  
  
• Weaving/Knitting Clusters & Processing Facility - Common processing facility for a set of clusters
  
  
• Cutting, Stitching & Garmenting - Branding of yarn/fabric/prints with the apparel in case of high-value products

How is Asset Management Practice Helpful in Textile Industry?

1. Tracking of Machines and Equipment

You can tag all your machines and equipment with barcodes, QR codes, and RFID tags. The details and information that a tags stores include machines' manufacturing date, company's name from which item was purchased, cost price, shelf life, name of the segment to which it is allotted, and other important information regarding the machine.

As it is important for the industry to know about the condition of their physical assets regarding its operating power to its actual location (where it is located).

It becomes easy and efficient with asset tags to monitor, identify, track, and control the assets plus it also increases the organization's bottom line.

Apart from this, all the information regarding the purchase of an asset and asset disposal. You can also retrieve crucial data from the history which can be easily reviewed by scanning tags that are attached to the assets.

2. Scheduled Maintenance of Machines

Equipment maintenance does not mean to repair when the equipment is not working. It is a regular practice for keeping your equipment maintained. In simple words, keep your equipment in good working condition with routine maintenance & it must be done on a regular basis i.e., scheduled maintenance.

When the equipment is in good shape it will perform better and increase productivity. Healthy equipment is responsible for running a smooth operation. Also, it will save the organization from an unexpected breakdown of machines.

Scheduled maintenance management has many benefits:

• Operator and Machine Safety

By performing regular preventive maintenance, you are always assured about your safely operating equipment for both (the machine and the operators). Possible issues can be eliminated before their occurrence. Therefore, it may not cause any harm.

• Machine Efficiency

With normal wear and tear, machines can cause lower efficiency. Proper preventive maintenance management will assure you of the optimal working conditions of the equipment. Moreover, it expands the equipment life span.

• Time Savings

Scheduled asset maintenance management will reduce the actual downtime caused by the breakdown and further enhance the machine productivity in less time, thereby, saving a lot of time. Preventative maintenance will consume less time than the time taken in emergency repairs and replacements.

3. Inventory Management

Inventory for the textile industry is its raw material, primarily. Tools and other things are secondary.

Inventory Management refers to the technique of ordering, storing, and use of all the consumable items. This stock management includes management & monitoring of raw materials, components, and finished products, along-side warehousing, and processing of such items in your company.

For the following few reasons Inventory Management is important for the textile industry:

• When to restock certain items
• What amount to purchase
• What price to pay
• When to sell
• What price to sell at
• Inventory planning and control
• Movement of stock
• Re-order level

4. Purchase and Requisition

Purchase and Requisition Management is the procedure that involves creating, processing, authorizing and tracking of purchase requests within an organization.

The method Requisition Management can also be described as the process of obtaining, raw materials needed for manufacturing a product or providing a service.

The asset management system will allow the textile industry to integrate all purchase requisitions to a single cloud database, that can be monitored and controlled from everywhere, anytime.

Following are the functionalities of Purchase and Requisition:

• Request Initiation
• Approval Access
• Create Purchase Orders (PO)
• Controlled Tool
• Centralized Purchasing System

5. Utility Monitoring

It includes the consumption of power and supply of utilities in any industry. The textile industry consumes utilities in a rich amount.

The need is to get higher returns and optimal corporate performance to focus on operations like the expectation of workers to get safe, affordable, continuous €“ power, gas, and water; to improve utility as an asset performance and reliability using technology.

Through utility monitoring you can manage the power units consumed per day/month/year, if exceeded you can use the data to consume the utilities in a manageable manner.

Moreover, the asset management system allows you to set the maximum value range of consumed utility units so that it can notify you in advance before it reaches the maximum value bar.

6. Audits and Physical Verification

The textile industry can perform audits and physical verification through the asset management system installed. As all the details and information are already present on the system it can be used and audits can be performed wherever and whenever you want, according to your ease.

Conclusion

Textile industry being the largest working industry across the world uses as many resources and machines as the usage of their final apparel product. It becomes very necessary to include asset management software that can manage, monitor, and track all the assets.

Asset management practice will provide you with many features to assist you in making the business grow with high profits.

Asset Infinity is the leading asset management software and application provider. It enables you to track your assets using Barcode tagging, QR code tagging, RFID tags tracking, NFC tags tracking.

There are more features such as Incident Management, Maintenance management, and Report on the equipment which you can use from anywhere, at any time. Asset Infinity offers a free 14-day trial - no credit card required!