The Hindu Business Line : Weaving in technology to wrap up textile exports

Only if India exploits to the fullest the productivity of the textile industry can it emerge as an alternative export hub in the sector. — Bijoy Ghosh

IN THE quota-free world, no one doubts that textile production will eventuallybecome Asia-centric and the two countries that stand to gain the most will be China and India. India's biggest foreign exchange earner, accounting for 35 per cent of the gross export earnings in trade and providing direct employment to about 35 million people, the textile sector is the second largest, after agriculture.

With quotas lifted, experts believe that the industry now has the opportunity to realise its full potential, achieving an export target of $50 billion by 2010.

And sure enough, with retail majors, such as Wal-Mart and Tesco eyeing India, readymade garment hubs such as Tirupur and Ludhiana are beginning to make a mark on the global textile export landscape.

However, they face strong competition. China today accounts for more than a quarter of the apparels sold worldwide. India's share stands at 4 per cent. The textile industry, with its ancient roots, accounted for exports worth $13.4 billion compared to the $12 billion earned by the less-than-twenty-year-old IT services industry.

What are the reasons for the textile industry's under-performance? After all, India's advantages are well documented. It is one of the few in the world that is truly vertically integrated from raw material to finished products, covering fibre-production, spinning, knitting, weaving, and apparel manufacture.

The country is also self-sufficient in cotton — the 2.7 million tonnes of cotton consumed by the textile industry is grown at home.

Further, India has the ability to service high-value niche orders with its readily available pool of designer resources. Building on the textile engineering base which began in the 1950s, the 1990s saw unprecedented growth in "fashion management" studies, including specialised modules, such as marketing and merchandising, garment manufacturing technology, design management, fashion communications management.

In a milieu where the cost of skilled Indian labour is comparable to China's in absolute terms, wherein lies the glitch?

The government's lopsided view to reserve certain areas of textile manufacturing to the small-scale industry and the fragmentation of the supply chain could be identified as inhibitors, but a crucial factor that has resulted in China's lead over India lies in productivity levels.

Chief executive officers of some of India's leading export firms have been impressed at the efficiency — current productivity of their factories is half to one-third the levels of what might otherwise be achievable.

At a time when textile exporters are looking forward to unshackled growth, China's first step has been to overhaul existing machinery by putting in place imported machines with productivity levels that are 6-7 times those in India. This, however, is a small step.

In today's business environment, manufacturers must increase productivity throughout the supply chain.

Textile manufacturers have so far built various control networks that are often separate from their business networks. These legacy control networks use proprietary interfaces that can prohibit the control and business networks from communicating, and thus compartmentalise information.

Enter Intelligent Networked Manufacturing (INM). What this entails is integration of plant floor data with business systems, providing employees with access to information as and when they need it. Not only does this make business and decision-making efficient, it, more importantly, enables manufacturers obtain visibility of the factory floor without disrupting the production line.

INM empowers manufacturers to add new services to the existing control network any time and at any location in the network, while maintaining the existing control scheme. Manufacturers can add wireless applications and improve plant personnel mobility. They can add IP-based phones, which eliminate the need to add separate time-division multiplexing (TDM) phone lines. They can add security and intrusion detection to existing network services, all without interrupting critical manufacturing processes.

The end-result is the provision of repeatable, deterministic data from real-time devices, helping to ensure the continued efficient operation of the manufacturing plant and the emergence of each and every employee into a strategic business asset.

India has as big an advantage in textile exports as China does. What remains to be seen is, if it will exploits its productivity to the fullest. Only such a strategy will allow India to emerge as an alternative textile export hub.

(The author is Senior Vice-President — Enterprise — Cisco Systems, India and SAARC.)

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