Abstract:

Internet of Things (IoT) has provided a promising opportunity to build powerful industrial systems and applications by leveraging the growing ubiquity of RFID, wireless, mobile and sensor devices. A wide range of industrial IoT applications has been developed and deployed in recent years in various industries. In an effort to understand the development of IoT in industries, this paper reviews the current research of IoT, key enabling technologies, major IoT applications in textile industry and identifies research trends and challenges. This new period called industry 4.0 has removed all paradigms of the previous period and created new paradigms related to production and consumption. The main contribution of this review paper is that it summarizes the current state-of-the-art of IoT in textiles systematically. 

 

Keywords: IIoT, Industrial Internet of Things, Textile and Apparel industry, Industry 4.0, Smart factory.

 

i.        Introduction:

As an emerging technology, the Internet of Things (IoT) is expected to offer promising solutions to transform the operation and role of many existing textile industrial systems such as transportation systems and manufacturing systems. For example, when IoT is used for creating intelligent transportation systems, the transportation authority will be able to track each vehicle’ existing location, monitor its movement and predict its future location and possible road traffic.

There is a growing interest in using IoT technologies in various industries. A number of industrial IoT projects have been conducted in areas such as agriculture, food processing industry, environmental monitoring, security surveillance, and others. So far IoT has been gaining attraction in an industry such as logistics, manufacturing, retailing and pharmaceutics. With the advances in wireless communication, smartphone, and sensor network technologies, more and more networked things or smart objects are being involved in IoT. It is now the peak time to integrate IoT with textile manufacturing industries/mills.

This paper provides an overview of the Internet of Things (IoT) with emphasis on enabling technologies, protocols and its application. The basic premise is to have smart sensors collaborate directly without human involvement to deliver a new class of applications. The current revolution in the Internet, mobile, and machine-to-machine (M2M) technologies can be seen as the first phase of the IoT. In the coming years, the IoT is expected to bridge diverse technologies to enable new applications by connecting physical objects together in support of intelligent decision making. Compared to other survey papers in the field, our objective is to provide a more thorough summary of the most relevant protocols and applications related to textile industries.

Custom orders in textile mills can challenge companies with unpredictable peak demand, resulting in long waiting times, which in turn have a potentially negative effect on consumers. On the other hand, these orders can help companies increase revenue and competitive advantage, improve cash flow, and reduce waste. Mass customization can also generate valuable data for product development, online marketing, and campaigns. The shape of real-world objects can be analyzed through 3D scanners, which collect data to build digital models. These scanners facilitate the measurement of a human body for individualized products. In the future, 3D scanning and modeling can move directly into the home, giving consumers the ability to scan, build the 3D model ben ordering custom clothing. Manufacturing, supply chain logistics will benefit from the adoption of digital sensors and smart tags that will offer visibility, flexibility and control product flows. This trend will be implemented by the Internet of Things (IoT), sensors, and intelligent analysis.

2. Evolution of Industry 4.0 and its contribution to the textile industry

The dominant role of consumers may continue to be decisive for value chains in the future. Now, all the supply chain operations and industrial activities are conducted according to customer satisfaction and expectations. Markets are facing an increasing need for individualized products. Customers do not want to buy standard products and demand more personalized and customized products and services. In parallel, industrial processes and supply chain operations have to be re-designed according to these new paradigms. In order to achieve the speed and flexibility required by competition, technology has become one of the most important components of the industry in this period.

Figure 1: Information Technology Integration with Manufacturing

Today, the convergence of the physical and virtual world is possible as a result of technological improvements. On the other hand, all physical objects are becoming digital. The evolution towards Industry 4.0 is mainly based on digital technologies. Fourth industrial revolution is trying to perfect all the processes, such as supply, production, consumption, and logistics. The best way to achieve this end is to increase the technological level of factories. In this way, decreasing the human factor which causes various errors is possible. Textile and clothing industry has faced the problems of using intense human power, and the lack of technology. As a result of these, the level of productivity and efficiency of these industries is insufficient. Since textile industries do not have flexible operational structure, they cannot balance their flows and therefore they are not strong enough before high competitive pressure. At the same time, we are facing new challenges: our products need to be more individualized and offered in more variations, they must be adjusted to market requirements in shorter time, the product life cycles are shorter than ever before and the global competition ever stronger. On the other hand, they show a high dependence on the labor force. Therefore, human errors are concentrated in supply, production and logistics processes. In addition to that, the varying level of customer expectations and demands is extremely high. Nobody wants to buy clothing products purchased by another customer. Therefore, industries have to make special product designs and should manufacture personalized products. Industry 4.0 may help to textile and clothing industries to solve these problems. With the redesign of the industrial processes according to industry 4.0 and technological advances, all the processes related to production and logistics may become more flexible, rapid and agile in textile value chains. Textile and clothing industries may obtain significant flexibility and can give quick and effective responses to the customer’s needs as a result of the transformation of their production and logistics processes. Transformation of textile industries depends on the use of high technology in production and logistics processes within the framework of technological advancements.

 

3. IoT technology in the Textile Industry

Clothing is one of the fundamental requisites for human survival. With the advancement of civilization; even though gradual changes made on the aesthetic sense improved exponentially, not much improvements are visible in terms of technology in the textile industry. The major challenge faced by most of the popular brands is replication in the black market. Up until now, no methods have been technologically developed to recognize the counterfeits that are unknowingly purchased by the people. Any user who purchases clothes has concerns about its brand value, color, quality, texture, and material. The attainment of all the concerns of the customers is broken due to the inability to recognize the counterfeits. Our job is to make sure that the customer requirements are fulfilled for the purpose of which we make use of IoT, NFC and Mobile Application technologies. IoT is a new revolution of the internet that is used to link objects to a big network using the Internet. Innovations in IoT are the need of the hour.

 

 

Figure 2: Schematic diagram of information transformation in textile 4.0

 

Objects can communicate with each other using various methods. The proposed system makes use of NFC that embedded within the clothes. By connecting NFC reader to the terminal of the internet, identification, tracking, and monitoring of the objects with which the tag is attached become easy. It is a cheap replacement for traditional barcodes, are highly reusable and can store more data. It supports various encryption schemes. The main selling point of NFC is that it is waterproof, dustproof and light proof making it more robust. Nowadays everything is dependent on Cloud and experts to believe that cloud computing is the new trend in the development of Computing Technologies. On devices where memory is an issue, cloud technology has served as a solution to it. It is an Internet-based computing where all the data and applications are provided to the end users with dynamic remote access services available on the emote servers. It helps in the storage, retrieval, and maintenance of large data with the added advantage of providing data consistency thereby enabling us to divide the tasks for simplicity. It, therefore, serves as the podium for the development of technological, social and economic infrastructure of Computing Technologies.

With globalization and advancement in technology, mobile technology hogs the spotlight in the area of communication. After mobile gadgets became smart, the entire focus has catapulted towards developing applications for the convenience of the users and to meet the requirements. Few application provides an interface using which the users can interact with the clothes and it provides various information related to the cloth that benefits the user in various ways. This would benefit both the manufacturers and the customers along with dealers, etc.

 

4. Potential Applications in Textile Industry:

4.1. Use of sensors in material container.

Figure 3: Self-optimizing of weaving process

 

Key fundamental technologies of automation in spinning, weaving and other aspects are essential to upgrade the textile industry. Textile 4.0 would be a process chain of independent production. Information carrier can be the textile material container, bobbin, warp beam, and fabric. Radio frequency identification technology (RFID) and sensors are basic modules to collect and store information, such as equipment operation status, and maintenance information. The plant will self-configure and self-optimize quickly and flexibly to meet custom manufacturing orders. Meanwhile, all information will be fed back to the MES and ERP systems for future management decisions.

 

 

 

4.2. Implementation of sensors in machines and equipment:

Figure 4: Schematic diagram of the IIoT system

We can implement sensors in the wide area over the machines and instruments. Control and Monitor circumstances by using the concept of Artificial Intelligence and IoT. Sensors (Temperature sensor, Pressure sensor, Humidity sensor, Vibration sensor, Intrusion sensor) are used to percept the environment and object conditions. Analog signal is provided to an Android device produced by sensors. Admin set the threshold for every sensor placed in Industry. Android check this threshold against an incoming analog signal. When it encounters an uneven condition devices (Buzzer, Alarm, motor, fan) are used to take accurate measures such as Alarm/Alert are generated, it sends messages and email to Admin. Then with the help of Artificial Intelligence, it takes adequate steps to solve the problems. This can be possible through past experience and similar previous condition stored in the database.

 

4.3. Artificial Intelligence in Looms

Loom data interpretation system” also called as an “Automated Information System” which will give better control over production monitoring and take corrective steps immediately. Loom data system provides better control over quality and production of the loom is that it will improve the productivity of the organization. The key to a profitable and successful weaving loom is the management of the loom to ensure it is achieving maximum efficiency. Productivity is assured by the continuous performance of every single loom in the mill. The idea of having a system that will provide a real-time view of the loom gives birth to loom data system. In order to make textile factory achieve the lean and agile production, an automatic collection system for textile production is presented in this paper. It establishes a platform for monitoring machines and collecting information from the machines in real time which realizes timely feedback information about machine malfunctions. It is necessary to do the proper analysis of data. The purpose of analyzing data is to obtain usable and useful information. The analysis is irrespective of whether the data is qualitative or quantitative, may: (I) describe and summarize the data (ii) identify relationships between variables (iii) compare variables (IV) identify the difference between variables (v) forecast outcomes. This helps the weaver increase the productivity and overall quality of his shed.

·         System automation is achieved by controlling the air cooling system in the industry.

·         Sprayer element in the system is also automated so that the high quality of the product is obtained.

·         These integrated controlling elements are efficiently and economically reasonable for quality management and power consumption.

·         Input stock and output number of cones/beams/cans are monitored synchronously.

·         These in-house stock values can be viewed from anywhere anytime.

 

5. Conclusion:

The boom of global “re-industrialization” would make manufacturing more intensely competitive and the traditional model is substituted for emerging model, which could be called integration of industrial chain better than an industrial revolution, and all participants in the production process collaborate production in a new way. Textile industry must be aware of the new challenges and respond with a judicious action in order to reduce production cost, improve manufacturing productivity, promote industrial growth, change the labor force structure and ultimately change the competitiveness of the company and the region. Technological innovation and personnel are basic drive of industry transformation. Meanwhile, it should be cautious to upgrade textiles 4.0 as it is imminent to figure out the industry standard and its implementation.

6. References:

i.        “Li Da Zu” Internet of Things in Industries: A Survey” IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics, vol. 10, no. 4, November 2014.

ii.        Sara Amendola, Rossella Lodato ,Sabina Manzari , Cecilia Occhiuzzi, Gaetano Marrocco, “RFID Technology for IOT based personal healthcare in Smart Spaces”, Univ. of Rome Tor Vergata, Italy, Volume 1, March 2014.

iii.        Ömer Faruk Görçün: The Rise of Smart Factories in the Fourth Industrial Revolution and Its Impacts on the Textile Industry., International Journal of Materials, Mechanics and Manufacturing, Vol. 6, No. 2, April 2018.

iv.        Saggiomo M, Wischnowski M, Winkel B, et al. Industry 4.0 in the field of textile machinery-first steps of implementationJ. Melliand International, 2015, (1).

v.        Zhen Chen, Mingjie Xing: Upgrading of textile manufacturing based on Industry 4.0, 5th International Conference on Advanced Design and Manufacturing Engineering (ICADME 2015).