After ages of research, “SoftWear Automation” introduced LOWRY, a stitching robot, or sewbot, that uses computer vision to spot and adapt to perversions in the fabric. Though originally only able to make simplistic products, such as bath mats, the technology is now superior enough to make complete t-shirts and many of a pair of jeans. According to the organization, it also does it far faster than a human stitching line.
SoftWear Automation’s big business point is that one of its robotic sewing businesses can replace a standard line of 10 workers and create about 1,142 t-shirts in an eight-hour period, opposed to just 669 for the human sewing line. Another method to look at it is that the robot, acting under the guidance of a single individual handler, can create as many shirts per hour as of 17 humans.
The company has developed as a leader with those trying to automate sewing, drawing the attention of companies that make home goods and of course apparel manufacturers, including Tianyuan Garments Company, a Chinese firm that designs for labels such as Adidas and Armani. Tianyuan Garments has spent $20 million in a 100,000-square foot warehouse in Little Rock, Arkansas, projected to open in 2018. The company will be staffed with 21 robotic product lines supplied by SoftWear Automation and will be able of making 1.2 million t-shirts a year.
Normally, production in the US would be much more costly than manufacturing in China because of the greater labor costs. But Tang Xinhong, chairman of Tianyuan Garments, told World Textile Information Network (paywall) that, in a fully automated production line, the cost of individual labor works out to about $0.33 per shirt. For the setting, to produce something like a denim shirt in Bangladesh, you might pay about $0.22 in labor costs, according to an assessment from the Institute for Global Labour and Human Rights. That same labor would be $7.47 in the US, setting the labor cost for Tianyuan Garments’ American-made shirt about on par with one of the tightest labor markets in the world.
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