Why is it taking ‘sew’ long for automation in the fashion industry?
Ever wondered what the robot that made your shirt looked like? Well one thing I can tell you for sure, is that your clothing was made by human hands and not robots. More than likely the hands of workers from Eastern or southern asian, where the labour is cheap. A shocking 97% of all clothing purchased in the United States is imported. So why hasn’t this industry embraced technology and automated the sewing process so that we can move our manufacturing back to our own country?
I have worked in design and production for the past 7 years with YNOT Made, a local manufacturer here in Toronto, Canada. After sewing for 8 hours a day for many years, I can tell you that sewing is a labour intensive process. Unless you have sewn a garment yourself, it is hard to understand how complex the process is. From pattern drafting, to cutting, to sewing, all the way to finishing a garment with grommets, snaps, button holes or zippers. Shirts shouldn’t cost $10, we have been spoiled and now we can’t go back to paying the real price of clothing.
Back In 2012 the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) pumped $1.25M into the research and development of a robotic sewing cell, in an attempt to automate the sewing process. What they ended up producing was a VERY expensive machine that relied on counting the threads of the fabric in order to program the machine to know when to start, stop and turn the fabric. This machine also used suction arms in order to lift and move the fabric. Very complex. VERY expensive.
As the DARPA research project found, garment creation is an industry that has proven impossible to automate. Human intuition and dexterity when it coming to manipulating fabrics is difficult to program efficiently for a variety of reasons:
1. The variables of fabrics are vast. Fabrics have different levels of stretch, thickness and weaves. Fabrics can crease, fabrics can fold and there is often imperfections and pulls that occur.
2. The garments being manufactured change frequently. Two words: Fast Fashion. H&M and Forever21 both get DAILY shipments of new styles. With each new style, an automated sewing machine would need to be programed with a new set of rules.
3. The movements required to fabricate are complex. While sewing you are often pulling or easing the fabric. Pieces of fabric have to be lined up perfectly or panels won’t match, buttons and holes won’t align and even something as simple as a zipper won’t work
It surprising that the sewing machine has remain relatively unchanged since the Industrial revolution in the 1800’s, which was when the sewing machine was first invented. Remember your grandmas pedal powered beauty of a sewing machine? Well the only major difference between that and today’s industry standard sewing machine is that it is now powered by electricity. We have also developed machinery to aid in other parts of the production cycle of garments. At YNOT Made, we would cut all our fabric with a massive laser cutter. The industry standard for this part of the process is to cut the fabric in large stacks with a hand-operated saw. Other technological advances in the fashion industry include: automated sewing machines carrying out very simple tasks, robotic cutting, computerized knitting and 3D printing.
In the past, companies tried to create complicated mechanical devices to emulate the way a human sews, which as we discussed is a very difficult and complicated approach. Last year, Seattle software developer Jonathan Zornow took a different approach. He started, manipulating the materials to make them compatible with robots. His invention, the Sewbo, temporarily stiffens fabrics. This allows off-the-shelf industrial robots to easily build garments from rigid cloth, just as if they were working with sheet metal. The water-soluble stiffener is then removed at the end of the manufacturing process by rinsing in hot water. There are some limitations to this process. Since the material needs to be completely wet, certain fabrics such as wools or leather are out of the question.
It is unfortunate that in 2018 we are still heavily dependent on armies of human laborers. The garment industry employs a whopping 60–75 million people globally. These labourers are often working in the kind of conditions that led to the 2013 factory collapse that killed more than 1,000 workers in Bangladesh. I believe that automation will ultimately be good for the fashion industry because of how labour intensive this task is. That being said, I am also concerned about places like Bangladesh where the workforce is dependent on this kind of work. Millions of people, mostly women in poor countries, could lose their jobs. However, the fashion industry can no longer continue to chase the lowest labour costs as a sustainable model, this needs to change.
Here’s a great Planet money podcast on automation in the sewing industry: https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2016/08/03/488611449/episode-715-the-sewing-robot