As players in the textiles and apparel markets continue to look for ways to streamline product life cycles and supply chains, digital technologies are playing a significant role. While not everything will be produced on-demand for the foreseeable future, there is significant opportunity to do so with a portion of production. The Holy Grail is the ability to build to order, rather than guesstimating what sizes, colors, and quantities will be able to be sold. Brands and retailers would also like to reduce lead times for getting products to market. One supplier we recently spoke to is producing leggings on demand, for example, and has reduced lead times from nine to 18 months, from design to customer delivery, to a startling nine hours for customized leggings. This growing number of digital technologies can be combined into microfactories that can produce fairly significant quantities on demand—even mobile microfactories that can visit sites and regions to produce event- and region-specific items. Imagine a semi tractor/trailer pulling up in Minneapolis to produce Super Bowl memorabilia that can be sold on site. This is a reality today that was prominent at the show.

In an ideal situation, such as the leggings microfactory, an order is received through an ecommerce interface where the consumer can specify everything about the garment they are ordering: size, color, fabric type if appropriate, shipping information, etc. Ideally, of course, they pay for their order at that time. The order then seamlessly moves into pre-production, where the file can be checked for any defects or problems. It then proceeds to marker making, printing, cutting, and sewing.

In a true microfactory, all of these steps are automated with little human intervention, even cutting. Sewing is still a bit of a bottleneck, but is getting more automated by the day, with a growing number of “sewbots” being introduced by Brother, Henderson, and others. Even transporting components from one stage to another can be automated, using conveyors, gantries, or robots.