+0)26-4

6
Conclusion

Textile industry was and is one of the largest industries of eastern and western countries, added huge amount
to its national economy. Apart from providing employment for larger percent of the population, several
ancillary industries like chemical, dye and dyeing, lathe machinery, printing, processing and many more
were sprouted out that directly or indirectly to support the main root, the textile industry.
Since the time unmemorable, it is learnt from history that the primitive man, the hunter who lived in forests,
wandered from place to place in search of food, protected his body with fleece, animal hyde, leaves, bark,
climber and other similar natural materials. These hunters though far away from the civilization expressed
their flare for self-adornment using the forest vegetation, animal skin, bone, horn, teeth, as a symbol of
strength and bravery.
With the passage of time the hunters became cultivators, who took up farming as their profession, grew food
crops along with the plants of natural fibres—flax and cotton. The spinning, basketry, weaving and colouring
with natural dyes gradually knitted in the beautiful life of mankind. Even the ancient excavations showed the
evidence of ornamentations through colours, dyes and embroidery. Cave paintings, pot paintings, bodily
paintings in general indicated that painting on the cloth was the first step to add colour on to cloth.
The industrialization introduced innumerable innovative techniques in every field, especially in textile
sector. The textile industry grew gradually in every country, and is now recognized as one of the most
flourishing industries at global scenario. The outcome of intensive research and development in the raw
materials—fibre, yarn and fabric is incredible. Many textile industries in the process of R&D with latest
technology are concentrating on New Product Development especially high tech smart textiles.
However, for the convenience of the study, the textile manufacturing industries may be grouped as industrial
and apparel & home textiles on the basis of their application. Most consumers are not actually aware of the
segment of textile industry, known as ‘industrial textiles’, which may be in simple words explained as ‘the
textile material which one can not wear it, sit on it, walk on it, or sleep on it’. Fashion is not a factor in
industrial fabrics instead functional characteristics as strength, durability, serviceability, flexibility, resist-
ance for chemicals are more important. Consumers of industrial products often deal with the civil construc-
tion, mining, sanitation and industrial transport, medicine; military and space; geo-textiles applied in soil
and soil based structures such as road building, dam construction, erosion control and agriculture. The
industrial fabrics are developed to meet specific requirement with little or no aesthetic value. But textiles
used in automobile and aircraft interiors, and in some luggage and shoes, and for these uses aesthetics are as
important as specific technical requirement.
The apparel and home textiles many times are not only functional but may be decorative too; sometimes
more aesthetic than functional and rarely more functional than decorative. The decoration of textiles formu-
lates another giant branch of apparel and home textiles where the artists and designers play a vital role to
beautify the yardage to provide better choice for the consumers.
 96 Surface Designing of Textile Fabrics

The end product and/or fabric of specific end use often recognize textile companies. Mills may produce
fabrics for various segments of the market but most develop fabrics exclusively for one end use. The apparel
industry is the largest textile sector produces variety of children’s wear, women’s wear, men’s wear, sports
wear, outer wear, inner wear, hosiery, lingerie, swim suits, accessories like bags, scarves, hats, parasols,
gloves and many more.
Similarly home textiles encompass bed linen, table linen, towels, shower curtains, table tops, and so on.
Another sector of the mill that produces draperies, curtains, upholstery, floor coverings that are used for
home (often referred as residential decorative, or home furnishings area) and those for commercial use such
as office, hotels, or hospital interiors (called the contract area).
The artist or designer is the one who has strong background in basic design and colour principles to work
creatively in the textile field. The textile designer’s job is multifaceted, requiring thorough understanding of
the customer for whom the product is intended, knowledge of related and competing products and any sphere
that influences the design world, and mastery of technical considerations of fabric production. Perhaps most
important for the designer is the ability to present new ideas at appropriate time and place so that the
intended market can make best use of them.
The spine of the designer’s career is their artwork in the studio. The creation, designing, and completion of
artwork on paper are the base from which the aesthetic features of fabric are woven. Ideas for techniques,
materials, and references encourage new interpretations and experimentations.
Apart from the skill and updated knowledge, the designer must be able to anticipate future trends and co-
ordinate the release of new fabrics for future forecast and peak marketability. In general the consumers who
continuously aspire for change, new and unique or exclusive, dictate the marketability of the textile. In fact
this trend of change is universally referred as fashion. Historically certain trends are cyclic, because the
consumers when tired or bored with one design trend or style wish for a change. The change is often seen
with respect to colour, design or motif or pattern and style. The motif, colour and style are interdependent
since are the part and parcel of textile designing. The change in motif and colour would ultimately decide the
style. Through intuitive ability and research, the designer must be committed to the emerging trends well
ahead of the time.
The artists get inspiration and gather valuable information from historical records, books, magazines, muse-
ums, historical societies, art galleries, sculptures, civil works, textile collections, trade periodicals, trade
shows, fashion shows etc. The display of fabrics in well-known major museums is the wonderful source for
the designers to draw attention towards motifs or designs of a particular era.
A designer’s job is not only to respond to customers demand but also to cultivate taste within the public.
When a designer receives negative reaction to a product, should find a way to show the idea in another way
that will be better accepted.
Thus, a good designer must keep up with any facet of life, which may affect the design but never confine to
the work that has been already done before or the one is being done currently. The textile industry like any
other business, desires to continue with products that are saleable. However, a new idea, expressed in a new
way and well presented will boost sales. The essence of textile design is to market these new ideas.
Colour and design are closely associated in many of the objects surrounding us; the form and colour of one
object against the background of another form and colour makes the universe meaningful. Although a large
percentage of plain coloured fabrics have no design, a great amount of textile designing could be achieved by
application of colour to attain or to emphasise the design form and its details.
 Conclusion 97

The history of man’s use of colour and design is most fascinating; the colour and design have been used by all
pre historic people in climates ranging from temperate to tropical all over the world. In colder climates
there was more limitation on colour.
Colouring fabric is the primary mode of decoration, has very limited variety. Dipping the grey or bleached
fabric in the dye bath, colours the fabric uniformly without any pattern, but of course is a means to improve
the aesthetic appeal.
Yarn dyeing has lead to a greater variety of patterns, when woven. The stripes, checks, plaids, shirting,
gingham, madras are the live examples of geometric patterns created through weaving. Union fabrics woven
with warp and weft of each different colour, say for instance light and dark shades respectively produced
double coloured or shaded effect, usually referred as ‘Dhoop-Chawn’ or ‘day-night’ or ‘shot colours’.
‘Ikat’ is another example of yarn dyed fabric rooted from Indonesia where either warp or weft yarns or both
are tie-dyed prior to weaving and interlaced in order to produce irregular patterns across the cloth width.
Clear and well outlined motifs can be woven by interlacing tie-dyed warp and weft yarns very carefully and
skilfully.
Similar to ikats, ‘tie-dyed’ designs are a class of resist style patterns famous worldwide, where the substrate
is woven fabric. Apart from basic 5–6 methods of tying techniques, combination of two or more techniques
produces interesting effects. The tie-dyed patterns in India is called as ‘bandhani’ means, a small tiny spot
effect either round or square.
The preparatory processes involved in ikat weaving and tie-dyeing is relatively elaborate and labour inten-
sive. The artisans still have preserved the rich heritage of this craft by continuing their occupation from
generation to generation, depicting the warmth of their culture. In fact this profession is a livelihood for
many, who earn better returns especially in the tourists places. However, these fabrics occupy a prominent
place in the fashion cycle, as they have endless utility and application initiating from dress materials to
home furnishings, wall decorations, made-ups, garment accessories including scarves and handkerchiefs.
Innumerable dyed materials in variegated shades and tints are available in the market to satisfy the con-
sumer needs. The fabric dyed in single colour has its own beauty but gradient effects of monochromatic
colour further enhance its appearance. The textile materials dyed in cool and warm colours are the fabrics
of seasons.
Of the many advantages of dyed substrate, the prime one being, creating patterns against coloured ground.
The technique of creating patterns against coloured ground is the unique feature of discharge printing where
the discharging agent reduces the colour thus, producing dark coloured ground with light coloured pattern.
Localized dyeing is another term used for printing, the technique dates back at least two thousand years.
Initially the fabric was hand printed but today is done with sophisticated computer aided processes.
Printed fabrics exhibited wider diversity than dyed, probably new printing techniques being constantly added
to the old list in order to satisfy the consumer behaviour. Consumer buying behaviour is unpredictable that
keeps changing several times before a final purchase is made. However, the printed fabrics have provided
greater scope for consumer choice and sales promotion.
In fact the patterned fabrics of course are more attractive and appealing than the simply dyed ones. The fact
being that motifs used on textile materials are infinite, sorted from natural, stylised, geometrical and
abstract categories printed with unlimited colour ways. It is amazing to learn that no two fabrics would ever
have same motifs until and unless intended for. A simple naturalistic floral motif could be modified into
geometrical or stylised or even abstract, by skilful manipulation. A designer may modify a realistic floral
motif into stylised and another designer in turn may modify slightly this stylised floral motif into a new one,
thus the concept of patenting textile motif or design is far from reality.
 98 Surface Designing of Textile Fabrics

Unlimited effects and patterns can be produced by repeating a single motif in definite yet different orders.
Some of the major pattern repeating orders are block, brick, drop and step; furthermore, the skilful combi-
nation of these repeating orders would result into wonderful designs.
The principal virtue of printed, as opposed to woven, patterned cloth is that printing technology allows a
number of colours to be introduced into a design and is relatively inexpensive. A further advantage to a
printed textile is that a perfect copy of any object, for instance a flower, could be obtained. With prevailing
sophisticated colour printing processes, accurate with finely detailed flower in all colour range is possible.
Most printed cloth mass-produced is inexpensive but the hand printed fabrics are relatively expensive. In
general the printed fabric is lighter in weight than its woven counterparts. Of course the quality and the
texture of fabric would greatly affect the printed design.
In the past many textiles were hand printed and the most beautiful and popular one in the eighteenth century
was the Indian calico. In the west, hand printing is the revived art. Unlike hand printing, hand painting gives
the designer an unique opportunity to create a design, but consequently it has greater value than printed
textiles. This area of handycraft is labour intensive and very elaborate, thus time consuming. Indian
‘kalamkari’ is internationally known hand painted textile; natural colours with mordant produced good
number of shades, exclusively an eco-friendly fabric. Though hand painting is the imitation for textile
designing, not frequently and abundantly used for surface designing especially in mass-producing sectors.
The personnel involved or engaged in hand painting need to have thorough knowledge on tracing or transfer-
ring the design, mixing colours to obtain intermediate shades, colour consistency and use of neutral colours.
Painted patterns are much different from printed, in terms of hand and feel, the former being relatively stiff
and less rendering.
Surface enrichment by colouring with dyes or a coloured pattern through printing and painting is entirely
different from decoration evolved with thread work, commonly referred, as embroidery may be hand, ma-
chine or computer assisted stitchery on a woven fabric. The term embroidery covers a variety of skills,
which use the stitch as a major patterning device. Often the term embroidery is referred as applied art,
because it involved stitching of a pattern or image using variety of threads like, cotton, silk, rayon, wool,
synthetics and metallic threads like gold, silver and at times even copper too. The quality coloured silk yarn
ravelled from the old or worn out dresses and made-ups was used for hand embroidery in earlier days. The
delicate and finely hand embroidered patterns appeared almost like woven designs and it is needless to say
that these embroidered articles priced remarkably high in the international markets. The handwork and hand
skill are the root cause for hand embroidery, which is unique regionwise with respect to types of stitches,
threads and colour combination, design/motif, ground cloth and products or articles embroidered on.
Machine embroidery though has simplified the hand stitching with respect to time and labour but the essence
of intricacy, delicacy and aesthetic appeal remained untouched. Hence, till date the hand embroidery in the
world of art and decoration has treasured its name and fame. Though the computers have taken the charge of
embroidery in the recent years, the power driven embroidery machine yet monopolizes the market since the
former being very expensive to be invested for domestic or small-scale production. However, some of the
hand embroideries, by their very nature, labour intensive and some cannot be translated to machine produc-
tion. Since the artistic skills are gradually becoming extinct, many of the embroidered textiles available
today are often antique. However, the government and NGO functionaries are working on the revival of
applied textile-making skills and interpreting them in new and exciting ways.
The thread work worked into an embroidery pattern is an attractive and pleasing mode of surface designing
the textile material. It is very much true that the threads/yarns create miracles in the field of textile
designing. Embroidery is worked against a ground fabric, that’s how it differs from woven design, which
primarily works with yarns, texture and patterns given by the weave, rather than a surface design. Thus, all
 Conclusion 99

the woven patterns are categorised as structural designs, a mode of designing that is remarkably expensive
than dyeing and printing. Though weaving involves manipulation of interlacement order of two sets of yarns,
the warp and the weft or three sets of yarns, the warp, the weft and either extra warp or extra weft, can
produce almost infinite design structures by permutation and combination of yarns of several origin, yarn
type, yarn size, weaves, textures, design repeat, design base, colour ways and weaving machines employed.
The simple grey fabric taken from the loom need to undergo one or the other finish may be basic/special or
mechanical/chemical that in turn would be permanent or temporary in order to have better acceptance in the
market. These finishes consist of application of a wide variety of treatments and special processes that give
the fabric some quality that is needed to enhance its aesthetic or performance properties. Some finishes
modify appearance, some modify behaviour and some modify both appearance and behaviour of the fabric.
Many surface finishes have greater impact on the appearance of the fabric. Sometimes these finishes pro-
duce a related change in the texture or hand-feel or both and occupy an important position in textile design-
ing.
Handloom fabrics, once upon a time produced were world famous for the textures, fineness, light-weight,
transparent appearance and the best example is the Dacca Muslin, woven with yarns of 1200s, in India. The
legend described this muslin as ‘woven air’, ‘evening dew’ and ‘running water’. With advent of new synthetic
yarns and weaving machines, the horizon of creating woven patterns expanded and especially with jacquard
looms.
Joseph Marie Jacquard, the son of silk weaver inherited his father’s small weaving business, but because of
unfavourable trade, changed his employment. In 1790 he was given the task of restoring the loom made by
Jacques de Vaucasan. Working on this loom led to him developing a keen interest in the mechanization of
silk manufacture. The silk wage weavers, fear of unemployment resulted in destruction of Jacquard’s first
loom but the French government took over the invention and Jacquard was honoured with a royalty on every
loom sold.
Although the history of weaving technology is age old, there is still a need for modernizing the existing
method of weave designing. The classical way of producing a jacquard design is a very costly and time-
consuming affair. The designers were facing difficulty in keeping pace with the fast changing trends of the
market to meet quick response. These are the driving forces behind the use of Computer Aided Designing
systems in textile industry. CAD is the tool to a designer to enhance his imaginative power and efficiency.
It offers great potentiality to the designer to innovate his ideas and experiment with them.
The developments in modern weaving technologies have resulted in a considerable increase in the loom
speed, quality production and reduction on cost, time and labour.
Ultimately when the weavers were asked on what were they looking for? Their answer was a machine that
could produce a shed with least effects, at the same time controlling this effect by means of computer data
transferred electronically to the jacquard head, that would be capable of running at realistic modern weaving
speeds with minimum maintenance and at a practical cost to the weaver.
A modern jacquard of average configuration operating on a high speed-weaving machine can involve nearly
700 million selection processes in an eight-hour shift. If the jacquard has to perform error-free over long
periods, the high performance could only be achieved by major changes in its operation. Some of the
important modifications achieved were minimizing the movement in primary motions, using lightweight
reinforced plastics and materials with high wear resistance, extra ordinary fine tolerances in engineering
and fitting, and minimizing down times. The conventional machinery complex often required lubrication
with oil that inevitably found its way into the harness and then into the cloth. Thus, the solution was to have
minimum number of moving parts and have no oiling points or oil stains, which adversely affect the fabric.
100 Surface Designing of Textile Fabrics

Tremendous developments were also brought about in the input units. With the electronic jacquards, the
cylinder and cards were totally eliminated. The electronic device, the solenoids, has replaced the mechani-
cal selection process by needles, which prevailed in the conventional jacquard.
The main objective of the electronic jacquard was the same as the mechanical jacquard but due to the high
speed required, electric circuits and solenoids replaced mechanical selection devices.
Similar to conventional jacquards, all electronic jacquards employ two hooks for each warp end and work on
the pulley principle.
The electronic jacquards may be grouped into two depending on the position of hooks during selection,
whether at its top-most position or at bottom-most position.
CAD is not really new; it is essentially a natural progression when dealing with complicated point paper
designs. Systems of this kind were used in assisting the punching of cards and creative works. The effect of
using the same system to convert floppy disk or cassette directly into CDROM or cartridge, or even hard
wired on to the jacquard head, is simply the elimination of card punching, elimination of people who have to
climb often in precarious situations to change the bulky sets of cards, and of the storage of cards, which
would take enormous storage space. Also some systems offer the possibility of adjustments to the design on
loom and the speed of calling the design onto the screen from the archive is negligible compared to the work
involved in adjustments on punched cards. Surely the installation of jacquard on to the modern and most
sophisticated looms eliminates the existing problem of keeping the antiquated machinery. Hence, the elec-
tronic jacquard is the solution of economy with flexibility.
The main function of the electronic system is to programme the magnetic tape cassettes used as programme
carrier for the electronically controlled jacquard machines. This system is based on manual reading-in or on
reading-in by camera or scanner and is connected to powerful computer.
Introducing new technology like CAD systems electronic jacquard will certainly attract the young, bright,
and enthusiastic people into the textile industry. It certainly needs them if the industry has to continue to
flourish.
The emerging electronic jacquards have a tremendous impact on industrial and commercial trends. The
industry was technically driven then, but now it is design driven. Many scholars from Art Schools are more
challenging because of extra ordinary design skills than technical know—how of jacquard or dobby weaving.
Today the runs are shorter and designs, which are suitable in the market, are for a short time. Thus the
equation may be, the design made in 2000 was almost three folds than the ones made in 1990.But the meters
of fabric woven per design would amount for only one third of the length.
The jacquard heads are getting bigger each year; there are looms that may have a pattern repeat of 1.4
meter. The looms have very high weaving efficiencies with one weaver supervising 20 machines. It is
apparent that though the capital investment is high but there would be a remarkable reduction on labour cost
per meter off fabric. This is an ideal combination for high labour cost, high skill countries like USA and
Europe.
When the jacquards became electronic, in a matter of time they were networked. But it is surprising that
only a small portion of the total weavers is networked in the global scenario. The network has two advan-
tages: low labour cost and few errors; though the cost of design charge are less, the firm can make shorter
runs/length without reducing profits.
Another emerging field of surface designing where networking has made remarkable progress is digital
printing.
Ink jet technology has developed to a point where it is driving a growing multi-billion dollar industry
worldwide. The development of chemistry (ink) for this printing is expanding its application beyond paper
printing to textile and industrial printing and fluid deposition.
 Conclusion 101

Digital printing is one of the many enabling technologies with respect to this division. Despite some limita-
tions in terms of colour, speed and print quality, the value of digital printing has been recognized and
technology adopters visualizing its impact for sampling, sales and merchandising. On the positive side, there
is plenty of evidence for the continuation of technological advances to support the shift from vision to reality.
Digital printing aims to provide large cost reduction for converters and printers, significantly increase new
product choices, shorter time to develop new products and leverage expertise in colour separation.
Designing different types of products that leverage the advantage of digital printing is the first milestone
towards rethinking about implement of digital printing, which means sales and marketing strategies that
leverage short run production i.e., thinking about the business from the perspective of mass customisation as
opposed to mass production. The ‘agile manufacturing’ refers to the ability to print, cut, sew and ship
immediately on demand.
The traditional chemistries used in textile printing are becoming available as ink jet inks for many printing
systems, being offered. Dye inks tailored to the end use and pigmented inks offering good functional perform-
ance are made available in the market.
Ink jet printing is non-impact or non-contact printing method, projecting drops of ink on to surfaces to be
printed. There are two types of ink jet printers—the coarse with maximum resolution of 40 dpi, essentially
found its application in textile industry; the finer printer offer resolution up to 300 dpi can print as continuous
stream (CS) and drop-on demand (DOD).
The grey fabric has to undergo a couple of preparatory processes viz., singeing, desizing, scouring and
bleaching to remove impurities and to provide fabric a uniform absorbency and whiteness. This processed
substrate is then pre-treated with selective chemicals, an important feature of ink jet printing that varied
with types of dyes used in the inks. For instance alginates on cotton to control penetration, urea to enhance
the hue depth, alkali to form covalent bond between dye and fibre and so on.
Ink jet inks may be broadly grouped as solvent based inks are dye and pigment, and water based inks viz.,
acid dye, disperse dye (sublimation), reactive dye, pigments with and without binders applied as per the
affinity between fibre and ink. However, care must be taken to consider the compatibility between substrate
and its pre-treatment, printing ink, method of printing and post printing finish applied to enhance the colour-
fastness.
Theoretically 4 basic colours cyan (C), magenta (M), yellow (Y) and black (B) inks are used in process
colour printing but there are printers with 7,8 and 12 colour capacity, which achieve much closer results
desired by the textile industry. However, the hardware and ink options available to the textile industry are
the reflection of a growing market that has yet to develop standards.
Colour management and Raster Image Processor (RIP) software manage colour by creating profiles or
characterization specific to the printer, ink, fabric and any post processing such as steaming and washing. In
fact RIP basically is a means of communication between the computer and printer that assists with ink
limitations, basic profile tweaking, scaling and layout prints on the fabric.
Digital printing of textiles is a new concept and with the exception of sampling, presently is not widely used
hence hard to classify the defects and even harder to rate in order of frequency. However the most common
problems: misfits, stick-ins, scrimps, wicking and dithering, which can easily be overcome by appropriate
engineering, alignment of screens, proper feeding of the substrate in the printer and suitable fabric
preparation.
Several textile designers are concentrating on vitalizing the surface design techniques by researching and
reinventing the indigenous methods prevailed in various cultures worldwide. Combining multiple techniques
102 Surface Designing of Textile Fabrics

insists artists to take up the task of pre-treating the substrate, in order to ensure acceptable colour fastness
may be steaming, washing or any similar after treatment.
In other words, the development of digital textile printing technology has challenged today’s artists, design-
ers and craftsmen to rethink how they could move forward within the textile design field. In fact it is very
encouraging to see a large number of artists experimenting their traditional surface designing technique with
emerging ink jet technology. Hand painting, resist dyeing, discharge and burnout indigenous techniques are
now been tried to blend with ink jet printing to create new-age cloth.
The print innovations shall change the entire face of traditional surface design and digital technology by
blending craftsmanship, that create a market for micro-manufacturers and small scale print shops to create
impact on the fashion, textile, home furnishing and interior design industries.
While analog print methods best address the need of mass production and increase quality printing, the
digital printing can best serve demands for variable information on quick response, just-in-time delivery and
short print outs. Digital printing has many advantages over analog printing: it requires minimal press set up;
dose not use film masters, stencils, screens or plates; uses less hazardous chemicals; leaves meagre waste
and results in less negative environmental impact; digital process has replaced optical and manual methods
but extended digital processing for Internet, CD-ROM, Video and TV, print media and multimedia.
Whether print the image digitally or analogically or blending both techniques few factors to be considered
are—image quality and resolutions, process speed, durability, applicability both indoor and outdoor, eco-
friendliness, consistency in the colour, reproducibility and ultimately cost of production.
Digital printing is not an easy task. It involved considerable labour like loading the printer with the fabric
bolts, steaming the fabric after printing, hand washing, and regular printer maintenance. But there is nothing
better than creating something beautiful on fabric, which is truly one-of-a-kind.
Digital printing is an emerging technology and process within the new supply chain. Most of the adopters of
this technologies face challenges with some limitations. But the companies are making it happen today on a
variety of levels, despite the barriers.
The current ink jet configuration covers productivity ranging over 200 square meters per hour. As production
speeds and print quality enhances the capital and consumable cost decreases. Analog printing technologies
will continue to hold quality and production speed advantages for the near future but digital improvements
for the next decade may continue to erode analog market share.
Market demands for reduced inventory risk, quick response, variable information processing, personaliza-
tion and customisation are favourably influencing the adoption of digital imaging and ink jet printing tech-
nologies. They have grown to dominate niches and segments of textile printing. Its expansion could open new
vista of application that may replace analog printing and occupy global market share.
Today creating patterns on advanced looms has been simplified by interfacing computer system. Automation,
computer application and development of sophisticated electronic control system have made ‘quick re-
sponse’ and ‘just-in-time’ manufacturing possible. These technologies are applied almost every step of the
manufacturing process.
The computer-aided design (CAD) in textiles is applied to yarns, weave structures (fabrics), and colour
ways. Eventually there is CAD software, which are also applied in garment designing/styling and manufac-
turing as well as production of knitted goods. With the CAD programmes the designer can make patterns and
modify the ideas on the monitor at a faster rate thus, speeding up the productivity. Computer generated
designs allow for faster transfer of the design to engraved screens and CAD assists to simulate the design
ideas. However, a couple of disadvantages encountered are; the colours in computer print outs are not as
true as those in painted representation of design, the traditional means of depicting printed or woven design.
Back up tapes are to be maintained to protect the computer memory when power outlays.
 Conclusion 103

Computer Aided Manufacturing (CAM) helps with the production of fabrics. Specific areas of application
include electronic equipment for monitoring operations, equipment that controls specific operation and
equipment that diagnoses and corrects the errors. Often CAM system eliminates some of the steps in the
product processing. ‘Quick response’ and ‘just-in-time’ are the words of textile industry, where computers
play a key role to monitor inventories and store and retrieve data about raw materials, process of order and
linkages with customers. This kind of inter-system communications are referred as Computer Integrated
Manufacturing (CIM). The systems that are not compatible probably inhibit electronic communication
between different segments of the industry.
The textile and apparel industries have formed an organization funded jointly, largely by matching grants
from the industry and federal government, called the Textile/Clothing Technology Corporation (TC)². The
main objective of this organization is to conduct research on application of electronic technology in both
textile and apparel industries in turn educate the engineers, technologists, designers, merchandisers, educa-
tors and executives on automated system, their potential and application.