Visions of an autonomous factory are rapidly becoming a reality

摘要

Digital printing was the undoubted star of the show during the last ITMA exhibition (held in 2015), but during next year's subsequent edition of one of our industry's most important events it will be the automation of and data exchange between manufacturing technologies (so-called "Industry 4.0"） that will dominate the attention. Plenty of evidence in favour of this assertion was to be found during the ITMA Asia + CITME satellite exhibition held in Shanghai, China, on 15-19 October 2018, where machinery builders and their representative bodies spoke enthusiastically about the rapid and disruptive changes that Industry 4.0 is causing across all areas of textile and garment manufacturing.