Textile companies should be tech companies

I don’t know another business quotation that has proven right over time like this one: “Every company will be a tech company.” The reason I say that is whatever you do, if you want to do it better, you need to be very efficient at technological solutions for the industry that you are working in. If you look at the biggest companies, you will see that they know how to use the latest technologies effectively.

Some of those companies are so efficient that they began to provide technology services to others. Amazon was the leader in this phenomenon. They were so efficient in cloud technology that another company was born out of it called Amazon Web Services (AWS), which is one of the biggest software solution companies in the world.

Of course, since Amazon was born into the web, it might be expected that they excelled in cloud technology. There are, however, some surprising tech giants that were once a small department in industries that were not directly related to high-end technology.

Hugo Boss Solutions is such an example. I didn’t know that the world-renowned suit maker is a technology leader. I knew that Hugo Boss had a world-class manufacturing plant in İzmir but did not know that they provide Industry 4.0 services as well.

The Hugo Boss factory in İzmir is a beacon of productivity. They are producing 900,000 suits, 2 million shirts and 550,000 women’s garments with 4,000 workers.

With such expertise, Hugo Boss Solutions provides production systems engineering, digital transformation, lean manufacturing, quality and assurance systems, organizational development, field managers development and leadership development services. There are many consulting companies offering similar services in Industry 4.0 and smart factory development processes. Hugo Boss Solutions, on the other hand, distinguishes itself from other companies with its scope, complexity and high skill.

It is great that they are using the factory in İzmir as a real-life laboratory. It means that Turkish engineers are creating value for the world.

Applications using augmented reality, virtual reality and voice recognition technologies in the Izmir plant have already been integrated into production lines. Among these applications, the Intelligent Artificial Intelligence Management (SAIL) project received the first prize in the production technologies category of International Data Corporation (IDC), one of the world’s leading big data and artificial intelligence institutions, in 2018. Virtual Dojo project, which includes virtual reality applications and facilitates and enhances the effectiveness of operator training processes, has won two international awards in the field of training and development.

Textiles is one the most important industries for Turkey. We need to keep up with the latest technologies if we as a country would like to keep textile leadership in the world. This can only happen if more companies invest in technology and research and development as Hugo Boss does.