Textile wonkery

Disclaimer: Dont tell me that i did not warn you. This is a WTF post actually started sitting at work. This IS work actually. I hope that the lack of time to write about generally nonsensical things will probably drive me to actually write more and more,um, useful things.

A thing or two about Textile processing in the Indian market's context:

General flow: 

Fiber (raw cotton) -I-> Yarn (thread) -II-> Fabric (woven stuff) -III-> Garment (stitched stuff)

I - the old fashioned 'mill owner type work' buy big bales of cotton and spin them into yarns :x - labor intensive - big establishments needed, dunno how it works in tamilnadu - lugging cotton all the way from other parts from India. The end product of mills is grey yarn.The grey yarn is procured by others and 'dyed' to give 'dyed yarn' 

II - yarn to fabric - umpteen units function in this segment - they convert one kind / mutliple of yarns into clothing material - kind of like taking black thread and making a roll of black cloth - if u get the picture. There are a million variations in this process - all kinds of names for different weaving techniques and so on.

III  - Fabrics to garment is of course the business of converting colored rolls of cloth into shirts, trousers and underpants by stitching. 

** Grey means 'undyed'/'unprocessed,um, in terms of chemical treatment'

1) Natural fiber based

i) Cotton

        1. Cotton fiber -> Fiber dyeing (niche)

        2. Grey yarn -> Yarn dyeing (Major volume)

        3. Grey fabric -> Fabric dyeing (Major volume)

        4. Garment -> Garment dyeing (Almost unheard of in terms of volume)   

So cotton processing essentially needs just two systems to be standardized - (2) and (3) - yarn dyeing and garment dyeing. Probably needs just about 5 or 6 chemicals per system - leaving of course the dyes alone. Needless to say, big market in South India.

ii) Silk  -  There is a lot of Yarn dyeing (Silk yarn that is) - little fabric dyeing - most of the silk is processed (colored) as thread and then woven - for eg. into sarees and the likes. Silk garments are nearly always made by dyed yarn  - Rarely does one see grey silk made into fabric to then getting dyed. There are one thousand quirks in the art of silk dyeing, special dyes need to be developed and so on. Volume vis-a-vis cotton is pretty small.

iii) Wool - Smallish market in the south. Mediumish market in the North - Some fiber dyeing - most business remains in Yarn dyeing - and then wet processing, feel modifying of the spun fabric - theres a lot of fancy fabric manufacture - knitting etc. - the chemicals needed are slightly different. Again 2 systems needed for Yarn dyeing & Fabric dyeing - the formulations will remain identical - but minor tweaking needed. Overall volume / clientele is not too exciting to work up a sweat initially.

2) Synthetic fibers

Polyester , Polycotton (Cotton synthetic blends), Polyviscose (Rayon etc.), Exotic ones.

These are chemically made stuff - directly extruded into fibers - the end product is like rolls of thread - synthetically made - the fun part is that they can be blended together with each other DURING extrusion (some cases) - or they can be ROLLED together with a certain proportion of cotton t0 provide a sort of a balance in properties. They are even sold as 'colored threads' made directly with a color - no need to be dyed.

Polyester remains the largest segment - big in ludhiana - growing in the south - Polyester yarn dyeing and polyester fabric dyeing need nicely tuned systems - the mechanism of dye fixing on them is different from the process involving cotton for eg. - so this system is something that needs a different portfolio of products.

A nicely balanced, client focussed portfolio with good surfactants / wetting / degreasing, soaping, stabilizing agents, levelling agents, fixing agents and surface feel modifiers - a portfolio totalling not more than 15 products ought to do the trick. 

We appear to have close to 40 - the old man only smirks if queried. Theres is this new testing machine in the plant which churns out rolls of processed yarn day in day out validating customer formulations vs ours and so on - measuring everything from fastness to water uptake.

The guy in the lab tried to jargonbomb his way out of my queries - but the poor bugger isnt aware that ive been through this with hazaar times more nutty stuff like leather processing where they maintain local sets of jargon in every possible language - punjabi, tamil, urdu, arabic, chinese, thai and what not.

Any specialty / application oriented chemical business is best approached by breaking it down into simple operations. So the nextime someone says PE, PC or PV - you know that hes just jargonbombing you to keep you from questioning his body of knowledge on the subject / to make sure that you treat him as an expert. 

Continuing with the rant from earlier posts, i think the luckiest bloke in the world is someone who is a Cotton/PE/PC/PV processing wonk and hasnt even heard of Megan Fox or Intrinsic value estimation by Graham/Dodd/Buffett first principles. 

So, we end with more gyaan thusly -  "pick your designated area - become a wonk and stay as one forever"

[P.s Please do not leave comments containing swearwords or cast unwarranted aspersions on my character based on the contents of just one or two posts made when seriously  stressed. :x ]

F*$#ing blogger. Screws up font formatting like this. Its behaving like quite an ass on Chrome, dunno why.