Transcript Textile and Apparel Industry in Germany

The Situation of the Textile
and Clothing Industry in
Germany
Overview
I.
II.
III.
IV.
V.
The development of the textile
and clothing industry in Germany
The situation of the German
textile and clothing industry in
international comparison
Processes of re-organisation
pertaining to quality and
innovation
(Employment-) Policy
Results of the empirical research
(throughout all chapters)
I.
The development of the
textile and clothing industry
in Germany
Development of textile and clothing
industry in Germany
•
Textile and clothing industry is one of the oldest industries in
Germany: transition point from manufacture to the (early-)
industrial production.
•
In historical perspective, the textile and clothing industry settled
(1) in densely populated areas or
(2) in rural areas with beneficial location factors, esp. low
mountain range regions.
•
Centres of textile and clothing industry: North-Rhine-Westphalia,
Baden-Wuerttemberg, Bavaria and Saxony.
•
Cities with important cultural heritage and tradition still vivid today:
Aachen, Albstadt, Apolda, Augsburg, Aschaffenburg, Bad
Hersfeld, Bielefeld, Bocholt, Chemnitz, Crimmitschau, Krefeld,
Mönchengladbach, Nordhorn, Plauen, Wuppertal and Zittau.
Development of textile and clothing
industry in Germany
•
After the Second World War:
– Reconstructions
•
Starting in mid-60s:
– Structural changes
– New market- and competition-conditions
•
Beginning in the 1970s:
– Outsorcing
– Internationalisation
•
Since the 1990s:
– Globalisation
II.
The situation of the German textile
and clothing industry in international
comparison
The German Textile and Clothing Industry
Clothing Industry:
Number of Businesses
Source: Merkel, R: Aktuelle Probleme der Bekleidungswirtschaft und abgeleitete Ziele in der EURO TEXTIL REGION. http://www.3-cip.com/set/704/merkel.95005.pdf
The German Textile and Clothing Industry
Clothing Industry:
Number of Employees
Source: Merkel, R: Aktuelle Probleme der Bekleidungswirtschaft und abgeleitete Ziele in der EURO TEXTIL REGION. http://www.3-cip.com/set/704/merkel.95005.pdf
The German Textile and Clothing Industry
•
“The crux is that this branch is sensed as a blind alley”
- developments in the last years lead to a bad image:
(1) since the branch is seen by young people as a branch with no
future, only a few are interested in an apprenticeship in this
field.
(2) Young people, who are interested in an apprenticeship in the
clothing industry, are often stopped by their parents. Here also
the parents think that the branch is in a bad or even desperate
situation.
(3) In addition it is also possible that the counsellors at the job
centre try to stop young people who wish to start an
apprenticeship in the clothing industry.
The German Textile and Clothing Industry
Source: Gesamtverband Textil+Mode
The German Textile and Clothing Industry
Clothing Industry: Import
Source: Merkel, R: Aktuelle Probleme der Bekleidungswirtschaft und abgeleitete Ziele in der EURO TEXTIL REGION. http://www.3-cip.com/set/704/merkel.95005.pdf
The German Textile and Clothing Industry
Export
Source: Gesamtverband Textil+Mode
The German Textile and Clothing Industry
Employees in the textile and clothing industry
Source: Gesamtverband Textil+Mode
The German Textile and Clothing Industry
International comparison of labour costs in the textile and clothing industry
Source: Gesamtverband Textil+Mode
The German Textile and Clothing Industry
source: TextilWirtschaft
III.
Processes of re-organisation
pertaining to quality and
innovation
Processes of re-organisation
Guarantors for competitiveness:
- celerity, creativity and flexibility
- highly specialised and design intensive products
- exclusive service for customers (“single-unit
production”)
- high quality standards
- delivery reliability
- short ways of decision and short throughput times
- textile innovation and new technologies
Processes of re-organisation
• “In Germany one can only survive through
quality and celerity, everything else has no
chance because of the cheap imports.”
• But “quality is a finite term in the field of
clothing”. The Asian countries were able to catch
up in the field of quality through the transfer of
knowledge, “sooner or later the businesses will
be at eye level in the question of quality”.
Processes of re-organisation
• Technical textiles
– The production of technical textiles has right now a
market share of 40% in Germany.
– Germany therefore is the European market-leader in
the fields of technical textiles’ production and use and
also in the field of research and development.
– Especially the technical textiles’ sector is projected
good chances of economic growth for the future (six
per cent per year).
Processes of re-organisation
• Technical textiles
 MedTex
 ProTex
 BuildTex
 MobilTex
 EcoTex –
 PackTex
–
–
–
–
Use in the medical science,
Use for protection,
Use in building structures,
Use in cars, airplanes, trains or
busses,
Use in the protection of the
environment,
–
Use in wrapping and containing.
Processes of re-organisation
•
„The market success of businesses of the German clothing industry
becomes manifest not only in the offered products, but furthermore
the efficient organisation of supply chains with a flexible reaction
towards changing needs of the retail market are another decisive
factor of success.“
– The demands towards logistic services did grow higher and higher through the
international distribution of commodity flows. Therefore logistic services which
are offered in due time and which are flexible lead to more success.
– Special focus on coordination of in-house and cross-company used warehouses
and places of production.
– The use of information- and communication-technologies also leads to changes
in the logistic, which was already heavily influenced by technical innovations and
rationalisations.
– Through the usage of those technologies, a company now only needs a few, but
highly qualified employees which coordinate and oversee the required logistic
services – and this in time of growing productivity.
Processes of re-organisation
• “industrial made-to-measure clothing”
– individuality in cut, design and in composition of
materials and colours – production modernisation,
customer orientated, cost-saving.
– “BodyFit 3D”-scanner: With the help of a measuring
cabin around 35 relevant body measurements are
automatically collected within 90 seconds.
– The thus won data can now (1) be used as a basis for
modification construction or (2) be used for a
complete new construction of a cut. In this second
variant, a model cut pattern is created with the help of
CAD-tools.
Processes of re-organisation
• “RAPTIL – Reorganisation of the order
transaction along the interplant process chain in
the textile and mesh-industry”; esp. for SMEs:
– Aims:
• Integration of the order transaction and logistic along the
supply chain,
• Transparency’s upgrading in the order processing,
• Shortening of the product’s cycle time,
• Reduction of disturbances in the work flow,
• Increased efficiency of the logistic chain.
Processes of re-organisation
• „LogFashion“ – software tool for SMEs:
– offers an innovative option to test the own logistic services fast
and cheaply, based on technological achievements.
– The model takes into account specific parameters of the clothing
industry, e.g. the high orientation on seasonal trends, customer’s
pre-order share, distribution channel, buying behaviour, shortlived trends as well as the transport distance between producer
and customer.
Processes of re-organisation
• R&D as factor for innovation and
competitiveness:
– Precondition for an increased recourse and use of
product-, procedure- and process-innovations is a
common, good climate for innovation in the
businesses – but in many businesses R&D has been
reduced due to costs.
– Improvement in consideration of cooperation between
R&D and businesses.
– Initiative of “ZiTex” (“future innovative textile”)
and textile industry association in North RhineWestfalia
IV.
(Employment-) Policy
(Employment-) Policy
• Internationalisation and globalisation lead to changes in
working- and apprenticeship-conditions; most affected:
- Women (ca. 70% of employees are women)
- Junior employees
- Employees without academic education
• The Adecco index of job vacancies (based on regular evaluation of
40 print media): in 2003 most of the 600 job offers from the textile
industry were for business economists (154 offers), followed by
industrial engineers (21), computer scientists (20) and mechanical
engineers (14). The most frequently sought-after personnel were in
sales and distribution (227), production and assembly (66),
purchasing (34) and marketing (33)
• “Meanwhile often the technicians do the purchasing and they also
say what has to be delivered when and whereto.”
(Employment-) Policy
 Original textile occupations: 78
Commercial occupations:
87
Other occupations:
13
(Employment-) Policy
Revision of apprenticeship - “German
Vocational Education and Training Act”:
 Reduction of professions in textile and clothing
sector
 New topics and interfaces included – modernisation
adjusted to actual needs of the branch
 Staged apprenticeship
 Raising job attractiveness for young appliers
(Employment-) Policy
(Employment-) Policy
(Employment-) Policy
(Employment-) Policy
• Labour contracts and agreements
– The labour contract of the German textile and clothing
industry from Mai 2006 determines a linear increase
of the salaries, wages and apprenticeship pays by
2,5% starting November 1st 2006 and a second
increase of again 2,0% starting May 1st 2007.
– The labour contract is connected with a request for
more apprenticeship upon the businesses; a
compulsive takeover of trainees is still not planned for
the future.
– The labour contract also includes promotion of
(continuing and advanced) vocational trainings, but
this part does not get much response from many
company managements.
(Employment-) Policy
• Problem of rising energy costs:
„For small- and medium-sized businesses, growing
energy costs imply that the money is missing elsewhere.
Research will be postponed, therefore innovations are
avoided and the competitiveness on the international
market is lost.”
– textile and clothing industry strives for recognition as an energy
intensive branch as a political long-term objective. But: energy
policy is regional economic policy.
(Employment-) Policy
• Promotion and association work
– The federal association of the textile industry and the federal
association of the clothing industry syndicated in 2002 to the
“Confederation of the German Textile and Fashion Industry”; with
headquarters in Berlin and a representative office in Brussels
• Aims: Better public relations and more influence on political
decisions at early stage on national and international level
– The Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology arranges in
cooperation with the Association of the German Trade Fair
Industry and with the assistance of the Confederation of the
German Textile and Fashion Industry a special event “High-Tex
from Germany” in India.
• Aims: help medium-sized businesses of the textile industry in the
opening up and developing of new markets outside the EU, esp. in
the field of technical textiles.