Sewing in Seoul

The lowly industrial sewing-machine is being transformed with technology once reserved for the automotive and consumer-electronics industries, reports Evan Ramstad in The Wall Street Journal (2/5/13). Sunstar Machinery, in Seoul, South Korea, “last year started producing sewing and embroidery machines with computers and displays built into them.” These new machines enable greater quality control over the stitching of a given garment, while also providing “feedback on production … to the customer, usually a wholesale distributor or even a retailer.”

Sunstar chairman Park In-chul says the technology is important in today’s retail world: “Fashion is being challenged by fast retail,” he says. “Our system provides more information than they’ve ever seen from their suppliers.” Such advancements have only become possible over “the past two years or so that the combination of computing and networking technologies became inexpensive enough to be cost-effective on industrial sewing machines.”

The machines do cost “about 50 percent” more than traditional machines, “making them a challenging sell in an industry that is highly sensititve to costs and operates mainly in low-wage countries in Asia.” Chris Kim of Bethel Industries, which makes military apparel, says a “25 percent jump in production” has more than offset the expense of the machines” because it gives him “the ability to look at anything in real-time.” As he observes: “The industry is sort-of risk-averse, but there is going to be a change in mindset … We’re all living in more data-centric environments.”