PolyU Webinar Series (3) – A re-industrialization roadmap for the textile industry in Hong Kong

 The Institute for Entrepreneurship (IfE), PolyU organized a series of webinar in the theme “Booting Re-industrialization” so as to drive Hong Kong’s reindustrialization.  The third webinar named “A re-industrialization roadmap for the textile industry in Hong Kong” was held on 28^th Oct 2020.  Ms. Yan Chan (Director, Business Development, HKRTA) was moderator of this webinar.  

The first speaker was Honourable Felix Chung Kwok-pan, LegCo Member (Textiles and Garment) and his shared texties and garment industry.  He said it was not sunset industry eventhough people discussed for more than 30 years.  We still need cloth.  Mr. Felix Chung said we needed to change our mindset that no longer depended on large amount but design and technology.

The second speaker was Dr Raymond Chu (Chairman, Hong Kong General Chamber of Textiles) and his topic entitled “How should Textile and apparel companies to keep up with industrial 4.0”.  Firstly, he briefed the background from industry 1.0 to 3.0x.

Then he compared the industry 4.0 among Germany, USA and China.  He said Germany focused on machine automation and digitalization; USA led by digitalization through industry internet.  However, Made in China 2025 policy was found to be combined both.

After that Dr. Chu mentioned textile and apparel companies industry 4.0 roadmap.  Strategically, two directions included supply chain and market leader should be considered.  In tactic, core competence included innovation capability, flexible manufacturing, customerization, agility and cost control.

Finally, he briefed six levels of industry 4.0.  Alibaba achieved level 4 in i.4.0 that using cloud manufacturing.  Lastly, Dr. Chu concluded that all textile machine data should be standardized and communicated.  Eventhough it was difficulty but some manufacturers installed standardized topbox to collect all machines data.

The last speaker was Prof. Calvin Wong, Cheng Yik Hung (Professor in Fashion, PolyU) and his presentation title named “Potentiality of AI to Benefit the Fashion and Textile industries”. In the beginning, he discussed the trends of online apparel sales that would be increase significantly.  

Then Prof. Wong briefed the AI levels that had three level included Perception, Interaction and Exploration in which integrating AI with Fashion.

And then Prof. Wong demonstrated some their research using AI for fashion matching to customer including different types of color, fine-grained colors recognition.

Finally, he showed the Fashion AI attributes that they would like to enhance the accuracy of AI such as using in Alibaba to recognize product.

At the end, Prof. Wong mentioned AI employed in the Textile and Apparel Production especially in the challenge of automatic material inspection. 

Discussion Panel

Mr. Felix Chung said government without inter-departmental cooperation arrangement for traditional industry and innovation & technology.

Dr. Chu suggested PolyU or Government own the ERP and Big Data and then shared to industry through rental.

Prof. Wong would like to contribute to the whole industry, not individual company.

Reference:

Re-industrialisation Funding Scheme (RFS) - https://www.itf.gov.hk/en/funding-programmes/facilitating-technology/rfs/index.html

HKSTP AMC - https://amc.hkstp.org/

FHKI - https://www.industryhk.org/en/

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