Alibaba’s Top Secret Rhino Smart Manufacturing Platform Takes Digital Textile Automation To New Level
Image Courtesy of Beta
Alibaba’s new manufacturing platform, Rhino Smart Manufacturing, which has been kept “secret for 3 years”, was officially unveiled a month back.
The concept is based upon the digitalisation of Textile Production.
From Printing to Cutting to Automated Sewing the factory shows a turn of speed that is truly breath-taking.
The core ability of Rhino Factory lies in “customization on demand, 100 pieces minimum order, 7 days delivery as soon as possible”.
In short, it takes only 7 days from the time the order is placed to when the consumer wears it.
WU XUEGANG CEO, Alibaba Rhino Smart Manufacturing "Our hope is to continue to expand Rhino manufacturing, to create an inclusive, win-win and open, digital collaborative network, serving 100-thousand businesses, and forming a trillion-level digital intelligent manufacturing ecosystem."
The opening of this digital factory specialising in taking small orders, serving small and medium businesses and entrepreneurs, and is helping them to have the ability to compete with big brands.
This allows small clothing brands to take off, concentrate on design and style, and in doing so, catch the fashion trend when it its most profitable.
In the factory workshop, there are many different small orders at any one time, and shirts, T-shirts and other autumn models of different brands are circulating on the same production line.
This may be the first time that the clothing industry is approaching the speed of the fresh food industry.
The historical “production-based sales” model had its drawbacks, because the sales volume is unpredictable and the production scale of a single model is too large, so high inventories often occur, and in this Textiles, inventory is often the key to the survival of a company.
So when manufacturing is intelligent, and products can be produced based on sales and flexible manufacturing, this will have a greater impact on small and medium businesses.
