Thanks to robotics, the South could see a return of the textile manufacturing industry. But take note: the 21st century textile industry will need skilled workers trained in using artificial intelligence devices, not sewing machines.
And it isn’t President Trump who is inaugurating this resurgence in American manufacturing, it is a Chinese company: Suzhou Tian Yuan Garments Co. Their latest factory in Arkansas will deploy 24 “Sewbots” that each can produce a new shirt in about 30 seconds. Many of the factory’s employees will not be seamstresses or tailors, but technicians with coding and electromechanical skills.
Palaniswamy Rajan, CEO of SoftWear Automation, which designed the Sewbots, commented, “We want people who can work with robots. That is where the new economy comes in.”
It’s interesting to note that the Sewbots’ creation stemmed from federally funded research into automated military uniform fabrication at the Georgia Institute of Technology. The robot-driven garment industry born of that research could add 50,000 to 100,000 U.S. jobs in the next 10 years, Rajan predicted.
We’ll let you draw your own conclusions about the importance of a military budget that has been imperiled by the push to build a border wall.