Held after a long gap of two years, GTE Bangalore, as anticipated, met with very high expectations of not only Bangalore, but rather of whole southern India’s garment manufacturing industry. However, the reflections of the weak economy could be seen dominating the mood of both the technology providers and garment manufacturers.In many ways GTE was a relief which presented an opportunity to the technology providers to showcase automated technology to reduce dependency on this rising cost of labour and also surmount the scarcity of trained labour. More than the technology suppliers it was companies presenting IT solutions to improve visibility in the manufacturing process for improving efficiency and productivity that were in demand.
While there was a thrust from the technology suppliers, it was met by a hold sign from the garment exporters, as they all were impacted by the slowdown in the EU and US economy. One direction that emerged loud and clear was to do something differently and catering to domestic market has a strong resonance. Even bigger than the recession, it was the slowdown of Tirupur which was the talk of the aisle meetings at the fair. The discussions revolved around the number of companies on the verge of closure due to the impact of high borrowing rate and reducing order numbers.
In terms of new technological directions, a lot of indigenous real time data collection systems for the shop floor like Inspire and Pro-con were present at the fair, and seemed no less than any international competitor. Another trend which continued from the previous versions of the GTE to this one was the absence of owners of various apparel manufacturing organizations, instead key production and management personnel were present to make all technology-oriented decisions. It seems the top management is concerned more with optimizing the internal systems and external strategies than buying technology, hence has delegated the task to the right people in the organization. Madura, Shahi, Gokaldas Exports, SKNL, Radhamani, Raymond, Cotton Blossom and many more companies visited the fair, highlighting that all is not lost…
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