Robots Will Be Better At Making Clothes Than Humans.

In a huge factory workshop, Kiran Kumari, dressed in purple and gold sand, sat in front of the Brother sewing machine (Brother) and sat around ten garment workers.

She waved her arm skillfully, picked up a piece of cloth from a bundle of cloth beside her, put a piece of white ornament on it and ran it quickly under the machine needle.

This is just one of the 400 collars that Kumari has sewed for Lav Lauren's (Polo Ralph Lauren) shirt in 8 hours of work. It takes a few minutes to complete a collar, while Kumari's salary is about 100 dollars a month.

She and other 4800 garment makers are scattered in 3 Matrix garment factories south of Delhi, which are a small part of the cheap labor force that many developing countries are looking for to promote the country's prosperity.

This is especially true for the South Asian region where population growth is fast and wages are still low.

The World Bank estimates that in the next 20 years alone, 1 million to 120 new workers will enter the labour market every month, with a total increase of 240 million.

However, 8000 miles away in the US city of Atlanta, a robot enterprise is working to develop a machine that may make Kumari permanently unemployed.

The Sewbot robot technology developed by Softwear Automation aims to automate the entire garment manufacturing process.

The technology still takes years to achieve enough cost and reliability to replace manpower.

For example, Kumari earned about $1200 a year.

The company will not say how much money the Sewbot robot will cost, but industry sources say it costs hundreds of thousands of dollars.

But as automation sweeps through all mature industries, experts warn that this technology destroys a large part of the economic model of the developing world, sooner or later.

Considering the extent to which the economic plan in South Asia depends on international manufacturing business (China has become too expensive for such businesses), the region faces particularly big risks.

Policymakers in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh are discussing the "demographic dividend" because the population of these countries is growing rapidly, while the average wage is still only about 1/4 of China's level.

Economists, however, began to ask questions about how many bonuses that these young, cheap and potentially unsafe labor can enjoy as robots gradually become competent for the heavy manual labor they earn on their livelihood. Southeast Asia (another garment manufacturing hub) and sub Saharan Africa and other regions may also feel the impact.

"Robots and AI are the next industrial revolution," said Rajiv Kumar, founder and economist of Pahle India Foundation, Pahle. "They will be more disruptive than the previous industrial revolution steam, electricity, assembly line or computer, because they will not only replace the routine, but also replace the complex brain functions." (Pahle)

What is worrying is that our so-called demographic dividend will turn into a nightmare of population structure. "

Noting that strange things have happened in parts of Asia, Latin America and sub Saharan Africa.

Although many countries have been growing strongly, the proportion of manufacturing jobs has hardly risen since the 80s of last century, and in some countries it has even begun to fall - much earlier than the economists expect.

According to the world's clothing shoes and hat network, in 2015, Harvard University (Harvard) economist Danny Roderick (Dani Rodrik) proposed the concept of "prematurely de industrialization".

He observed that, compared with the development of western countries, many developing countries turned to a service led economic model at a much earlier stage of development.

He said that technological change played a big role in it and warned that this trend could have serious consequences for economic growth and political stability in these areas.

"

Traditionally, a large number of unskilled labor has been absorbed, "he wrote. He also warned that the trend of de industrialization" is not necessarily a good thing for liberal democracy. "

Roderick's findings help explain a study conducted by the International Labour Organization (ILO) and the UN Development Programme shortly after the financial crisis.

The report found that between 2003 and 2009, employment growth in South Asia was only 1/3 of the overall economic growth.

Experts warn that the region is experiencing "no job growth".

Since then, the pace of technological change has accelerated, and some industries have even lost their jobs.

India IT services, which thrive in the past 30 years, began to give way to the automatic cloud computing system.

Infosys and Tata Consultancy Services, the two largest companies in the industry, have laid off workers this year.

At the same time, at Chennai's modern (Hyundai) automobile factory, 400 robots have replaced humans in a large part of the production process.

Chief executive of a large technology company in India, who asked not to be named, said that if employers are not worried about the consequences of massive layoffs, layoffs will be even greater.

"We conducted an audit and found that we could replace half of our employees with AI," he said.

"If we had not taken into account the social shock of doing so, we would have done so."

Industry is the fist industry of these economies.

Bangladesh is particularly dependent on the clothing industry. Clothing accounts for 82% of the country's exports, and 2.5% of the country's population is in the clothing industry.

Data from the Clean Clothes Campaign, which is responsible for better working conditions for garment workers, shows that in Bangladesh, India and Pakistan, a total of about 27 million people are employed in the clothing industry.

One of the reasons that the clothing industry is creating job opportunities is that workers in South Asia are competing for wages less than Chinese counterparts.

Last year, the average hourly wage of Chinese factory workers reached US $3.6, which is nearly 4 times that of 10 years ago, according to Euromonitor, a market research firm.

The average salary of factory workers in China is now 5 times that of India counterparts, close to Portugal or South Africa.

Another reason is that, surprisingly, the clothing industry has proved to be less susceptible to automation.

Since nineteenth Century

Since the advent of the world, there has been little change in the process of making a T-shirt.

T-shirts are usually made of cotton cloth. This is a light and friable material that makes it difficult for robots to pick and move accurately.

There are a series of tiny processes and decisions behind the quick stitching behavior of the heart of the mobile library. They are so complex that even the most sophisticated software engineers can hardly copy them.

"There are 4 processes to make a garment," says Gautam Nair, general manager of Matrix Clothing. "Pick up cloth, align, sew and place on one side."

In these processes, only sewing has been automated, and sewing machines have appeared long ago.

Other parts of the production process are still faster and cheaper by manual completion. "

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This may be about to change.

In an old factory in Atlanta, a group of technicians at Softwear Automation knocked in computer code on the touchscreen to try to improve the Sewbot robot.

In order to solve the problem of sewing fine fabrics, they have installed an eye like camera for the robot, just as engineers do for self driving cars.

These cameras can capture the cloth in stitching, analyze the image, and guide the movement of the manipulator.

This technology has attracted the attention of WAL-MART (79.99, 0.18, 0.23%) (Walmart). WAL-MART, the world's largest retailer, has given the company 2 million US dollars as part of an automated production project for jeans.

Last September, the Sewbot robot made a breakthrough and successfully stitched a lateral suture onto a pair of jeans.

Next year, the company plans to use Sewbot robots for T-shirts, and 97% of T-shirts are produced outside the United States.

Softwear Automation CEO Palaniswamy Rajan explains the business necessity behind the development of such technologies, even if clothing companies have a large number of cheap labor force to use.

"If you are a Macy s, you want 100 thousand items of this style, you have to order from 9 to 12 months in advance," he said. "If the place of origin is closer to the consumer, you can arrive at the next 10 thousand orders and arrive within 1 months, then you can see if some designs will sell better than other designs." Messi said.

WAL-MART is not the only large retailer focusing on automated clothing.

In April of this year, Amason (987.78, -32.26, -3.16%) (Amazon) applied for a patent to develop an on-demand sewing machine, which could automatically produce garments after receiving orders.

However, stimulating American enterprises is not only a rapid technological change, but also a political reality.

Donald Trump (Donald Trump) was elected president of the United States and its "American priority" trade policy commitments, prompting enterprises to start thinking about how to move their jobs back to the United States.

"There is no doubt that our work will be very different in the future," WAL-MART chief executive Dong Minglun (Doug McMillon) recently told employees. "Robots, UAVs, algorithms will finish some work we had to do in the past.

Some people are afraid of the consequences of these changes.

I don't think we need to be afraid.

The secret of our success will always be our employees.

Policymakers in developing countries are also aware of these trends.

Some people believe that as long as the government grasps the policy, there will still be time to create a manufacturing boom in South Asia.

Arvind Subramanian (Narendra Modi), the chief economic adviser of India's prime minister Narendra Modi (Arvind), has studied the problem of "premature industrialization".

Sitting in a big office in the Treasury building of New Delhi, he said, "yes, robots have begun to cut soft cloth.

But I don't know if this is something we should worry about in the next 9 or 10 years - or more realistically, in the next 20 years.

Subramanian said that combining good training, carefully arranged free trade agreements and labour market reforms can create manufacturing jobs before robots become mature enough and cheap enough to replace workers.

"If he is wrong, the social impact will be enormous," warned Kumar of the Pahle India foundation. "This may be a nightmare, because all educated and ambitious young people will lose their jobs due to automation."

The widespread use of robots has raised concerns about large-scale unemployment. Others believe that these countries should take a "stop loss" action instead of focusing on the service sector.

In 2015, Yuri Centre, a senior researcher at Policy Centre, a think-tank in Morocco, wrote Uri Dadush, "the importance of manufacturing as a lever for development is slipping". (OCP Policy)

He believes that countries such as India, Pakistan and Bangladesh should focus on pforming themselves into certain industries, such as tourism, pportation or finance.

For Kumari, the employment boom in service industry will make up for the prospect of employment loss in manufacturing industry without any consolation effect.

"If I don't make clothes, I have nothing else to do," she said. "I have not received any other training."

How are robots better at making clothes than humans?

Jonathan Zornow, a software developer in Seattle, developed a method last year that he believes that the solution has removed the technical obstacles that restrict the automation of sewing for decades. Jonathan,

At the time of "boredom", the 28 year old programmer watched the How It s Made at Discovery Channel, and he was surprised to find that at least 9 people needed to complete the 38 process of making a pair of jeans.

He is different from other people: he wants to change the fabric structure so that the fabric can better cooperate with the robot operation, rather than improving the robot's ability to process fabrics.

He applied for a patent for his new technology: soaking cloth in thermoplastic melt - making cotton and other thin materials as hard as wood.

After that, the robot stitched, stitched and shaped the hard fabric.

Once washed by hot water, the fabric will restore elasticity and become a pair of jeans.

Zono said he made the first garment made entirely of robots in this way: a T-shirt.

Zono said he was negotiating with some "very large retailers" and manufacturers in China, India and Sri Lanka to promote the technology known as Sewbo.

Last month, executives from Adidas (Adidas) and Eileen Fisher of American Apparel Design Company watched the Sewbo demonstration in Manhattan.

But even the zealots enthusiasts admit that at least cheap labour is more competitive than machines, such as his robot.

South Asian nightmare: robots coming to make clothes

He said, "if you are in Bangladesh, when you have a room full of people willing to work for you for $1 a day, you will not buy super advanced sewing machines."

Instead, he sees the sewing robot as an opportunity to make manufacturing closer to shoppers and shorten the long and slow supply chain -- each T-shirt has to pport about 20 thousand miles on average to reach customers.

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