Myant to Unveil the Digital Textile Exchange (DTX) at CES 2020, a Platform to Democratize Access to Textile Manufacturing Capacity and Enable Textile Innovation
TORONTO, CANADA – January 7, 2020 – Myant Inc., pioneers in Textile Computing™, will unveil the Digital Textile Exchange (DTX) at CES 2020 (January 7-10, 2020 in Las Vegas), a digital manufacturing platform that connects the network of stakeholders in the advanced textile innovation value-chain to enable unprecedented levels of efficiency, quality and consistency. By connecting existing manufacturers, inventors, startups, and academia with knitting machines and textile producers all working under a new universal set of standards, DTX will streamline the process of going from idea to mass-scale production for advanced textiles, and reignite the culture of making and innovation that has been dwindling in the textile world for decades.
Barriers to Innovation in the Current Textile Manufacturing Ecosystem
Fibers and textile systems are continually being prototyped with increasingly sophisticated functions applied to a diverse set of applications, including everything from sweat-sensing to wound care, wellness management, drug detection and delivery, shape shifting, pressure monitoring, brain-computer interface, electrical stimulation, heating, cooling and much more. The resultant consumer demand for actual connected textile products that incorporate these functions has risen to great heights in recent years, but the textile manufacturing ecosystem has not kept up with the new knowledge, materials, integration processes and standards needed to easily turn an innovative textile idea into scalable products. Bringing advanced textiles innovations to the market at scale in the current ecosystem is an uphill battle that often results in brilliant ideas being snuffed out before they have a chance to thrive. The challenges faced in sourcing new types of functionalized yarns, finding manufacturing facilities that can knit and integrate textile electrodes at scale, and addressing the myriad of supply chain requirements not typically associated with conventional textile manufacturing makes innovation in advanced textiles practically impossible, even for the most well-resourced global textile companies.
At the core, finding partners in the supply chain that can help innovate is difficult due to a lack of universal standards. While rapid prototyping and advanced manufacturing exist for small-run or early concept stage applications, these prototypes typically cannot be scaled up without some critical compromises relating to sustainability or function due to the need for regulatory adherence and other factors.
DTX: Enabling Innovative Textile Ideas to Become Scalable Products
Recognizing these challenges, Myant created DTX as a digital textile manufacturing nexus in order to democratize access for manufacturers, innovators, start-ups and existing manufacturers. DTX offers a number of key features that lower barriers to scalable innovation:
- Connecting Supply to Demand: DTX dynamically maps the demand for advanced textile manufacturing (i.e. production orders) with available production capacity across a global network of knitting machines. By way of example, consider how a global-apparel manufacturer will now be able to centrally and flexibly manage production, optimize for localized manufacturing, and dynamically respond to evolving volume demands by tapping into a deeper pool of textile production partners. On the flip side, DTX will allow a textile producer with idle knitting machines to maximize output and value by tapping into a deeper pool of available jobs. They could potentially even take on orders that exceed their own production capacity and re-sell portions of an order back on the exchange in order to maintain relationships with a key partner. This type of flexibility for textile producers translates to lower overall risk greater return on their investment in knitting machinery.
- Enforcing Universal Standards: Knitting machines registered on the DTX will also need to comply with a new universal set of quality, materials, labor and environmental sustainability standards, thus ensuring that a product produced on a knitting machine in one country is the same as the same product produced on a different knitting machine in a different country. The standards to be set forth by DTX aim to bring all stakeholders into alignment with the specific regulatory requirements, engineering restrictions and systems integration demands for textiles in each specific industry (e.g. medical, automotive/aerospace, consumer goods, home/office furnishings, etc.). For example, since textile computing applications require knitting with conductive yarns that are not common in conventional textile manufacturing, DTX will define process standards relating to yarn extrusion, covering, coding, testing and validation to ensure that innovators can design against a standard that textile producers can actually support at scale.
- Training for New Processes & Standards: To support the proliferation of these new standards and to prepare a new generation of workers for a new type of work, Myant and the DTX will be working with academic institutions across the world to build academic nodes that support the development of talent for the textile computing industry. Textile manufacturing has evolved tremendously in the last few decades, but the existing and future workforces may not possess the appropriate skill-set to remain relevant as Textile Computing becomes the norm for the textile manufacturing world. The development of talent would come in the form of joint curriculum development, hands-on training on DTX-connected knitting machines, and more, similar to the model in place between Myant and Toronto’s Ryerson University. More academic nodes across the globe like the one at Ryerson University are in the process of being established.
By bringing stakeholders together and enforcing a universal standards, DTX will engender greater trust and transparency between stakeholders, enable textile product manufacturers to optimize for local demand in a more dynamic and efficient way, and ultimately bring the textile manufacturing industry into the sharing economy.
Building a Network of Knitting Machine Partners
The first knitting machine partners on the Digital Textile Exchange will be Stoll, the German 3D robotic knitting machinery manufacturer. Building upon a relationship that started in December 2017, Myant now has an exclusive global partnership for textile computing applications with Stoll. The knitting machine manufacturer will be on-hand at Myant’s Booth at CES 2020 (Sands Expo, Booth #43925) for the inauguration of the Digital Textile Exchange. Stoll will also be demonstrating the new knitelligence generation of machines featuring the STOLL-knitrobotic technology. STOLL-knitrobotic represents a major breakthrough for the textile computing industry, allowing integration of microelectronics and other features into textiles during the knitting process in a fashion similar to the way pick-and-place machines do in microelectronic fabrication. The Stoll knitelligence line of machines includes many other features that are critical to Textile Computing including a cloud management software where proprietary processes, designs, and other IP will be protected, as well as remote training and production management. Stoll’s knitting machines will be the first to be connected to DTX, opening up a new realm of possibilities for its customers.
Myant will also be adding other knitting machine manufacturing partners to DTX that can support warp knitting and circular knitting, enabling innovators to realize whatever vision they have in mind.
Seeding a Global Network of Textile Manufacturing Clusters
As a first step, Myant is growing its manufacturing capacity and will be opening up a new facility to house 1,000 state-of-the-art Stoll knitting machines to support the projected demand for their own textile computing products launching in 2020 and beyond. This new facility will be located in Ontario, Canada. This flagship textile manufacturing cluster will serve as a model for the eventual creation of other similar clusters across the globe, all joined through DTX and operating with the same standards, laying the foundation for a transformation in the textile manufacturing world.
For more information or to schedule a meeting at CES 2020 to discuss DTX, please contact:
Ilaria Varoili
Executive Vice President at Myant
ilaria.varoli@myant.ca
Brian Fung
Director of Marketing at Myant
brian.fung@myant.ca
Markus Kirwald
Director of Business Development
markus.kirwald@myant.ca
About Myant Inc. and the Digital Textile Exchange
Myant has created the world’s first platform that continuously and ambiently connects people to their bodies, to each other, and to the world around them. Using connected textiles that can sense and react to the human body and a platform that enables machine learning driven health and performance outcomes, Myant is on a mission to transform human connectedness. With an extensive patent portfolio, key exclusive relationships within the textile computing industry, a multidisciplinary team of researchers, engineers, data scientists, fashion designers and knitting specialists, and over 80,000 ft² of manufacturing capacity, Myant is changing the way people across society connect. Connect with us to find out how we can help you create innovative solutions powered by connected textiles and the Myant Platform.
Visit myant.ca and digitaltextileexchange.com to learn more.
About STOLL
H. Stoll GmbH & Co. KG is an internationally operating manufacturer of flat knitting machines based in Reutlingen, Germany. The world-renowned enterprise was founded in 1873 and has about 1,000 employees worldwide. Stoll exports to more than 70 countries all over the world and offers integrated services through affiliated companies, sales and marketing centers and numerous agencies. The Stoll product portfolio comprises 3D knitting machines and patterning software which are used for the production of fabrics for fashion as well as for technical applications. With innovative technical developments and a modern production environment Stoll enables a broad spectrum of knitting trends. For more information about Stoll, please visit: Stoll.com.
