Economic impact/Potential to implement the R&D results

Textile companies in Europe are under increasing pressure to achieve high levels of flexibility together with high efficiency levels. Customers today expect smaller and smaller batch sizes and increasing number of product designs and decreasing costs. Company decision makers constantly try to organise their resources such as to meet these stringent demands.

The market on which European textile companies are operating is today to a large extent a local (European) market. MCP, which requires the extensive use of ICT, opens opportunities for accessing global markets.

Many companies are not in a position to evaluate individually the potential benefit of MCP to meet these demands. This project aimed at doing the first analysis of possible MCP approaches and at presenting the most feasible one to the industry. Individual companies can learn and use this as a reference for the evaluation (1) if MCP is possible in their organisation and (2) the extent of the effort which would be required to apply this to their organisation. Companies can further use the results as basis for implementing MCP or start discussions with technology providers or research institutes to help them implement MCP.