Chapter 20 · 2010–2020
The Reshoring Frontier
Robotics, Digital Knitting, and the Technical-Textile Future
Some textile and apparel production began to return to America—but it looked nothing like its predecessor. Automated, capital-intensive, and built around technical fabrics, the new U.S. mill employs hundreds where its predecessors employed thousands.
Jump to classroom kit
Much of what remains of American textile manufacturing focuses on technical and industrial fabrics: flame-resistant cloth for the military and first responders, medical textiles, automotive and filtration materials, and high-performance yarns. Reshoring arguments rest on speed to market, intellectual-property protection, and automation—including digital knitting machines that produce shaped panels or whole garments with little cutting waste. The most publicized experiment, Adidas's robot-assisted 'Speedfactory' plants in Ansbach, Germany (2016), and near Atlanta (2017), closed by April 2020, with the technology moved to suppliers in Asia. The pandemic of 2020 then forced a sudden test of whether what remained of the domestic supply chain could protect a nation.
Inside this chapter
Classroom Kit
Can the United States rebuild a textile industry, and should national security be the reason to do it?
The Berry Amendment, 10 U.S.C. § 4862
U.S. Congress, First enacted 1941; current codification
(a) Requirement.—Except as provided in subsections (c) through (h), funds appropriated or otherwise available to the Department of Defense may not be used for the procurement of an item described in subsection (b) if the item is not grown, reprocessed, reused, or produced in the United States. (b) Covered Items.—... (B) clothing and the materials and components thereof, other than sensors, electronics, or other items added to, and not normally associated with, clothing (and the materials and components thereof); ... (D) cotton and other natural fiber products, woven silk or woven silk blends, spun silk yarn for cartridge cloth, synthetic fabric or coated synthetic fabric (including all textile fibers and yarns that are for use in such fabrics), canvas products, or wool ...
Context: First passed on the eve of World War II, the Berry Amendment requires the military to buy American-made textiles and clothing. It guarantees a domestic market that has kept many U.S. mills and sewing plants open.
DoD Announces Award of New Revolutionary Fibers and Textiles Manufacturing Innovation Hub
U.S. Department of Defense, April 1, 2016
The institute will bring together nontraditional partners to integrate fibers and yarns with integrated circuits, LEDs, solar cells, and other capabilities to create textiles and fabrics that can see, hear, sense, communicate, store energy, regulate temperature, monitor health, change color, and more. For example, the institute will pair the likes of leading audio equipment maker Bose, computer chip maker Intel, and nanofiber manufacturer FibeRio with textile manufacturers and textile users like Warwick Mills, Buhler Yarns, and New Balance.
Context: The Pentagon announced Advanced Functional Fabrics of America (AFFOA), a public-private institute led by MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It was part of the Manufacturing USA network meant to rebuild American production through new technology.
Discussion questions
- Which textile items does the Berry Amendment require the Department of Defense to buy from U.S. producers?
- A Pentagon press release is written to promote a program. Which claims in the AFFOA announcement would you want to verify, and how would you do it?
- How do the Berry Amendment and AFFOA represent two different strategies, guaranteed government demand and investment in innovation, for keeping textile manufacturing in the United States?
- Should ordinary consumers pay more for U.S.-made clothing, the way the military does? Argue, considering jobs, prices, and environmental impact.
Key terms
- Berry Amendment
- A federal law requiring the Department of Defense to buy clothing, textiles, and certain other items made in the United States.
- Reshoring
- Bringing manufacturing that had moved overseas back to the home country.
- Functional fabrics
- Textiles engineered to do more than cover the body, such as sensing, storing energy, or changing color.
- Public-private partnership
- A project in which government agencies and private companies share costs, risks, and goals.
- Supply chain
- The full sequence of businesses that grow, make, move, and sell a product, from raw material to customer.
Sources
- Primary sourceadidas deploys Speedfactory technology at Asian suppliers by end of 2019. adidas Group, 2019.
- ScholarshipAdidas to close German, U.S. robot factories. Reuters, 2019.
- ScholarshipOne Billion Gowns by August. Textile Insight, 2020.