The tcbl pilot framework 2017 edition

TCBL HANDBOOKS

THE TCBL PILOT FRAMEWORK 2017 EDITION

Co-funded by Horizon 2020

ANNEX 6 TO TCBL D 4.2 –15 JULY 2017

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CONTENTS Contents..................................................................................................................................... 2 introduction ................................................................................................................................ 3 1

The Problem ...................................................................................................................... 4 Question: Can Innovation Bring Innovative Business Models that Could Reverse the Long Decline of T&C Industries in the EU? .................................................................................... 4 The Initial Technical Support Framework .............................................................................. 5 The Initial Business Systems Design ..................................................................................... 5

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Development of the Framework Elements ...................................................................... 14 Overview and justification .................................................................................................... 14 The Updated Analysis of Markets & Trends ........................................................................ 17 The Governance Approach .................................................................................................. 19 The TCBL Needs Categorisation Framework ...................................................................... 22

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Revised Pilot Framework ................................................................................................ 24 The TCBL Representation of the T&C sector ...................................................................... 26 Use of the Trends affecting the T&C sector ......................................................................... 28 TCBL Macro-scenarios ........................................................................................................ 30 Forthcoming Pilot Activities .................................................................................................. 31

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Application of the Framework: Plots and Business Cases ................................................... 32

Document Information ................................................................................................................. 35

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INTRODUCTION The objective of TCBL is to understand, map and visualize existing textile and clothing (T&C) business systems and to find and experiment ways to transform them in such way they can serve TCBL aims. Pilot projects – whether successful or not – will help meet this objective and provide a canvas of examples for the industry; secondly, the results of some of these experimentations will be attractive enough to provoke their larger adoption by T&C individuals and organisations.

This is the objective of the interaction between the TCBL Project and its growing community of Associate Enterprises. With each year, new businesses join the network and, through our experience, the pilot framework itself matures.

This Handbook presents the first attempts of TCBL to model the kind of value chain innovation we are seeking, and further developed those models in relation to the frameworks being developed for other aspects of the project. The state of advancement of the framework at this point, i.e. until June 2016, was published as Version 1 of this Handbook in February 2017.

This Version 2 updates the framework with chapter 4, containing information gained in late 2017 and the first half of 2017, through the application of two approaches: • •

‘Plots’ or structured procedures for the definition of innovation value chains using TCBL services ‘Business Cases’, more loosely defined processes that are driven more by expressed business needs but which aim to achieve the same end as the original Plot concept.

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THE PROBLEM

QUESTION: CAN INNOVATION BRING INNOVATIVE BUSINESS MODELS THAT COULD REVERSE THE LONG DECLINE OF T&C INDUSTRIES IN THE EU? This decline, stronger in Clothing than in Textile has been the result of changes in prevailing business models since the fifties. During the fifties, factories were only for less important garments such as underwear. In important European cities there were tailors: they invented fashion, in quite small laboratories. Scattered throughout Europe, less important local tailors interpreted the big fashion trends. Famous tailors sold them models and patterns from the previous year’s collections. Much of the work was done by home workers.

In the sixties, prêt a porter was introduced: fashionable garments were manufactured in standard sizes, ready to wear. It is a revolution, and new designer names appear. Some tailors of the «old generation» adopt a prêt a porter approach, moving their production from workshops to factories.

The seventies are dominated by the big prêt a porter brands, who enlarge their production capacity. The «catwalk world» brings new actors into the star system: top models, fashion photographers, agents, fashion magazines, etc. The multitude of small laboratories in Europe slowly goes into decline.

During the eighties, the cost of marketing and fashion shows increases dramatically. The larger fashion houses begin to look to the small laboratories for help. In this tightly controlled «fasonist» organisation of work, each garment is cut in the central factory and the pieces sent to small laboratories for assembly.

During the nineties, the spiralling demand for novelty and brand competition puts increasing pressure on production costs. The immediate solution is to cut the cost of the main component of physical labour: sewing. Assembly is subcontracted first to Southern Europe and Eastern Europe, but also more and more to Asia. In the new millennium, the subcontractors are mainly in Asia.

Can this long decline of Textile and the even stronger decline of Clothing Industries be reversed and how? Can innovation help? And, if yes, which kind of innovation?

These are the core questions that TCBL pilot experiments for introducing innovation in current business systems are called on to address.

To address that challenge TCBL partners have during the T&C business systems’ period agreed on the following basic principles which will guide their work during the next phases of the project: •

•

•

TCBL should aim to build a business ecosystem that demonstrates that desirable and long-lasting alternatives to current products, markets and supply chains are possible.

It intends to do it by exploiting the interest for innovation of existing and new business driven by curiosity but also by their concerns for consolidating their business viability.

TCBL assumes that some societal changes leading to emerging demands of customers for a better durability and ecologic sustainability of products and solutions may provide incentives for changing currently prevailing business models.

For such changes to happen it will require people believing that multi-disciplinarity and cultural richness are important to focus on customers' individual needs, interested in exploring (or already adopting) open innovation and co-design methods and committed to transparency in business.

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The TCBL Pilot Framework TCBL Handbooks Textile & Clothing Business Labs

The responses received to the Call for Expressions of Interest, confirming that these principles can be widely shared with different kinds of people and business involved in T&C activities, are comforting the TCBL partners in adopting these principles in their future work.

These principles are an essential part of the framework adopted for conducting the work planned in terms of pilot experimentation and business support to T&C sector and for building the innovation ecosystem needed for addressing the challenges the TCBL project has accepted to face, together with the more than 100 Associate members the project has succeeded in recruiting.

THE INITIAL TECHNICAL SUPPORT FRAMEWORK In technical terms, in the initial hypothesis, the Knowledge Spaces technical infrastructure had as a starting point DITF’s vDiscover platform, a semantic ontology driven Web 2.0 expert system of DITF-MR under GPL 3.0 licensing for process-oriented knowledge management, especially knowledge discovery and distribution. vDiscover would be used to describe, host and provide all necessary knowledge for setting up Business Labs and Systems as well as about uses cases and experiences from practice. To make it more accessible and visible, vDiscover would be extended with links to external social networks such as Linkedin or Facebook. Additional tools and services relevant to the Knowledge Spaces include AR tracking and overlay for on-the-job learning (esp. manual skills) from the FP7 ICT TELL-ME project and Gamification tools and techniques from the CIP ICT PSP MyNeighbourhood project.

For the Business Process Services, the main platform was set to be the bpSquare portal, which provides training and performance support linked to innovative business process models.

Finally, TCBL initial thoughts concerning the TCBL platform were to take the path of bringing together a range of services on top of an underlying cloud infrastructure rather than trying to propose T&C businesses yet another do-it-all service portal. This loose coupling was aimed to facilitate interoperability and integration of the additional service components to be brought in through the Associate Service SMEs. For the cloud infrastructure, P6 iMinds would open the relevant set of Generic and Specific Enablers required.

THE INITIAL BUSINESS SYSTEMS DESIGN Based on the above description of the technical support infrastructure and the internal positioning, in TCBL, of the Business Systems (coloured in orange in the figure below), the initial TCBL’s innovation strategy for creating and handling Business Systems focused on: • • •

the exploitation of the Knowledge Spaces the use of the Business Support Services the interactions with the Business Labs

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The TCBL Pilot Framework TCBL Handbooks Textile & Clothing Business Labs

Figure 1. Initial Business Systems Design1 The left-hand side of the picture shows the on-going work done by the TCBL Business Labs and their interactions with the T&C Enterprises, depicted on the right-hand side, using the facilities offered by the TCBL socio-digital ecosystem and available as Innovation Spaces (middle of the picture). These facilities support the real-life experimentation and market deployment of innovative Pilot Scenarios using Service Concepts developed by the TCBL Business Labs and the Transition Schemes (Pathways) adopted beforehand by the involved Enterprises.

The initial step of the WP4 team was to start from this framework to document and build a set of suggestions for Pilot Experiments (Business Scenarios of Reference) of two kinds: 1) Information and cases aimed to inspire experiments based on a mix of innovation (technical and non-technical) using relatively mature technology components to generate and enable substantial organisational, process, and market innovations (innovative business models).

2) Information and cases aimed to inspire more technically oriented experiments aiming at accelerating the innovation adoption path of emergent or immature technologies (AR glasses, 3D printers, etc.).

Different existing reference frameworks and problematics have been taken into consideration by the TCBL partners to organise and document the Business Scenarios of Reference. The concern was to map and integrate the major elements coming from the macro-environment of T&C and influencing T&C business systems, as follows:

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Source: TCBL Deliverable D9.2 (Progress Report Q1-Q2).

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Figure 2. T&C Business Systems Macro-Environment The above diagram shows the different trends coming from the macro-environment of T&C sector which need to be taken into account for forecasting its evolution and for identifying the challenges and opportunities it may be confronted to. The main sources of information used to study them and the main elements concerning them used for defining the Initial TCBL Pilot Framework are reviewed below.

From a Science and Technology point of view The European Technology Platform for the Future of Textiles and Clothing of EURATEX, offers continuously since 2004 interesting insights and is organised in 3 pillars2 relevant for TCBL problematic (grouping science and technology innovation according to the product and process innovation they may introduce): • • •

From Commodity to Specialty Products New Textile Applications From Mass Production to Customisation

From an Economic and Business point of view, the IFM study dating from 20073 offers a grouping according to issues related to six, still relevant strategies: • • • • • •

Brand and design strategies Partner strategies Industry-retail strategies Subcontracting strategies Technological leadership strategies Traditional continuation strategies

From a Societal perspective the consortium took up the results of the FP7 PROSUMER project of the FP7 programme which has studied4 3 major broad socio-economic drivers/challenges identified by the 5 ETP’s across consumer goods markets, which are also of relevance for TCBL work: •

Safety and sustainability in production and consumption: powered by long-term economic (rising resources utilisation costs), political (combat of climate change and

European Technology Platform for the Future of Textiles and Clothing – A vision for 2020 – EURATEX Study on the competitiveness, economic situation and location of production in the textiles and clothing, footwear, leather and furniture industries – IFM – May 2006 4 Socio-economic Report on Consumer market trends and barriers – PROSUMER – IFTH – May 2012 2 3

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•

•

improved consumer and work safety) and cultural (responsible producer and consumer behaviour) drivers; Health, well-being and activity of an aging and individualising population: powered by long-term demographic (ageing population) and cultural (more diverse and selfassertive lifestyles) drivers; Satisfying needs and desires of a growing global consumer class: powered by longterm political (globalisation and market liberalisation), economic (growing middle class in emerging economies) and cultural (aspiration to status and recognition through material goods) drivers.

The interest of this last focus was that the enabling technologies and innovation for these three trends have already been analysed in PROSUMER, allowing a relatively easy and rapid building of a first set of Business Scenarios of Reference, as the one presented in Annex I. This is why this reference framework (on societal trends) has been the one initially chosen as a base for the generation of a first set of Business Scenarios of Reference using an Excel form to collect other scenarios has been designed.

However, different alternative ways of collecting and presenting such Business Scenarios of Reference have later on been experimented and discussed by the partners.

In practical terms, two forms have been designed, which allowed the TCBL partners to collect some additional Business Scenarios of Reference. The first is the Pilot Experiment Description Form (more suitable for describing the Pilot Experiments of Factories) below. The second is the Persona Scenarios (Illustrated story telling of what expected changes could be brought about by TCBL) and exemplified in the picture below. Generally speaking, Persona Scenarios seem more targeted to define the expected interactions among the TCBL Network Members and more suited for describing the Pilot Experiments of Small Laboratories/Workshops. These are composed of two main parts: • •

a presentation of involved T&C actors/stakeholders; a description of their possible/expected interactions.

By the adoption of the Persona convention, an additional goal has been fulfilled, which is well documented in D6.1: to define the broadest possible range of TCBL stakeholders with their business models and goals (e.g. designers, T&C artisans and manufacturers, but also home workers and fasonists, academics, policy makers and civil servants, etc.) in line with the “Quadruple Helix” representation5 that is typical of the Living Lab methodology [Arnkil et al.

2010].

The “Quadruple Helix” is an abstract term used to identify a (formal or informal) partnership involving four stakeholder categories: Government, University, Businesses and Civil Society.

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Presenting actors story telling

Figure 3. Example of Persona Scenario During this phase of collection, cases coming from previous projects, from news, from expected pilots as well as from answers received to the initial questionnaire for TCBL Labs, issued by Waag in the framework of WP3, have been used to enrich with other cases the Business Scenarios of Reference.

The final list of the macro scenario which has been generated in this way is shown in Table 1 on the following page.

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TCBL Pilots' MacroScenarios Ecosystems of social economy in Fashion

Impact Eco-social empowerment

Beneficiaries Social Economy Actors

Promoters Place Labs

Enablers Artists, designers, artisans

TCBL Pilots ideas submitted

Transformers Social entrepreneurs, local authorities

•

•

DYI (Do it yourself) clothing kits

Transfer cost of labour

Textile producers

Place Labs

Making Labs

Business actors

Production units opening their doors

Community engagement, creativity

Existing factories

Pilot coaches

Labs, Innovators, Creators, Designers

Business actors

Recycling

Circular economy

Existing businesses Startups

Place Labs

Artists, Social Business

Design labs, Incubators

Cultural anchoring

Designers

Design Labs

Fashion trends, museums

Making / Place Labs

•

HCIA(PL)

•

eZavod (PL)

Veneto (PL)

• •

Design inspiration

HCIA: Technical and nontechnical innovation as sources of inspiration eZavod: Pilot addressing problems of local unemployed textile workers

TCBL LABs involved

Detox My Fashion, Cleviria (Prato) Toys from Waste Textile

MIRTEC (DL)

• •

Prato (DL) HCIA(DL)

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TCBL Pilots' MacroScenarios

Impact

Beneficiaries

Promoters

Enablers

Transformers

Self design and production

Empowerment

Designers

Design Labs

Making Labs

Network orchestra-tors

The slow factory

Eco lifestyle

Existing factories

Making Labs

Artists, Makers

Inspired entrepreneurs

Smart Textiles

New products

Existing factories

Making Labs

Textile engineers

Business actors

TCBL Pilots ideas submitted

HCIA(DL)

•

•

eCommerce

Distribution

Any business

Place Labs

Web designers

eCommerce platforms

Home based production

Employment

Home workers

Place Labs

Trainers

Network orchestrators

Industry 4.0

New IT based ways of production

Existing factories

Making Labs

IT people, T&C engineers and students

Business actors

TCBL LABs involved

•

Living walls, Capillary cinetics, Sensory Textiles, Illuminating textiles Siamidis, CALTSA, SOULIS

•

DITF(ML)

•

MIRTEC (ML)

Consorzio Prato Trade, Maglieria Maso

Table 1. TCBL Pilots’ Macro-Scenarios

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The idea, in any case, was to build these Business scenarios of reference for inspiring candidates interested by our Call for Expressions of Interest and help them define and propose their own Concrete Pilot Experiments when responding to the Call. According to this hypothesis, Workshops/laboratories and manufacturing plants would be invited to use the Business Scenario of their choice and define their individual Pilot Scenario6. In order to be able to map the Pilot Scenarios and verify a good coverage of all the T&C value chain, each proposer would be asked to position him/herself in the value chain and identify which elements of it would be influenced by the Pilot Experimentation proposed.

For this initial mapping the approach has been to use NACE codes at a detailed level and the representation of the T&C value chain as defined by the European Technology Platform for the Future of Textiles and Clothing, at a general level and illustrated below:

Figure 4. Overview of the complexity and variety of actors in the T&C business 7

Another option was that after their selection the selected TCBL Associate Members should discuss and agree with the TCBL partner of their region a Transition Scheme for implementing the concrete Pilot Scenario they have proposed.

In so doing, Transition Schemes would help secure and accelerate the proposed innovation (change) paths, defining the steps, conditions, needs and deadlines of implementation of the Business pilot, in line with TCBL partners’ capacities and availability. The description of the Transition Schemes can be the basis for a MoU linking the participants in the pilot with 6

Later on this option has been considered too heavy and too normative (limiting creativity and spontaneous expression of needs and innovation ideas) and the use of these scenarios as sources of inspiration has been left as a possibility to explore at a later stage of interaction with Associate Businesses (after their recruitment and during experiments co-design).

7 Source: TexMap project – reproduced in European Technology Platform for the Future of Textiles and Clothing – A vision for 2020 – EURATEX.

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individual TCBL WP4 team members acting as guides and mentors as well as selected Business Labs, which could serve some of their specific implementation needs.

Finally, the actual Pilot results would serve for the elaboration of Transferable Pilot Scenarios for the next waves of TCBL calls, for which new transition schemes would be elaborated with the applicants thus enriching with their results the Business Support Services already implemented.

In the next project phase, the additional services brought to the TCBL platform by the Associate Service Providers (foreseen by the DoA to be recruited in round 2 of Pilot Experiments) will be added to the initial suite and integrated in the future experimentations serving to their improvement

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DEVELOPMENT OF THE FRAMEWORK ELEMENTS

OVERVIEW AND JUSTIFICATION The initial representation of the TCBL Business Systems Support Framework and of their environment has been progressively affected by the integration of the different inputs brought by the TCBL work in other work packages and activities to reflect the evolution of the common understanding between TCBL partners and their associates of the TCBL Business Systems internal components and dynamics and of the evolution of their environment.

First a clarification work has been done on the Technical Ecosystem Architecture, in D6.18, identifying more accurately its various components, their points of access and their interactions, as summarised in next sub-section. In particular, the improved analysis of Knowledge Spaces components and of the progressive availability of Business Services usable for supporting experiments aiming at introducing innovation in Business Systems had important implications on the redefinition of the Business Systems Support Framework.

Again in Deliverable 6.1 the TCBL needs categorisation framework was generated, based on a survey to which TCBL partners have participated and in which they expressed the needs and usage scenarios of about 50 potential users (described with a ‘Persona’ approach).

Then an updated analysis of the economic and business perspective, provided by D7.19 (in the Chapter entitled “Market analysis and trends”), has affected and enriched the reference frameworks and problematics initially taken into account to organise and document the Pilot Experiment Suggestions (Business Scenarios of Reference).

Finally the clarifications provided to TCBL’s Governance approach, starting with the methodological considerations of D6.3 (Chapter “The Approach to Evaluating TCBL”) and pursued in D6.510 (Chapter “Governance Framework”) have added key elements in the definition of the TCBL approach of the experimentations on Business Systems. They are reviewed in a third sub-section below.

T HE T ECHNICAL ECOSYSTEM ARCHITECTURE One of the first technical components in TCBL to become active and receive user input was the project’s official website (www.project-tcbl.eu) built with the Ning platform. This was also used to configure the TCBL working groups, namely, as per Task 8.1 description, a number of “cocreation Space[s] hosted within the website, open to the public as well as TCBL users and other projects and sectors”. Ning advertises itself as a social network platform, aimed at building communities. Similar to a forum, discussions of various topics take place therein, each representing a Knowledge Entity.

At present, users getting registered in the TCBL ecosystem adopt the authentication facility providing by Ning, together with its interface to major social networks. It is de facto the main reference in terms of Knowledge Spaces for TCBL Associated Actors participating to Experimentations of Business Systems. Progressively the Knowledge Spaces will be centred around the vDiscover expert system, originally developed at DITF which currently offers only a basic ontology scheme and a set of exemplary screen mock-ups.

The customised fablabs.io Open Source offered as the platform of reference of TCBL Labs gives access to its own “Knowledge Spaces” and “Business Services”. It could be progressively

TCBL Architecture – March 2016 Exploitation and Impact Plan – release after Set Up phase 10 Value Exchange and Governance Framework 8 9

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opened to TCBL Associated Actors participating to Experimentations of Business Systems and possibly substitute, at a later stage, the TCBL Ning Space.

The Business Process Support Services offer another major component of the TCBL ecosystem, namely bpSquare, a web based repository of learning contents for the T&C industry (SMEs and micro businesses, as well as larger enterprises) focused in particular on business process innovation, skills definition and training on T&C software tools. Using bpSquare, the TCBL ecosystem can provide business support services to different entities (in the first instance, pilots) who come together to form a value chain specific to a business initiative (or pilot scenario). These services therefore include collaboration along the supply chain and bpSquare can help identify roles and responsibilities within that, as well as support the T&C actors with learning information and software applications.

An additional tool, strictly related to bpSquare, is an “orchestrator”, which serves the purpose of modelling business processes in a graphical way. This can be put at free disposal of the TCBL partners. The tool is based on a predefined representation of the underlying business process (adopting the BPMN standard, www.bpmn.org) for the specific initiative in focus, involving all of the actors in that value chain.

Finally, with the iMinds resources set up on the cloud and configured in that way for the different pilot value chains, openness to integration with Cleviria's supply chain certification platform Thela exists. This will provide an interesting opportunity to experiment new scenarios of use (multiple-actor value chains, flatter decision structures, collaborative and participatory business models, etc. rather than only targeting large companies) and, from there, to explore alternative licensing arrangements. In addition, it will also be a way to explore different approaches for a 'deep' integration of skills and learning features in open and distributed network organisations.

As illustrated in the following diagram, there are three distinct typologies of cloud environment to be considered as relevant for the project purposes: •

•

•

The iMinds Cloud (aka TCBL Cloud), providing all the (virtualised) hardware, backup, internet bandwidth and services that are required for the proper functioning of the TCBL technical infrastructure, plus the trusted environment resources (like authentication, privacy, security etc.).

The Partner’s (own) Cloud(s), where other core TCBL services have been natively configured, for which there is the option to repeat the installation on the iMinds Cloud. This is the case of e.g. bpSquare. which is currently running on SKILL’s own Cloud infrastructure.

Any Third Party’s own Cloud: for instance, the one currently hosting the official project website and the Ning working groups; or those belonging to Strategyzer and Cleviria, all companies that are not members of the TCBL consortium.

The above functionalities contribute to build a trusted environment, which TCBL members will weigh the benefits of by themselves according to a “learning by using” approach. Such a focus on reliability and confidence building is extremely important because, from the social perspective, the cloud infrastructure is supposed to host a number of virtual interactions, including business transactions, among the ecosystem participants, as shown in the diagram below.

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Figure 5. The TCBL Technical Architecture (from D 6.1)

T HE E XPECTED USERS AND USE OF TCBL SERVICES In D6.1 the Chapter on High Level Scenarios and Use Cases of the TCBL Ecosystem reports the results of a survey to which TCBL partners have participated just before the launch of the Call for Expressions of Interest. It maps and visualizes, with the goal of better understanding: • •

a number of business scenarios where the mediation of individual TCBL components is invoked, and some use cases emerging from these, centred on the fictitious user profiles that are categorised by means of the “Personas”.

The main results are as follows, for each of the elements of the Technical TCBL Ecosystem: •

•

•

•

Argh! the prospective members of the TCBL ecosystem look for mainly sewing tutorials, available online, based on Augmented Reality principles. They do so in the possible dual role of developers, as well as utilizers, of those tutorials, depending on the specific business scenario.

BpSquare the function of bpSquare is correctly envisaged by the prospective members of the TCBL ecosystem as an online repository of business knowledge and learning resources, including software tools and process models.

Labs.tcbl.eu: the role of this component (adapted from the Open Source Fablabs.io) has been rightly interpreted, in a wide majority of cases, as offering the first entry points to the Business Labs and more generally the TCBL community, for those T&C players looking for a first level advice and support infrastructure.

Private NING groups: Finding new opportunities, connecting around and the possibility to advertise one’s own ideas in design and manufacturing is the key function of the Ning Groups in the eyes of the majority of prospective TCBL ecosystem members. The meaning of the word “private” appearing on the top left of the map cloud has to be referred to the closed nature of the groups themselves (i.e. restricted to registered

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•

•

•

members in the Ning platform, or even more so, in case of groups activated by invitation for specific business purposes).

Strategyzer: Not surprisingly, the words “Business” and “Model” (or “Models”) are the two most frequently occurring. Also, support in the design and exploration of new or alternative business models is correctly perceived as the key function of Strategyzer in the eyes of prospective TCBL ecosystem members. If one aspect can be said to have been overlooked, it is the collaborative, or concurrent, working feature of this web based software, which is hardly mentioned in the cases reported. vDiscover: Market (or market relevant) information is the key asset of vDiscover in the eyes of prospective members of the TCBL ecosystem. Content wise, this information then instantiates into knowledge about trends, production processes (esp. sewing processes, due to the nature of the underlying business cases), materials, machinery etc.

Thela and MacroGen: “Sewing Patterns” and “Supply Chain(s)” are the two single most used words and therefore the most frequently occurring concepts in the Persona descriptions utilized for this exercise. Others follow that highlight the communitarian value and inclusivity of the expected uses of these systems.

THE UPDATED ANALYSIS OF MARKETS & TRENDS The TCBL Deliverable 7.1 in its Chapter “Market Analysis and Trends” provides an updated overview of the economic environment, industry structure and major market trends of the T&C sector, confirming the complexity, inter-relatedness and diverse nature of all the components, phases, activities and sectors that form the T&C value chain today, using for mapping the sector an updated version of the one initially used 11, and coming from the same source.

Figure 6. The textile industry12

11 12

See Figure 8 above Source: The European Textile Technology Platform (www.textile-platform.eu)

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In this analysis one observes a medium- to long-term tendency of T&C to consolidate (contract) and simultaneously grow in scale (mass production by global players). The study also reveals a more recent tendency to fight the decline by diversifying and specialising the production, in order to explore new markets both in the EU and in third countries (China, India, Brazil, Russia, etc.), where a new middle class is emerging, endowed with an increasing purchasing power.

The most encouraging new element is that it provides for 2015 encouraging data on the evolution of the sector in the EU, despite the continuation of its decline of its outputs in volume, as shown in the figure on the following page.

Figure 7. Market evolution overview: 2015/2014.

More analytically, it identifies some 50 major market trends under 9 different domains: Domain

Major Market Trends

1. Consumption

Declining demand, Reactive demand, (Smart) Lower Cost Solutions, Integrated Solutions, Restricted Markets

2. Emerging Markets

Positioning In Emerging Markets, Growth of Emerging Middle Class Markets (Luxury And Premium Products), Protectionism, Direct Investment in Emerging Markets, Increased Global Demand For Technical Textiles, Increased Export to Emerging Markets

3. Relocalisation

Reshoring, Mass Customisation, Fast Fashion, Two-String Strategy (Asia and EU), Low Working Capital, Short Lead Times And Low Stocks, Increasing Production Costs In China, Chinese Manufacturers Escaping The Subcontractors’ Trap, Increased Demand For Design Or Services, Hybrid Model (Sub-Contracting + Own Brand)

4. Business Models

Value Chain Control / Vertical Integration, Retailing On Emerging Markets, Specialisation, Takeovers, Niche Market Control, Fragmentation And Small Scale Production, Embedding In End-User Communities, Advanced Customization, Mass Customization, Withdrawal From Commodity Markets

5. Networked Production

Production Networks (Industrial Districts), Leading Customers, Competitive Environment (E.G. Research Institutes), Hidden Innovation, Inter-Regional Clusters, Focus On Creative Industries, Design,

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6. Consolidation

Consolidation, Specific Product/Market Combinations, Global Leadership, Strategic Branding, Production Outsourcing

7. Fragmentation

Fragmentation, Self-Employment, Creative Micro-Enterprises, Customization, Specialisation, Credit Crunch

8. Commoditization

Commoditization13,

9. Subcontracting

Subcontractor Vulnerability, Subcontractor Specialisation, Competitive Districts Table 2. Major Market Trends by Domain.

The study evaluates to which extent these may positively contribute to TCBL’s main objectives (return of delocalised manufacturing to Europe, reduction in the environmental footprint, creation of a novel supply network and creation of new embedded services supporting the customer driven supply chain).

This analysis demonstrates that TCBL’s objective to restore manufacturing capacity can be favoured by increasing the T&C focus on end-users’ needs, customisation, niche products, costeffectiveness, smart solutions, design and service.

On the other hand, EU Textile & Clothing loses when it falls into the commodity trap, i.e. when it tries to compete on costs, low quality products, fast fashion, commoditization, etc.

Moreover, such hampering factors like fragmentation, subcontracting pitfalls, restricted market presence should be avoided, while success factors and strategies that too often stay hidden should be evidenced and disseminated among T&C actors for smarter innovation and competitiveness.

THE GOVERNANCE APPROACH The key features of TCBL which can be seen as driving the governance approach, identified by D6.3 (in the Chapter entitled “The Approach to Evaluating TCBL”), are the following: •

Emergence: this means that the identification of governance structures needs to capture and structure emergent properties of network relationships

•

Open systems: this means that TCBL requires an open governance approach, which is capable of constantly bringing in new actors and services

•

Experimental: this means that governance methods need to be developed through actual testing and co-design in a constructivist approach

•

Diversity of experience: this means that the governance approach needs to respond to different disciplinary world views and reference models.

The document further identifies three main baseline theories for TCBL which contribute to our understanding of the relevant governance focus to adopt:

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The commodity trap means being positioned in a market segment where barriers of entry have declined, opportunities of product or service differentiation have dwindled and competition on cost has become paramount.

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The TCBL Pilot Framework TCBL Handbooks Textile & Clothing Business Labs •

•

•

The ecosystems perspective, deriving from the key options of TCBL approach, which requests business models to have a focus to dynamic interactions for the ecosystems to develop and become creative and attractive.

The complexity perspective, justified by the multiplicity and diversity of the interconnected and interdependent system elements and dimensions of TCBL Ecosystem, which implies governance to focus on non-linear and unpredictable development processes.

The theory of Large Scale Change, justified by TCBL objectives, which request a vision centred governance and a capture of achievements mutually reinforcing change across systems.

These, combined with the clarifications of the Technical Ecosystem Architecture and the analytical approach adopted in D6.1, suggests a process architecture that can shape the definition of emergent governance structures as follows:

Figure 8. TCBL analytical approach (from D6.1).

As applied to governance, these three steps can be interpreted as follows: • Mapping involves the identification of actors, roles, and system elements to be governed.

•

Visualising involves the definition of hypothesis structures and rule sets that represent the mapped interactions to all players.

•

Understanding captures the lessons and insights learned and the tensions that develop as the system evolves, leading to new mappings.

CONSEQUENCES The discussion on the evaluation criteria for the Calls for EoI during the period Dec 2015 – Feb 2016 paralleled the development of an awareness of TCBL as a ‘global movement’ and the emergence of ‘TCBL as a label’. This in turn led to the conception of TCBL as a value-based community. In addition to the coherence with the governance approach described above, the specific value proposition to Call candidates was to establish a ‘platform of trust’ and shared values that can lower the transaction costs (or innovation risk) for participating enterprises and labs to define experimental partnerships.

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The TCBL Pilot Framework TCBL Handbooks Textile & Clothing Business Labs

The first implication was to clarify the mapping of TCBL actors as follows:

Figure 9. TCBL Ecosystem roles and elements (from: D6.5).

One of the specific additions, compared to previous representations of this diagram, has been to locate the new actors introduced in the system at the end of the selection of the candidates applying to the Call for Expressions of Interest: the Associated Advisors, who will have a main role in enriching the Knowledge Spaces with documentation related to their fields of expertise.

The second implication was to promote a common vision. For this the idea of using compliance to a set of principles as the main selection criterion for the Calls which first emerged for the Labs, appeared more relevant for the recruitment of the Associate Businesses/Enterprises and substituted the initial plans of asking them information about their company or project ideas (The unexpectedly high response to the Call, nearly 120 Applications against a target of 60, later bore out this hypothesis).

In operational terms this led to a questionnaire focusing on the 7 values (principles), described and justified at the beginning of Chapter 3, and detailing the criteria of adherence to them, listed below in Table 3: Table 3. Pilot Selection Criteria.

Principle

Pilot Criteria

Curiosity

1. Ability to identify problems of relevance to the industry.

2. Interest in engagement with innovation initiatives.

3. Willingness to learn and experiment.

Viability

4. Market relevance of issues raised.

5. Alignment with relevant trends.

6. Added business value.

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The TCBL Pilot Framework TCBL Handbooks Textile & Clothing Business Labs

Principle

Pilot Criteria

Durability

7. Commitment to the environment.

8. Commitment to durable design.

9. Scalability of sustainability approach proposed

Multiplicity

10. Disciplinary and cultural richness.

11. Orientation to customer needs.

12. Business model innovation potential.

Openness

13. Contribution to shared resources and services.

14. Willingness to adopt open innovation.

15. Commitment to transparency.

Respect

16. Soundness of authorship, IPR and privacy policies.

THE TCBL NEEDS CATEGORISATION FRAMEWORK Based on the insights from state of the art analyses on both requirements engineering and the European T&C industry, three main categories of business or professional need have been identified as the “fil rouge” or common element to all Persona representations: •

Value recovered: or the generation of innovative solutions that capture some unused potential from under-utilised assets, resources, capabilities etc. or reduce / eliminate some sources of value destruction, negative productivity, depletion of non-renewable items, environmental or social damage [Bocken et al., 2013].

•

Knowledge required: or the possibility of accessing and interacting with new actors, networks, relations, which can bring new business concepts, methods/tools and practices, in support of value recovery.

•

Services requested: or a mapping of the specific resources that (ideally not for free) could be retrieved on a socio-digital ecosystem like TCBL, thanks to the contribution of (public or private) professional entities.

Alongside the randomly allocated items belonging to the (Value / Knowledge / Service) wish (TO BE) list, D6.1 also presents a tentative qualification in terms of (AS IS): •

• •

Contextual factors: or the external influencers on the T&C value chain that justify or motivate the innovation requirement expressed herein. Following the inspiration of the STEEP analysis paradigm [Makos, 2016], slightly adapted to the purpose, a distinction is made between Socio-economic, Technological, Environmental, Socio-cultural, Legal/Political and Business Model related factors.

Value chain processes: or the core locations of the proposed / desired innovations and/or missing knowledge acquisitions.

Business intermediaries: or a (probably incomplete) list of external and (far less frequently) internal service providers to a T&C business, who could be considered as the current major suppliers of the associated (felt as missing) resources.

The D6.1 provides a stylized representation of the T&C value chain, building on three main focus areas: 1) the raw material growing and transformation, with detailed mentioning of the technical phased of yarn and fabric manufacturing, 2) the addition of a garment design / confectioning area that is typical of clothing industry, and 22

The TCBL Pilot Framework TCBL Handbooks Textile & Clothing Business Labs

3) the key commercial processes of wholesaling, distribution (of both raw and finished products) and marketing/retailing.

The resulting TCBL actor needs categorisation framework is shown below:

Figure 10. TCBL Actor Needs Categorisation Framework (source: D6.1).

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3

REVISED PILOT FRAMEWORK

The objective of TCBL is to understand, map and visualize existing T&C Business Systems and to find and experiment ways to transform them in such way they can serve TCBL aims and make the results of these experimentations attractive enough to provoke their larger adoption by T&C actors.

A general overview of the work TCBL has to do concerning the Business Systems is in line with what has been defined in D6.1 and depicted in Figure 12 above as its analytical approach.

The first round of this approach has been applied to Business Systems as follows: •

•

•

Understanding consisted in the initial phase in collecting information and documentation on the T&C sector from previous studies, current information sources and partners’ knowledge and opinions on the existing status, problematics and trends.

Mapping involved the identification of actors, roles, and systemic elements of existing Business Systems, done through different method (and notably using the Persona profiling and storytelling).

Visualising involved the definition of hypothesis structures and rule sets that represent the mapped interactions to all players (using the Business Scenarios of Reference).

The second round consisted of revisiting the three steps above using the outputs and the feedback of the TCBL partners in the different activities as reported in the previous section.

The third round consisted of applying this analytical approach to understand, map and visualise the results from the Call for Expressions of Interest. For this we tried, through the adopted process of promotion and selection, to avoid influencing the views of the Associate Members as much as possible, without obliging them to adopt our views but only to share our values and the most important parts of our vision.

The fourth round (first phase of pilot activities) will consist of applying this approach to help our Associate T&C Enterprises to discover and understand the background information, environment and services of TCBL and to find pertinent matchings with other Associate Members. This will be realized in project year 2, starting right after the holiday break (but some dynamics of the TCBL_Jam in June 2016 have already shown a positive momentum in that direction).

The fifth round (second phase of pilot activities) will consist of following, monitoring and observing the activities of the Associate Members to capture and understand, map and visualize the results of the Business Pilots. Primarily these will concern the Transition Pathways from an initial to a final Business Model, the way they have been affected by the pilot experiments and what has been the impact for the business and for the environment.

The above will be the starting point for engaging a new group of Associate Members by the second Call for Expressions of Interest, with whom a repetition of the 3rd, 4th and 5th rounds will be undertaken in year 3.

The expected accumulated cases will form the basis of a campaign for the wider adoption and deployment of the innovative business models tested by the T&C enterprises, through a new repetition of the 3rd, 4th and 5th rounds in year 4.

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The TCBL Pilot Framework TCBL Handbooks Textile & Clothing Business Labs

Figure 11. Actual and Prospective Implementation of the TCBL Pilot Framework

The following scheme illustrates how TCBL intends to affect the existing Business Systems and some elements it puts emphasis on for doing it:

Figure 12. Leverage Factors for TCBL Business Systems Implementation

To intervene in the Business Systems in the different ways illustrated above the TCBL strategy consists of building an Ecosystem starting with TCBL project partners and expanding it through experiments with successive waves of associated members in view to provoke, in line with the theory of Large Scale Change, a large-scale adoption of its vision, solutions and achievements by the actors of T&C Business Systems.

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The TCBL Pilot Framework TCBL Handbooks Textile & Clothing Business Labs

Figure 13. Progressive expansion of the TCBL Ecosystem (source: DoA)

More precisely the TCBL socio-digital Ecosystem components defined, agreed, developed and shared between the partners, according to the project’s work plan organisation are: •

•

The Digital part of the Ecosystem which will be used as an open platform environment, offering Knowledge Spaces and Business Services and a first set of operational services; The Social part of the Ecosystem made up of the initial TCBL parthership, their respective local networks and the Associate Members who have been invited to join, according to their main expected contribution to the further development of each of the TCBL Ecosystem Components as shown in the diagram (reflecting the contents of Figure 4 above).

The ultimate goal is to achieve the real-life experimentation and market deployment of innovative Pilot Scenarios for the T&C manufacturing sector.

The profile of TCBL Associate Members is analysed in a next section (Innovation Actors) and the details of the first group of them is presented in Chapter 3 of this document devoted to “The 1st Call For Expressions Of Interest”.

THE TCBL REPRESENTATION OF THE T&C SECTOR Based on the different representations of T&C sector and, especially, on those provided by the European Textile Technology Platform, TCBL has adopted the following (loosely linear) representation of the industry value chain:

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The TCBL Pilot Framework TCBL Handbooks Textile & Clothing Business Labs

Phase

Activities

Raw Materials Raw materials production Textile Production

Collection design and sampling Regeneration Spinning Finishing Dyeing Warping Weaving Knitting Drying Printing Technical (including “smart�) textiles Other

Clothing Production

Collection design Selection of textiles and accessories Pattern making Prototyping and testing Grading and placement Preparation and cutting Tailoring Finishing and/or assembly Distribution Retail Other

Services to the Industry

Marketing Logistics Distribution Legal and regulatory aspects Policy and funding opportunities Research and development Training ICT applications and services (transversal) Environmental issues (waste, water, recycling Energy-related issues Social issues Business consultancy (incl. process solutions) Other

27

The TCBL Pilot Framework TCBL Handbooks Textile & Clothing Business Labs

This representation has served as a basis for all Candidates responding to our Call for EoI to locate their activities related to the sector. It will also be used to analyse the tasks performed for each activity, the skills and equipment used, the trends and innovations which could affect them and the possibilities to re-organise them through pilot experiments.

The diagnosis and benchmarking will be done with the assistance of TCBL experts for all the Associated Enterprises using the tools available in TCBL, like Orchestrator and bpSquare. bpSquare will help the sharing of information on that, the study of scenarios for changing current practices in some places, using elements coming from other places or to explain the changes which are expected by individual experimentation/innovation plans.

Out of this work this representation will be enriched and become much more detailed. This in turn is expected to contribute to the identification of innovation scenarios and of their potential impact. Out of these, Proposals for Pilot Experiments (Pilot Scenarios), to be transformed in Concrete Pilot Experiments with Concrete Implementation Paths (Transition scenarios) will be made to the Associate Enterprises.

For each of the involved Enterprises, a Business Canvas of their existing business and of their expected business transformation will validate the benefits to be expected from their decision to participate and will serve as a basis for the evaluation of the results of their Pilot Experimentation (to check which of the expected results have been obtained and which unexpected ones have occurred). This work will be done by the Associate Enterprises with the support of TCBL partners’ experts.

USE OF THE TRENDS AFFECTING THE T&C SECTOR The initial representation of the general overview of these trends remains the same as the one used in the initial framework (see Figure 6), to show the different trends coming from the macroenvironment of T&C sector which need to be taken into account for forecasting its evolution and for identifying the challenges and opportunities it may be confronted to.

But the work done through different activities within TCBL during the first year has revealed multiple14 new trends, additional to those selected in the initial Framework, to which all these activities are exposed. The initial analysis of TCBL users’ needs confirmed that one of the top concerns of them is to get detailed information on these trends.

The available documentation and information collected to produce deliverables like deliverable D7.1 is very rich. It will be spread through the Knowledge Spaces, starting with the one firstly used by Associated Members (Ning) while in parallel they will feed the main Knowledge Space of TCBL partners (vDiscover), while, based on some of them, some illustrations and attractive training courses using Argh! could be produced.

The objective will be to progressively provide access to detailed analysis of these trends with a view to inspire and provoke new ideas and proposals of innovative business scenarios and pilot experiments to test or implement them. As already started in Deliverable 7.1, the systematic evaluation of the contribution of these trends to TCBL’s targeted impacts will be pursued (return of delocalised manufacturing to Europe, reduction in the environmental footprint, creation of a novel supply network and creation of new embedded services supporting the customer driven supply chain), through grids like this one:

14

About 50 trends are analysed in Deliverable 7.1

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The TCBL Pilot Framework TCBL Handbooks Textile & Clothing Business Labs

Figure 14. Influence of Relocalisation Trends on TCBL impacts (Source: D.7.1).

This will help to identify the trends and innovations to be the most actively promoted by TCBL partners in the TCBL eco-system. The parts of the value-chain affected will be analysed to better identify the T&C enterprises which could be interested in experimenting on them (see section 3.2).

Based on them new proposals for Pilot Experiments (Macro-Scenarios) will be co-designed with Associate Members interested, to enrich the existing collection of TCBL Macro-Scenarios.

To engage the Associate Members in such co-design exercises, different remote working groups will be created on NING. The first to be proposed are focused on seven themes of interest: • • • • • • •

Natural and eco-fibres (hemp, organic cotton, recycled fibres) New design approaches (self-design, heritage, emotionally durable design, design intelligence) New work models (slow factory, social enterprises, community sewing, home sewing) Manufacturing process innovation (chemical use, energy efficiency, smart factory) Smart and technical textiles and clothing (sensors, special needs, hazardous environments) New product concepts (made to measure, value-driven, do-it-yourself kits) New retail concepts (m-commerce, social buying, value marketing, rental clothing)

To organise the interactions with them one partner is named as coordinator for each of these themes. His work will consist in creating a private Ning group on that theme, to populate it with some initial posts, to invite interested pilots to become members of the group and to supervise the posts in it and organise the animation of it.

To help the coordinators do this initial work and to provide future assistance to the members of each group in creating and managing Ning groups, a guide has been already produced. Indeed, while it is easy to start with Ning, for mastering the full set of the powerful functionalities offered

by Ning this is going to be a very valuable assistant.

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The TCBL Pilot Framework TCBL Handbooks Textile & Clothing Business Labs

TCBL MACRO-SCENARIOS During the Business Systems Set-up phase, different Macro-Scenarios (Business Scenarios of Reference) have been defined, both from the Pilots perspective (in WP4), using a common form as the following example (Table 4): TCBL Pilots' MacroScenarios Ecosystems of social economy in Fashion

Impact Ecosocial empowerment

Beneficiaries Social Economy Actors

Promoters Place Labs

Enablers

Transformers

Artists, designers, artisan s

Social entrepreneurs, local authoritie s

Relevant cases

TCBL Pilots ideas submitted

TCBL LABs involved

Sakina M’Sa

HCIA: Technical and nontechnical innovation as sources of inspiration

HCIA (Place)

Table 4. Example of TCBL Pilots’ Macro-Scenario.

As shown above, these scenarios involve more than one TCBL actor and notably these first ones explicitly consider a role and active participation of specific Business Labs in their implementation. The full list coming from WP4 is the one detailed at the beginning of this section under Table 1. It remains unchanged. Inversely, some additional scenarios added from Labs perspective (WP3), available in Annex V, will certainly involve pilot activities with Associated Enterprises (WP4).

The initial idea was to build these Macro-Scenarios (Business scenarios of Reference) for inspiring candidates interested by our Expression of Interest Call and help them define and propose their own Concrete Pilot Experiments when responding to this Call: small units like Laboratories (or workshops) and bigger ones like Factories (manufacturing plants) would be invited to use the Business Scenario of their choice and define their individual Pilot Scenario.

After the decision to recruit associate members on a different basis (motivation and adherence to the TCBL vision represented by the 6 principles and the attached to them criteria) the role of Macro-Scenarios has been redefined or, more exactly, repositioned, in time.

They will be part of the TCBL suggestions that the Associate Enterprises will be invited to consider in the first phase of Pilot Activities for co-designing with other fellows the concrete Pilot Scenarios which they would like to partake in the second phase.

After their decision to participate to such concrete Pilot Scenarios, each TCBL Associate Enterprise will discuss and agree with the TCBL partner of their region and the other members of the Scenario, their specific role and the Transition Scheme (path) for implementing the part of the scenario corresponding to their role, filling in a Pilot Experimentation Form (see example in Annex III) and defining a Business Model Transition for the implementation which will be worked out with the assistance of TCBL experts and other members of the TCBL community (such as Labs and Associated Advisors), using the methodology proposed in Chapter 6 (Transition Models, Drivers and Paths), and its periodical updates.

The TCBL pilots’ Transition Schemes should also integrate the innovative practices coming from the Business Labs. In so doing, they will help secure and accelerate the proposed innovation paths and define the steps, conditions, needs and deadlines of implementation of the Business pilot, in line with TCBL partners’ capacities and availability. Additionally, the 30

The TCBL Pilot Framework TCBL Handbooks Textile & Clothing Business Labs

description of the Transition Schemes can serve as a basis for a MoU linking the participants in the pilot with TCBL WP4 team members acting as guides and mentors as well as selected TCBL Labs, which could serve some of their specific implementation needs.

Finally, the actual Pilots results will serve for elaboration of Transferable Pilot Scenarios for the next waves of TCBL calls, for which new transition schemes will be elaborated with the applicants (see Annex II), thus enriching with their results the Business Support Services already implemented.

In the next project phase, as already stated in the initial framework’ s definition, the additional services brought to the TCBL platform by the Associate Service Providers (to be recruited in round 2 of Pilot Experiments) could be added to the initial suite and integrated in the future experimentation(s).

FORTHCOMING PILOT A CTIVITIES According to the DoA, TCBL Piloting activities should be based on existing and concrete supply and value chains including social enterprises, primarily in, but not limited to the T&C manufacturing sector. In the same document one specific goal set for TCBL is to put the emphasis on customer-driven innovation, leading to customer-driven value chains, and at a more general level to help T&C business systems to shift toward a practice that identifies sustainable needs and desires and adapts production to that end.

The beneficiaries of these pilot activities will be the Associate Enterprises who will join TCBL community in the successive Calls for Expressions of Interest.

The resources of the TCBL project devoted to these activities are mainly those allocated to WP4 of the project and specifically to Tasks 4.3 (Pilots involving mainly “Laboratories” – now renamed ”Workshops” – e.g. small business units or individual professionals) and 4.4 (Pilots involving mainly Factories – e.g. relatively larger T&C Enterprises).

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4. APPLICATION OF THE FRAMEWORK: PLOTS AND BUSINESS CASES The first observation used to design the initial pilot experiment scenarios, at the end of year 1, in the D4.1, has been that the selected associate members’ activities cover all the phases of the T&C value chain but the most common activities are textile and clothing collections design, selection of textiles and accessories, prototyping and testing, R&D and those relayed to environmental issues, while very few are involved in raw materials production and in some textile production stages (warping and drying) and relatively few in Textile production or in ICT or Energy related activities, as shown in the table below.

9 48 12 11 18 16 9 18 18 7 18 24 38 53 54 38 46 28 36 35 33 28 27 26 39 23 30 25 24 46 32 19 43 18 29 33 8 59 106

RAW TEXTILE

CLOTHING

41 37 28

TOTAL

3 17 2 5 10 8 7 8 5 4 6 12 15 22 22 15 17 13 16 13 17 16 13 7 19 17 19 12 11 22 9 7 20 12 10 12 4 18 2 25 9 3 4 4 1 8 10 1 7 4 8 25 25 17 20 10 16 19 14 10 11 9 12 4 7 6 5 12 12 1 11 2 10 9 2 19 4 6 1 3 4 4 1 2 3 2 5 8 15 6 7 6 9 5 4 3 2 2 3 10 8 2 4 7 8 12 11 11 12 4 9 12 2 22

Raw materials production Collection design and sampling Regeneration Spinning Finishing Dyeing Warping Weaving Knitting Drying Printing Technical (incl 'smart') textile experiments Other (please specify) Collection design Selection of textiles and accessories Pattern making Prototyping and testing Grading and placement Preparation and cutting Tailoring Finishing and/or assembly Distribution Retail Other (please specify) Marketing Logistics Distribution Legal and regulatory aspects Policy and funding opportunities Research and development Training ICT applications and services (across all) Environment issues (waste, water, recycling...)

Energy-related issues Social issues Business consultancy (incl.process solutions) Other (please specify) Any other skills or experience

ALL Factories Laboratories Advisors

SERVICES

Global view of the activities the TCBL Associate Members are involved in From the analysis of the profiles of the Associate Enterprises recruited in 2016 three types of pilot experiments have been defined as possible in June 2016 and worked out in Y2 (from July 2016 to June 2017) 1. Pilot experiments which could palliate the weaknesses of the sample Three cases of this category were explored, in the elaboration of the initial pilot scenarios, which have not been included in Business Cases selected but remain open for new ones: •

•

Only ONE laboratory and less than 20% of factories declared to be involved in activities involving the use of ICT applications and solutions, while 40% of the associated advisors were involved in such activities and TCBL has its own offer in that field, which is planned to increase in the future through the addition of new business services. This discrepancy has been exploited by inviting associated advisors to propose attractive pilot experiments inviting laboratories and factories to discover and co-design with them relevant uses of their ICT applications and solutions and provoke their interest to be involved in co-designed pilot experiments in view to introduce these applications and solutions, later on, in their businesses’ daily activities.

Only TWO associated factories were devoting part of their time in activities related to the regeneration and recycling of textiles, while NINE associated laboratories are active in this type of activity. It has been considered useful to explore if the unique Associated Advisor operating in this field could organise an experiment which would help the transfer of what the laboratories are doing in this field to more factories.

32

The TCBL Pilot Framework TCBL Handbooks Textile & Clothing Business Labs •

Finally, in Textiles, one activity emerged as comparatively more populated than others, even if at lower levels than clothing activities: the activity related to technical textiles, including smart materials. More than 20% of the associated members and more than 25% of associated factories were involved in them, while very few (10%) of associated laboratories (smaller units) are involved. The initially planned plot on Technical Textiles was envisaged to exploit this case, but has not been, finally, transformed or transferred in a Business Case.

Pilot experiments reinforcing these activities which include very interesting technical innovations and have, from existing studies, interesting development perspectives have been also explored to propose Pilot activities to the selected sample of associate members.

This option remains open for new Business Cases next year.

2. Pilot experiments which could exploit the strengths of the sample What appeared out of the previous analysis is that TCBL possessed a strong initial community (up to 50% of all associated members, and even more than that in associated workshops) involved in the design of collections. Several pilot experiments introducing innovation in design activities, but also in all activities (including making) up to prototyping of clothes should be proposed, to exploit this wide basis of possibly interested associate members. This was addressed until January by the so-called Made to Measure Plot and, later on, by the Independents Business Cases.

Another interesting concentration was tailoring activities in which more than 50% of the associated laboratories (small production units) and 30% of the associated industries were involved. The conclusion was that some pilot experiments focussed on tailoring clothes, mainly for Laboratories, could be proposed, to exploit this other wide basis of possibly interested associate members. This was addressed until January through the so-called Made to Measure and the Short Runs Plots and later by the Independents and Short Runs Business Cases.

Finally, the involvement of up to 50% of associated factories in R&D activities and in activities related to Environmental issues, combined with the involvement of more than 40% of the associated advisors in the same activities offered a basis for some interesting exchanges of experience to explore possible pilot experiments using R&D and focussed on Environmental issues, mainly for Factories. This was addressed until January by the socalled Eco-friendly Production Plot and later by the Eco-friendly Production and Bacteria Dying Business Cases.

3. Pilots that could strengthen stages of the value chain having very few actors involved We know from past experiences in some regions and countries that when the enterprises remaining in activity in some step of the value chain are very few the risks of having at local, national or European level broken value chains can weaken previous and next steps of the value chain. In our sample, we verified that the less represented stages of production are signals of such possible threats or just a defect of our sample. •

In clothing, we observed, for instance, that the relative weakness of pattern making and even more of grading and placement appears to influence next steps of production which are at lower levels than previous ones. This global observation is confirmed when observing details, like the regional evolution of covered steps by factories associated to TCBL, as shown in the diagram below:

33

The TCBL Pilot Framework TCBL Handbooks Textile & Clothing Business Labs

Bulgaria France Germany Greece Italy-PRATO Italy-VENETO Portugal Romania Slovenia UK

22 1 1 2 1 6 2 3 3 1 1 1

22 1 1 3 1 6 1 3 4 1 1 0

15 1 1 2 0 6 1 1 0 1 1 1

17 1 1 1 0 6 1 2 2 1 1 1

13 1 1 1 0 4 1 0 1 1 1 2

Finishing and/or

Belgium

Tailoring Preparation and cutting Grading and placement Prototyping and testing Pattern making Selection of textiles and accessories

Collection design Factories

16 13 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 5 5 1 0 1 0 1 1 1 1 2 2 2 1

17 1 1 2 0 6 2 1 1 1 1 1

Clothing activities of TCBL Associated Factories In these cases, pilot experiments creating the conditions for rebuilding the broken stages of the value chain may revitalise the sector. Sometimes this can be addressed relatively easily by re-acquiring, locally, lost know-how, by transferring it from other places through training. This was addressed until January through the so-called Made to Measure and the Short Runs Plots and later by the Independents and Short Runs Business Cases.

•

In textile, the most alarming cases of all the value chain appeared to be those of raw materials production and drying.

The case of natural raw materials has been considered, in the case of our sample selected associated partners the most interesting because it is linked to on-going national or regional efforts for revitalising the production of declining natural raw materials (silk, cotton, wool) or the vitalisation of new ones (citrus based fibres), which is part of a more general strategy TCBL supports for relocating/ reinforcing production activities in EU: improve the durability (ecological friendliness of the production).

Pilot experiments related to these materials provoked interest and involved actively some associated members covering different stages of the value chain. This potential was exploited to build three scenarios, worked out, from July to December 2016, as “Plots”: • • •

one scenario for Cotton, with 14 associated businesses another for Wool, with 15 associated businesses one for Silk, with 11 associated businesses.

What was interesting for all these scenarios was that we had, through the enterprises identified, a complete coverage of the T&C value chain. The first case of this type successfully implemented and developed in Year 2 has been the Natural Cotton Business Case.

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The TCBL Pilot Framework TCBL Handbooks Textile & Clothing Business Labs

DOCUMENT INFORMATION REVISION HISTORY Although this document is published as Annex 6 of Deliverable 4.2 (see below), a first version of this document, consisting in chapters 1-3, is based on TCBL Deliverable 4.1, “T&C Business Systems: Setup”, v6 of 05.08.2016. Authors: Athanase Contargyris (MIRTEC), Matteo Castagno (ISMB), Lorena Vidas (Prato), Michela Bergamin (UCV), Darko Fercej (eZavod), Ana Sampaio (Sanjotec), Maria Adele Cipolla (eZavod), Ruth Farrell (TCoE), Luca Leonardi (ARCA), and Dieter Stellmach (DITF). In particular, it is based on Chapter 2 “The TCBL Pilot Framework”, author Athanase Contargyris (MIRTEC).

Version two contains the new Chapter 4 and is issued as Annex 6 to TCBL Deliverable 4.2 “T&C Business Systems: Internal Pilots” of 15.07.2017. Authors: Athanase Contargyris (MIRTEC), Michele Osella (ISMB), Maria Adele Cipolla (eZavod), Michela Bergamin (UCV), Jesse Marsh (Prato), Paolo Guarnieri (Prato), Richard Axe (TCoE), Ruth Farrell (TCoE), Darko Fercej (eZavod), Ana Sampaio (Sanjotec), Luca Leonarsi (ARCA), and Dieter Stellmach (DITF). The contribution was specifically authored by Athanase Contargyris (MIRTEC)..

REVISION Version 1 Version 2

DATE 31.12..2016 15.07.2017

AUTHOR Richard Axe Thanos Contargyris

ORGANISATION

DESCRIPTION

TCoE MIRTEC

Excerpt based on D 4.1 Added Chapter 5, defined with D 4.2.

STATEMENT OF ORIGINALITY This deliverable contains original unpublished work except where clearly indicated otherwise.

Acknowledgement of previously published material and of the work of others has been made through appropriate citation, quotation or both.

COPYRIGHT This work is licensed by the TCBL Consortium under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, 2015-2016. For details, see http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ The TCBL Consortium, consisting of: Municipality of Prato (PRATO) Italy; German Institutes for Textile and Fiber Research - Center for Management Research (DITF) Germany; Istituto Superiore Mario Boella (ISMB) Italy; Skillaware (SKILL) Italy; The Oxford Brookes University (OBU) UK; imec (IMEC) Belgium; Tavistock Institute (TAVI) UK; Materials Industrial Research & Technology Center S.A. (MIRTEC) Greece; Waag Society (WAAG) Netherlands; Huddersfield & District Textile Training Company Ltd (TCOE) UK; eZavod (eZAVOD) Slovenia; Consorzio Arca (ARCA) Italy; Unioncamere del Veneto (UCV) Italy; Hellenic Clothing Industry Association (HCIA) Greece; Sanjotec - Centro Empresarial e Tecnológico (SANJO) Portugal; Clear Communication Associates Ltd (CCA) UK.

DISCLAIMER All information included in this document is subject to change without notice. The Members of the TCBL Consortium make no warranty of any kind with regard to this document, including, but not limited to, the implied warranties of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose. The Members of the TCBL Consortium shall not be held liable for errors contained herein or direct, indirect, special, incidental or consequential damages in connection with the furnishing, performance, or use of this material.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The TCBL project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 Programme for research, technology development, and innovation under Grant Agreement n.646133.

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