Proper technology, its perfect usage and quality raw materials are the key parameters to produce quality PPE and Apparel Resources highlighted all these parameters head-on in its much appreciated webinar – ‘The Challenges of Making PPE: Body Coverall’.
The webinar, attended by over 700 people from the apparel industry, was conducted by industry’s experts such as Dr. Prabir Jana, Professor, NIFT (Delhi); Rashmi Thakur, Assistant Professor, NIFT (Mumbai) and Anshuman Dash, Founder, Unik Technologyz.
The almost two-hour long webinar was well moderated by Ila Saxena, Editor, Apparel Resources.
While Dr. Prabir opened the webinar with the styling options and fabric consumptions for body coverall, Dr. Rashmi explained the different options for fabric manufacturers to achieve the crucial viral barrier as well as breathable property. Anshuman Dash literary took the viewers to the shopfloor explaining and showing the crucial process parameters how to achieve the correct seam sealing of coverall.
Going into details, Dr. Jana discussed about body coverall manufacturing journey in India to give a background check to all attendees. He shared interesting information about the rising number of coveralls being produced in India, details of manufacturers and the number of seam sealing machines presently installed in country.
“India produced some 10,250 coveralls per day on 600 hot air seam sealing machines till 28 March and the number of coveralls’ production on daily basis has risen to more than 200,000 today using an additional 900 hot air seam sealing machines as well as using cold process of seam sealing which indicates the strong capability of the manufacturers venturing in this product,” informed Prabir.
Right from the beginning of the webinar, the enthusiasm of attendees was at its peak and they flooded the QA section with their queries – technical, market aspects, manufacturing and raw material were some of the critical areas that people wanted to know more about.
Once Dr. Jana gave his insights into manufacturing journey, he handed over the baton to Rashmi Thakur who presented her deeply researched information on the selection of raw materials for making a quality body coverall. She threw light on three technical aspects – fabric GSM vs. barrier properties; microporous membrane vs. monolithic membrane; and air permeability vs. breathability properties in fabric to be selected for right body coverall.
Rashmi also emphasised on the fact that laminated fabric is around 7 to 10 times costlier than the coated fabric so depending on the budget, the manufacturers can opt any of these two for fabric properties’ enhancement.
The next speaker was Anshuman Dash who highlighted all technical challenges within seam sealing operation while manufacturing coveralls. The attendees got to know about many technical aspects from total SAM (sewing and seam sealing); total seam sealing time; total number of sewing operations and total number of seam sealing operations in a body coverall.
“Apart from this, the manufacturers should also improve tape bonding process and it is recommended to attach tape in one go instead of stopping the process and readjusting it,” averred Anshuman.
Apart from knowledge sharing through domain experts, the interesting part of the webinar was various short surveys on allied issues of PPE manufacturing – body coverall in particular, so all stakeholders could have a better idea about the entire industry’s views on critical points.
At the end of the webinar, the panelist answered queries from viewers; the questions discussed were about many diverse areas including welding options, sterilisation options to critical fabric features to make reusable and sustainable coverall.
“The need of organising the webinar on PPE was obvious as we can see a huge escalation in coverall manufacturing invoked by the pandemic and the need is here to stay. However, those who are already into technical textiles or in protective gear manufacturing find coverall manufacturing not a difficult task as they have necessary infrastructure, technology and expertise in the domain. The problem remains with the new entrants who find it challenging to venture into coverall manufacturing from their regular apparel production,” commented Deepak Mohindra, Chairman and Editor-in-Chief, Apparel Resources.
Dedicatedly working for the growth of the Indian apparel industry, Apparel Resources will continue its efforts and in future it will have more such required knowledge sharing sessions.