Volume 13, Issue 4

Operating performance could affect the survival and future development of a business that both businesses and business managers would devote to the enhancement of operating performance. Having developed for more than four decades, the consistent upstream, mid-stream and downstream system have been constructed in domestic textile industry. The output value of textiles in Taiwan has exceeded 480 billion NT dollars, which is not a sunset industry, as generally described. The impacts of high labour cost, environmental protection measures and changes of capital market as well as the competition of emerging countries, particularly Mainland China, have made textile industry in Taiwan face great market competition and pressure. Since textiles are regarded as one of the major products in Taiwan, the operating performance could affect the survival of the overall industry. In this case, operating performance survey of textile manufacturers in Taiwan during 2010–2012 is combined with Data Envelopment Analysis and Slack Variable Analysis to measure the total efficiency, pure technical efficiency and scale efficiency of top 12 textile manufacturers in Taiwan, tending to provide the reference of operating efficiency improvement for the manufacturers. The empirical results show that the overall efficiency in the 3 years appears 0.89 averagely. The relative efficiency (1) between two manufacturers, Far Eastern New Century and Ruentex Industries, achieves the optimal operating efficiency, whereas the remaining 10 are comparatively worse. Regarding the analysis of returns to scale, two textile manufacturers present constant returns to scale, with the optimal operating efficiency, whereas the remaining 10 show increasing returns to scale, revealing that expanding the scale could enhance the marginal return and further promote the efficiency.

Opening a factory overseas requires a large amount of capitals and technical experiences, and the number of native cadres expatriated overseas is also considerable. The relationships between Overseas Adaption and Job Satisfaction of expatriates are worth research and exploration. This study, therefore, aims to discuss the effects of Overseas Adaption on Job Satisfaction of expatriates in textile industry. The questionnaires for expatriates of Far Eastern New Century are distributed and collected through mails. With convenience sampling, a total of 400 copies are distributed and 263 valid ones are retrieved, with the retrieval rate of 66%. Based on the statistical analyses with SPSS, the sample data are further proceeded with factor analysis, reliability analysis, regression analysis, and analysis of variance. The research findings show the significantly positive correlations between (1) Overseas Adaption and Needs for Survival, (2) Overseas Adaption and Needs for Relatedness, and (3) Overseas Adaption and Needs for Growth; and (4) the correlations between Overseas Adaption and Job Satisfaction show remarkable differences in personal attributes.

In this paper, a novel classification method of assessing garment sewing stitch based on amended bi-dimensional empirical mode decomposition (ABEMD) has been introduced. Two parameters that characterise garment sewing stitch, average area and standard deviation, have been defined based on the grey value of pixels. Experimental results showed that when the window size is 512×128 pixels with regard to average area, the threshold can be decided as 6.00, 5.50, 5.30 and 4.00 for five different grades , respectively. Meanwhile, with regard to standard deviation, the threshold can be decided as 48.00, 40.00, 30.00 and 20.00, respectively. It is demonstrated that the parameters are effective in discriminating sewing stitch images in terms of the grades when used as inputs for the ABEMD. The performance of the algorithm on different garment status is significantly reliable.

The success of any organisation is dependent on how effectively it attracts recruits, and the manner in which it motivates and retains its workforce. To cope up with the current situations, managements must be flexible enough in dealing with their workforce and ensure loyalty in their employees. In order to satisfy the employees and achieve organisational goals, the management must adopt new approaches to improve the quality of work life of employees. This paper aims to measure the factors influencing the quality of work life and the impact of quality of work life on employees’ performance. A sample of 150 employees from a textile industry was selected and the study reveals that organisational culture, training and development, compensation and rewards, and job satisfaction differ from department to department, which have great impact on the quality of work life of employees. The positive finding in this study is that there is a healthy relationship among the subordinates and superiors which leads to effective communication and cooperation. Thus, quality of work life of employees has a positive impact on productivity of the employees.

The observation of the market indicates that material assets as determining the value of the company and as the determining factors of its success are increasingly becoming less important. On the other hand, the factor, whose share has an increasing significance in the success of the organisation, is the ability to utilise intangible resources, meaning the intellectual capital. The aim of the current article is to present the essence of the intellectual capital and different instruments of estimating its level. There was also an attempt made to measure the intellectual capital with the use of one of the available methods. The companies from textile-clothing sector quoted at the Warsaw Stock Exchange were selected as a target group.

A single step electrospinning of chitosan and chitosan derivative-chitosan lactate nanofibres was studied in this paper. Chitosan was dissolved into acetic acid to produce structure-stable nanofibres. The effect of chitosan concentration and the content of acetic acid on the fibre diameter and morphology of nanofibres were studied in detail. The dynamic viscosity and surface tension of the electrospinning chitosan solutions were systematically studied as well. Based on the fundamental study on electrospinning chitosan in acetic acid, a chitosan derivative, chitosan lactate, was added to produce nanofibre in a pH-friendly aqueous environment. Chemical and morphological analyses demonstrated that chitosan lactate will positively influence the formation of nanofibres in higher pH condition although the morphology should be improved.

Due to its excellent biocompatibility, Chitosan is a very promising material for degradable products in biomedical applications. The development of pure chitosan microfibre yarn with defined size and directional alignment has always remained a critical research objective. Only fibres of consistent quality can be manufactured into textile structures, such as nonwovens and knitted or woven fabrics. In an adapted, industrial scale wet spinning process, chitosan fibres can now be manufactured at the Institute of Textile Machinery and High Performance Material Technology at TU Dresden (ITM). The dissolving system, coagulation bath, washing bath and heating/drying were optimised in order to obtain pure chitosan fibres that possess an adequate tenacity. A high polymer concentration of 8.0–8.5% wt. is realised by regulating the dope-container temperature. The mechanical tests show that the fibres present very high average tensile force up to 34.3 N, tenacity up to 24.9 cN/tex and Young’s modulus up to 20.6 GPa, values much stronger than that of the most reported chitosan fibres. The fibres were processed into 3D nonwoven structures and stable knitted and woven textile fabrics. The mechanical properties of the fibres and fabrics enable its usage as textile scaffolds in regenerative medicine. Due to the osteoconductive properties of chitosan, promising fields of application include cartilage and bone tissue engineering.

The aim of this work was to visualise liquid transport in textiles. Knowledge of the transport phenomena allows for the design of textiles for various applications, e.g., comfortable to wear filtration and wound dressing. To visualise liquid transport through textiles, three test methods were explored. The first one was the high spatial resolution magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) technique (also referred to as nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) microscopy). It allowed the observation of the pathways of liquid flow through textiles. In the second method, a thermographic camera was used to record temperature changes and assess the liquid flow in the textile. The third method was using a high-speed video camera to observe the liquid transport within the textile. Two types of textiles were studied: a double-layer knitted fabric and a woven fabric, both made from hydrophilic and hydrophobic fibres (cotton, viscose and polypropylene). The knitted fabrics were tested as a new type of wound dressing, which trans

Sound absorbing materials used to provide optimal conditions in rooms can be applied in the form of textiles with a special structure such as nonwovens or fibre-containing composites. Nonwovens can be successfully used to make thermoplastic composites by thermal pressing. This paper presents the comparison of the sound absorbing properties of needled nonwovens and composites made from them. Composites with various densities can be made of nonwovens with various percentage contents of filling and matrix fibres. The sound absorption by composites with similar thickness, about several millimetres, is slightly lower than that by the laminar nonwoven packs used for their making. The optimal content of the filling fibres in the composite, when its sound absorption coefficient reaches the highest values, is at the level of 10 wt.%. With the increase in the content of filling fibres the composite density decreases. In the case of the composite with 10 wt.% of filling fibres, its density is the highest among the composites investigated, and the increase in absorption of high-frequency sounds is the highest. Imparting a relief with a protrusion diameter over 10 mm to the composite surface, we can increase the sound absorption of that composite.