Development of Potential Woven Fabric Designs with Existing Loom-Set up

Weaving factories in Ethiopia are sticking to limited types of product categories. It is analyzed that production of bed-sheeting and sheeting material covers more than 50% of the total product varieties. Besides, production of shirting, blankets & suiting in total covers only about 40%. Due to this, demands forbasic product categories of shirting, suiting, dress materials, curtains and towels are not fulfilled with local factories product mix. Thus, the country is forced to import such products from different countries like: China, Italy, Turkey, India, Netherlands, United States, Taiwan, etc. for assessing the majorly importedproduct mix, three month import data has been taken from Ethiopian customs revenue authority and analyzed that for this 3-month period, a total cost of USD 566,329 has been withdrawn for purchasing the products. So, this paper tries to assess the machinery and loom conditions of the selected representativefactories with main parameters of shedding mechanisms, make & model of the looms and active/working number of harness frames. Shedding contributes about 50%, 40% & 10% for tappet, dobby and jacquard mechanisms respectively & the number of harness frames in the looms ranges from 6 to 20 for both tappet and dobby looms respectively. Accordingly, with this machine set-up the potential woven fabric designs, which have application areas of shirting, dresses, suiting, towels & home furnishings have been studied in detail and more than 15 product designs have been suggested with details of required heald shafts, drafting procedures, lifting plans and specific application areas.