Moratuwa University Textile Association (MUTA) initiated the series of webinars to share the cutting-edge technologies and modern concepts within its members and the apparel industrialists in the country. The first webinar titled ‘the Data-Driven Decision Making with Industry 4.0 solutions’ was held on 7th July, 2021, conducted by Mr. Dilan Walgampaya - Chief Technology Officer and Co- founder of X.O Concepts (Pvt.) Ltd. This delivered vital information on concepts, success factors, maturity index and real-life implementations of Industry 4.0.

The audience was mainly past graduates, undergraduates, and the staff of the department. The session was moderated by Mr. Asanga Henegedara – Director of Lean Transformation at ICEES Global. The webinar drew 300 registrations with more than 200 participants in the live presentation and it ended up in an interesting question-and- answer segment. The recording of the webinar is available on the MUTA YouTube channel.

From a student perspective about the webinar series July 2021’

“Our final year project is to develop a roadmap to reach industry 4.0 for the Sri Lankan apparel industry. At that time, MUTA conducted a webinar on Industry 4.0. At that time, we were planning how to apply this industry 4.0 concept in practical application on the apparel factory production floor. We got a clear idea of how to use those industry 4.0 key enablers like the Internet of Things, cloud computing, big data in a professional environment. Mr. Dilan described the line performance comparison of the knitting plant production floor.

According to him, all knitting machines are connected to the network and all machines are displayed on the dashboard. The current status of live engines can be found on the dashboard. The automation process starts with the RFID chip installed on each machine. The maintenance team maintains the machines without any delay. Dashboard refers to all running and idle machines. Similarly, all idle times will be added in the relevant department. The hourly production will be displayed on dashboards with real and forecast. Once the required data management is obtained the entire picture of the production floor can be viewed without going to the floor.

Then the management can make the required administrative decisions. So, we used the same concept in our project. There are sewing machines instead of knitting machines. But the problem is that the sewing floor has more human contact compared to the knitting floor. So, this is a very complicated situation. But the concept is the same.

He also talked about different types of data in the manufacturing sector, how that data is generated and is important. How to make data-based decisions in the manufacturing sector. And there was an introduction to the concept level design about industry 4.0 and key design principles. Different research articles had different design principles. But he explained the simple and clear way to do it. The whole world goes back to the 4.0 era, and we are so grateful that we made such a valuable project. Overall, it was a very helpful webinar for our project, and I am thankful to Mr. Dilan Walgampaya and also to the MUTA for organizing such a valuable event. And I expect more events in future like this..”

- C.K. Yaparathne, Undergraduate - 31st Batch