Apparel manufacturers are facing growing pressure from rising labour, energy and financing costs, shorter lead times and increasingly demanding sustainability requirements. At the same time, factories are being asked to improve productivity and flexibility without simply adding more people, machinery or working capital.
In an interview with Kohan Textile Journal, Himanshu Mehrotra of Coats Digital discusses how digitalization and artificial intelligence are changing costing, production planning, factory-floor analysis and decision-making across the apparel industry.
He also examines the challenges facing manufacturers in Türkiye, the opportunities emerging across the Middle East and Africa, and how tools such as GSDCost, FastReactPlan, GSDQuest, AI Analytics and GSD RealMotion can help factories improve productivity, transfer specialist knowledge and become more responsive and competitive.
Digitalization Must Deliver Measurable Value on the Factory Floor
The apparel industry is undergoing rapid transformation. From your perspective, what are the biggest challenges manufacturers are facing today, and where can digitalization deliver the greatest measurable impact?
The apparel industry is being squeezed from several directions at once. Labour, energy and financing costs are rising, customers want shorter lead times and greater flexibility, and sustainability expectations are becoming much more demanding. At the same time, manufacturers cannot simply pass those costs on.
So, the question is not really whether factories need to become more efficient. They do. The question is how they achieve that without continually adding more people, more machines or more working capital.
I believe digitalization has the greatest value when it changes the quality and speed of everyday decisions. If you know what a garment should cost, what capacity you have, what is happening on the factory floor and where a problem is developing, you can act much earlier.
For me, the ultimate measure is quite simple: can we help a factory produce more pieces per hour and deliver them on time? If digital technology does that, it is creating measurable value.
Türkiye’s Apparel Industry Needs Productivity, Not Just Cost Advantage
Türkiye’s apparel manufacturers are facing significant pressure from rising labour, energy, financing and production costs. Many companies are now looking either to manufacture more efficiently or shift toward higher-value-added products. How can Coats Digital’s solutions help Turkish manufacturers reduce costs, improve margins and move up the value chain?
Türkiye has many of the ingredients needed to remain a significant apparel manufacturing hub: an established industry, skilled people, strong supply-chain relationships and proximity to important markets. But the cost advantage cannot be taken for granted.
That makes productivity increasingly important. Manufacturers need to understand exactly what they are producing, what it should cost and how effectively their capacity is being used.
GSDCost provides that foundation by bringing greater scientific rigour to costing methodologies and Standard Minute Values. FastReactPlan then helps manufacturers translate that information into more effective production planning.
We are also seeing AI change what is possible. GSDQuest brings specialist GSD knowledge into the costing process, while AI Analytics makes operational data much easier to interrogate and act upon.
I don’t think moving up the value chain necessarily means moving away from manufacturing. It means becoming a smarter manufacturer — one that can offer speed, reliability, flexibility and consistent quality alongside competitive costs.
Read More: Digitalisation and AI to Drive the Future of Turkish Apparel Manufacturing
AI Can Help Bridge the Apparel Manufacturing Skills Gap
Textile and apparel manufacturing is expanding rapidly in markets such as Egypt and several African countries, but access to skilled operators, production managers and technical expertise can remain a challenge. Can AI and digitalization help bridge this skills gap? Rather than replacing workers, can technology actually make operators and factory teams smarter, more capable and more productive?
Yes, and I think this is one of the more positive applications of AI.
There is an enormous amount of expertise in apparel manufacturing, but it has traditionally been very dependent on individuals. An experienced engineer or production manager may have spent 20 years learning how to solve particular problems. The challenge is making that knowledge available to everyone else.
That is one of the reasons GSDQuest is interesting. It can make decades of GSD expertise accessible when and where people need it, rather than leaving that knowledge sitting with a small number of specialists.
In addition, GSD RealMotion, which is currently in beta, is exploring how AI and computer vision can make method analysis faster and more accessible. By analysing simple videos of factory-floor operations, it aims to help industrial engineers understand how work is being performed and identify opportunities to improve methods.
I don’t see AI as replacing people. I see it as giving people better tools. If we can help a junior engineer make better-informed decisions, or enable an experienced specialist to analyse operations more efficiently, we can extend the reach of expertise across the industry.
Connecting Costing, Planning and Production Through Digital Intelligence
Coats Digital offers solutions across areas such as costing, production planning and manufacturing optimization. How can connecting these different stages digitally help an apparel manufacturer improve productivity, shorten lead times and make better business decisions?
One of the problems in apparel manufacturing is that the industry has traditionally been organised around functions. Costing, planning and production often operate in separate functional silos with information transferred manually via spreadsheets, emails or word of mouth.
But manufacturing doesn’t work in functions. A costing decision affects planning. Planning affects production. What happens in production should then inform the next costing and planning decision.
That is the opportunity we see in building a Fashion Intelligence Platform. We want information to become more connected and, importantly, more useful over time.
If a manufacturer has been using a digital system for three years, I don’t think they should be getting exactly the same value from it as they did in month one. The system should have learned from their orders, their styles, their factories and their decisions.
That is what I mean by intelligence that compounds. The value should grow with use.
Coats Digital Moves AI from Discussion to Practical Manufacturing
AI is now moving from discussion to practical implementation in manufacturing. Where is Coats Digital already seeing the most meaningful applications of AI in apparel production, and what could an AI-powered apparel factory look like within the next three to five years?
We are already beyond the discussion stage. The interesting question now is where AI can solve a real manufacturing problem.
We are applying AI to practical challenges across apparel manufacturing. GSDQuest brings AI into costing workflows and makes specialist GSD knowledge more accessible, while AI Analytics helps manufacturers extract meaningful insights from production, supply-chain and sales data.
We are also exploring the next generation of AI-powered manufacturing tools. GSD RealMotion, currently in beta, is designed to use AI and computer vision to analyse factory-floor videos, with the aim of making method analysis faster and helping industrial engineers identify opportunities to improve working methods.
What connects these developments is a focus on practical manufacturing problems. The aim is to reduce the effort involved in accessing specialist knowledge, interpreting operational data and analysing factory-floor processes, so that teams can focus more of their time on improving performance.
The Apparel Factory of the Future Will Be More Predictive and Conversational
In three to five years, I expect the factory to become much more conversational and much more predictive. Instead of waiting for a report at the end of the day, a production manager might simply ask what is affecting today’s output, why a line is behind plan and what options are available.
The technology will increasingly identify patterns that humans might miss. But I don’t expect it to remove humans from the equation. Manufacturing is too complex for that. The role of people will evolve from gathering and interpreting information towards making decisions and managing exceptions.
Türkiye, Middle East and Africa: Productivity Will Define Competitiveness
Looking specifically at Türkiye, the Middle East and Africa, where do you see the strongest opportunities for apparel manufacturing over the coming years, and what role will digital transformation play in determining which manufacturers remain globally competitive?
I think there is a genuine opportunity across these regions, particularly as brands continue to look for supply chains that are closer, more responsive and more resilient.
But resilience and competitiveness are increasingly connected to productivity. A factory cannot afford to have large amounts of capacity sitting idle, waste materials through poor planning or discover a production problem when it is already affecting delivery.
There is also an important sustainability dimension here. Improving productivity is often good for the environment as well as the balance sheet. Better planning can reduce unnecessary production, idle capacity and waste; better methods can reduce wasted time and resources; and better visibility can help manufacturers make more informed decisions about how they use energy and other inputs.
So, I don’t see sustainability and productivity as competing priorities. Increasingly, they are the same conversation.
The manufacturers that succeed will be those that combine their existing expertise with better data, better technology and a willingness to keep improving. Digitalization won’t replace manufacturing expertise. It will make that expertise more powerful.
Our role at Coats Digital is to help make that happen — ultimately helping manufacturers produce more pieces per hour, delivered on time, while using their people and resources more intelligently.
Read More: Coats Digital Discusses Smarter Garment Manufacturing at Apparel Sourcing Week 2026
Editor’s Note
The interview reflects a wider shift taking place across apparel manufacturing. Digitalization is increasingly moving beyond software adoption and becoming part of how factories calculate costs, plan capacity, analyse production performance and transfer technical knowledge across teams.
For manufacturers in Türkiye, the Middle East and Africa, this transition could become especially important as rising costs, skills shortages and pressure for shorter lead times increase the need for better productivity and faster decision-making.
As Coats Digital’s perspective suggests, the competitive advantage of the future may depend less on low-cost production alone and more on how effectively manufacturers combine experience, data, automation and artificial intelligence.
