Although Europe keeps the world-wide leadership in the textile market, Far East has become a major manufacturing area. This situation opened new perspectives in fast growing markets for the European manufacturers of textile machines, in terms of annual turnover and jobs provided, but the advantages were only of short duration. An intensive effort of the manufacturers of textile machines in Asian countries in introducing the production of cheaper textile machines has started, and as a result Far-East has become the first applicant in the world as far as the number of patents on new machines and equipment for textile manufacturing is concerned, almost filling the gap with Europe. This represents a major threat for European textile machinery SMEs, and the only way forward is to establish once again the long tradition of cooperation between manufactures of textile machines and producers of textiles, innovating products and product portfolio and searching for new sophisticated solutions in high added value markets. A systematic and interdisciplinary approach is necessary, that enable textile machinery SMEs to:
To address this challenge in 2006 the MANUTEX initiative has been launched in order to realise closer collaboration in pre-competitive research and development at European level between the Textile and related Machinery Industries. In this framework a preliminary analysis of the scientific and technological bottlenecks has been done, highlighting the technological major needs to improve textile machinery. In line with the Strategic Research Agenda of MANUTEX, NU-WAVE aims at supporting textile machinery SMEs in the design of a new generation of flexible and high-performance machines through a close cross-sectorial R&D collaboration between textile and textile machinery manufacturers at European level, promising a clear win-win situation for both sides.
