by Jeff Frye, Eleventh Annual EFS^® Conference June 9,1998

Good Morning, my name is Jeff Frye. It is an honor and a privilege to be invited here to discuss with you "The Advantages of Buying Preclassed Cotton in Mexico and it's Impact on QSPC."

I worked for Parras Cone de Mexico in Coahuila, Mexico for three and one-half years. Parras Cone de Mexico is a joint venture denim manufacturing facility owned by Cone Mills Corporation and Company Industrial de Parras S.A.

Textile companies in Mexico have the ability to buy cotton from anywhere in the world without restriction. While I was the Manager of Parras Cone, we experimented with cotton from other parts of the world. It is my opinion, there are distinct advantages with using United States preclassed cotton. These advantages are the focal point of this discussion.

What is important in a textile operation? When this question is asked, you get varying replies, depending on whom you ask and what their responsibilities are. For example, if you ask a Cost Accountant the reply may be the accounting method used to track cost, or if you ask a Manager of a Ring Spinning department the reply could be the amount of short fiber in the cotton. I believe there is one simple and inclusive answer . . . QSPC. QSPC is an acronym for Quality, Customer Service, Processing, and Cost. Managing to achieve the best possible outcome of these four attributes will ensure a strong and successful
organization. Next, I want to explain the relationship preclassed cotton has with QSPC.

Quality, as defined by Webster, is the peculiar and essential character or degree of excellence. Whether you are discussing yarn or fabric quality, basically the same measurements apply: strength, uniformity, elongation, color, defects, consistency, and durability. According to Ralph Feil of the Institute of Textile Technology, the key to consistently producing world class yam and fabrics is simple; proper fiber selection, proper bale management associated with those fibers, optimize your equipment, and perform proper preventive maintenance on your machinery. It is impossible to consistently manufacture high quality products without having proper fiber selection and bale management.

Fiber processing is also significantly impacted by cotton fiber attributes. According to research conducted by Schlafhorst (depicted in Figure 1 ), changes in cotton micronaire significantly impact open end spinning end breaks and yarn strength. As micronaire values increase end breaks increase. Also, as micfonafre values increase yarn strength fs decreased. However, ft should be noted that an increase in fiber strength yields higher levels of yarn strength.

Cost is the heart of any manufacturing operation. When in control and with proper measurements in place your organization is very strong, however, when out of control the demise of your operation is inevitable. As depicted in figure 2, the cost of cotton fiber represents more than half of the total manufacturing cost of a typical yarn mill. Therefore, a major part of controlling cost in your organization depends upon using the correct fibers for the specific product that you are manufacturing and manage those bales like they were gold, maximizing their yarn output.

I was reared in the foothills of North Carolina. In that area many proverbs are used to teach lessons. A proverb that I think applies to purchasing cotton is "Don't buy a pig in a poke." This simply means know what you are buying before you buy it. The greatest advantage of preclassed cotton is the ability to know the exact fiber attributes before the cotton arrives to your plant. Many times when you buy a pig in the poke you get disappointed. I strongly recommend the use of preclassed data to circumvent "the pig in the poke."

There are many advantages to using preclassed cotton. If you use preclassed cotton, you can achieve world class bale management through the use of Engineered Fiber Selection^®. EFS^® will generate statistically uniform cotton mixes which can be specified for the specific end use. Using preclassed cotton in conjunction with EFS^® allows you to reduce your cotton inventory and gives you the flexibility to make adjustments to your laydown averages based on the incoming cotton attributes. Also, labor in the cotton warehouse can be reduced because the need to cut samples from each incoming bale is eliminated. When you use United States preclassed cotton you can receive free technical assistance from Cotton Incorporated. They will assist with processing concerns as well as run samples for you in their labs. Through the use of EFS^® you can decrease your cotton inventories. Normally, textile companies using a traditional method of laydown selection need four or five weeks of inventory to make consistent laydown picks. With the use of EFS this inventory can be reduced to two weeks or less. We at Parras Cone de Mexico have found that by using preclassed cotton in conjunction with EFS^® we are able to produce one of the most consistent products in our market. According to Uster Statistics, we rank in the five percentile of the world for yarn count variation. This is the building block for consistently manufacturing high quality products.

When we started-up Parras Cone on September 4, 1995. We were using a certain percent of non-classed cotton. Based on our experience, this cotton was poorly ginned, the fiber consistency significantly varied, bale compression was not consistent, bale wrapping frequently contaminated the cotton, and we found many foreign objects and grease inside the cotton bales. I am not saying preclassed cotton is perfect, however, it is far superior to the cotton that I used at that time.

By the second quarter of 1996 we had converted to 100 percent preclassed cotton. We had established a world class bale management system using EDI data through QRNet and decreased fiber testing to only 10 percent.

During the start-up of Parras Cone, I remembered Ralph Foil's keys to success. We followed this advice at Parras Cone and now we have become extremely successful within our market. Our weaving efficiency on heavy weight denim is averaging 96.00% with a first quality of 99.87% and average finished points per one hundred square yards of 0.99. We have had zero product quality returns, and zero warp and filling tear failures. Also, a goal that we are very proud of is our achievement of 100% on-time shipments. This relates specifically to the S in QSPC, customer service. Because of these milestones, we have made some very strong partnerships with our customers.

In closing, I hope the following messages were conveyed in this presentation. Fully utilize the best preclassed cotton that you can buy. Manage your company focusing on product quality, customer service, processing, and cost while understanding the interaction with cotton.  Finally, remember good yarns begin with good fibers.