Using specialist textile machinery and equipment to weave or to finish textiles.
This standard has options. Display duties and KSBs for:
This occupation is a technical role within textile and fashion advanced manufacturing companies. The occupation is a production/manufacturing role that involves the production of textiles for woven or finished fabrics. The broad purpose of the occupation is to ensure that the technical capabilities of the plant, the product and the machinery are appropriately and innovatively fined-tuned to meet customer expectations. This involves the use of specialist textile machinery and equipment, either to WEAVE or to FINISH textiles which service the world’s textile supply chain.
The Textile Technical Specialist is a core and options apprenticeship standard. The options are as follows:-
1) Technical Weaving - this occupation covers the whole of the weaving production operation in an advanced textile manufacturing company
2) Technical Finishing - this occupation covers the whole of the textile finishing operation in an advanced textile manufacturing company
A Textile Technical Specialist is highly skilled and can utilise, operate and maintain all equipment within either the WEAVING department or the FINISHING department.
In their daily work, an employee in either of these occupational roles works in a sophisticated production environment using computer systems to plan and programme production machinery, interchanging between manufacturing facilities and laboratories. Almost all their work is indoors in controlled environments and they would usually deal with customers by telephone or email over technical matters that affect production performance.
An employee in this occupation is responsible for the exact machinery programming, scientific analysis, accurate measurements, trials, whole production and efficiency as well as quality of fabric production for either the textile weaving or finishing applications. The role is heavily mechanised with the use of bespoke computer systems. It directly involves the production/output of fabrics to meet a high value market.
They work in a senior role as a business’s technical expert and lead a team of operatives. They report directly to senior management and directors and have overall scrutiny and responsibility for the accuracy of manufactured products. Textile Specialist have overall autonomy for the use of production machinery, ensuring that appropriate personnel are appointed to production roles to meet demand. They are employed across micro businesses, SMEs and large businesses, ranging from small weaving and finishing businesses to large clothing businesses to meet requirements of a global fashion market.
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Duty 1 plan daily production schedules for specialist textile equipment. |
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Duty 2 manage staff within the team to ensure effective and efficient textile production. |
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Duty 3 create technical product reports that demonstrate production expectations for customers, taking into account the technical specifications needed to meet bespoke client needs. |
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Duty 4 calculate production, ratios, energy consumption, and other measurements appropriate to the production of high quality textiles. |
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Duty 5 manage Health & Safety processes undertaken and maintain safety of the team. |
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Duty 6 manage customer need and produce according to specific bespoke client requirement. |
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Duty 7 tailor/adjust equipment for effective production and optimise machinery ensuring that the core values of production are maintained throughout including the use of specialist ICT software on machines. |
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Duty 8 plan and maintain all schedules for upgrade, upkeep and maintenance to reduce downtime production loss. |
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Duty 9 maintain quality control expectations and identify fault through rigorous analysis of end product. |
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Duty 10 Set up and prepare weaving machinery (looms) and equipment for textile production, adjusting loom speed, raw material, load, tensile strength, weights, efficiency and timings are considered, according to machine capability. |
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Duty 11 Optimize parameters of weaving machinery to ensure compatibility with products. Change weaving and configure guiding system and weft insertion to machine manufacturers’ tolerances. Change all machine settings relating to cloth parameters, e.g. picks/cm, weave design, warp tensions and adjust shedding machinery on weaving machinery to client requirements. |
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Duty 12 Insert prepared healded warp into weaving machine in correct way ensuring no damage is done to warp. Secure shedding device into the shedding system and secure the healded warp to enable weaving to be carried out by tying up or use of appropriate system. |
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Duty 13 Set, monitor and adjust warp and weft tensions for optimised production speeds during machine overview and management practices. Ensure all parameters of fabric are correct before releasing for production. |
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Duty 14 Monitor production efficiency of multiple machines to ensure production requirements are met, making adjustments to maintain constant productivity and quality, replacing machine parts as required and set according to machine manufacturers specifications |
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Duty 15 Monitor spare part usage on the looms (across the whole of the weaving department) and order replacements in a timely manner to ensure production targets are maintained. Enforce a proactive and preventative maintenance programme, according to schedule set by machinery manufacturers (example: utilising correct specification of lubricants on moving parts to maintain loom efficiencies). |
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Duty 16 Set up and prepare finishing machines and its various processes (tentering, cropping, decatizing) as required, ensuring that batch sheets are fully evaluated prior to production, as outlined in client brief. |
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Duty 17 Set machine width on machine control systems and ensure machine temperature settings are precise for the type of material in production prior to tenter pinning (e.g. difference for wool, cottons, blended cloth fibres etc) |
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Duty 18 Plan, organise and carry out fabric cropping on piece ends, ensuring that settings are appropriate in terms of speed, time and pass (example: 18metres per minute standard industry practice) and manage cylinder cutting. |
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Duty 19 Review cropping processes to ensure damage hotspots are identified, evaluated for severity and amended, working on setting changes as the fabric passes through each cylinder, before recording on batch records using the appropriate computer control systems. |
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Duty 20 Organise decatising of fabric, through system control panel, noting input wrapper and roller settings as per recorded settings. Run at industry speed (example: 200m empty wrapper standard expectations) before introducing piece end into the machine, making sure the edge isn’t frayed and even. |
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Duty 21 Apply weft straightener settings and run into machine meterage (example: 600m) and work with the parameters of the autoclave machine to finalise fabric for client despatch. |
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Duty 22 Monitor spare part usage on the finishing machinery (across the whole of the finishing department) and order replacements in a timely manner to ensure production targets are maintained. Enforce a proactive and preventative maintenance programme, according to schedule set by machinery manufacturers (example: utilising correct specification of lubricants on moving parts to maintain machine efficiencies). |
K1: Principles of health, safety and welfare including employment law, safety management systems, control of substances, first aid, safe systems of work, dynamic risk assessment, safe personal protective equipment usage and the adherence to safety management practices.
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K2: The textile sector, its history, heritage, manufacturing process and innovation potential in detail. Know how goods are procured and how they affect the economic potential in UK manufacturing. Understanding the sector will involve research in past, present and future manufacturing processes, including how new technology will affect production.
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K3: The sources and processes of the textile supply chain, from raw materials consisting of natural fibres and manufactured fibres, their origin and their manufacturing process. Understanding pre and post production operations from fibre to finished garment. Knowing customer standards and expectations and adapting in-company processes to meet client need.
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K4: The quality management systems deployed in textile processing at the high level. learners will require advanced knowledge and understanding of analytical product assessment and how it affects quality. The differences between quality testing methodology, upholding ISO systems, textile specific measurements and industry standards. Read and interpret specifications and test results and implement changes to machinery/processes as required. Understanding which aspects of quality production can affect final creations.
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K5: The primary and secondary motions of weaving including techniques used for manufacturing such as shedding (Jacquard, Dobby and Tappet), picking (shuttle, projectile, rapier, air and water jet systems), beat up (crank and cam motions), take up (gear driven and electronic systems), let off (positive and negative systems) in line with production requirements.
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K6: Weaving machinery and all components that contribute to an effective production system, including machinery limitations, asymmetrical/symmetrical shed geometry, width setup, machine specification, ancillary services of the weaving machine, breakdown procedures, maintenance schedules, fault analysis and rectification routines, parts replacement.
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K7: The conditions in which weaving machinery operates, the temperatures and climatic conditions that affect yarn and fibre manufacturing, cleaning and cross contamination practice, environmental impact of textile manufacturing, waste reduction, recycling.
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K8: Sources of fibre production, properties of different fibres and identification methods, how manufactured fibres are produced, and methods used, use of blends in textile manufacturing processes, production methods of raw materials and varied processes fibre to yarn to fabric, specialist materials and properties used in technical textile manufacturing.
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K9: The different finishing processes including wet, dry, mechanical and chemical procedures. How finishing techniques can vary but are largely dependent on fibre type and yarn/fabric structure, fibre physical properties, fibre absorption properties and fabric receptivity to finishing agents, and susceptibility to chemical modifications.
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K10: Finishing machinery and all services that affect and contribute to finishing of fabric types including woven, knitted, non-woven fabrics including machine limitations and design of construction. The machine finishing processes singeing, crabbing, scouring, carbonising, mercerising, bleaching, milling, hydro-extraction, drying, shearing, raising, pressing, cropping, decatising, steaming, calendering, inspection, tentering and stentering as required within production facilities.
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K11: The conditions in which finishing machinery operates, the temperatures and climatic conditions that affect fabric finishing, cleaning and cross contamination practice, environmental impact of textile finishing, waste reduction, recycling.
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K12: The use and disposal of chemicals/finishes for mildew proofing, mothproofing, crease resistance, moisture and soil resistance, flame retardents, microencapsulation, easy care, shrink resistance, and other functional coatings.
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S1: Work within, and contribute to, a safe, healthy and well managed environment, taking into consideration the appropriate health & safety legislation that affects textile manufacturing.
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S2: Develop working relationships in a manufacturing environment including listening skills around the machinery, effective communication skills with colleagues, identify improvements and interact confidently to ensure that production is achieved.
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S3: Configure and prove textile machinery to ensure fabric specification, input all mechanical/electronic settings to maintain quality and productivity. Make changes to machine capabilities for different styles/qualities.
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S4: Perform and make records of scheduled maintenance to ensure the efficiency of machinery meets production expectations and reduce malfunctions. Ensure continuing supply of spare parts to eliminate machine downtime and eliminate production losses, liaise with machine manufacturers to overcome performance limitations.
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S5: Read and interpret data from production records, specifications, data management, process planning meetings including job documentation and appropriate work instructions.
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S6: Accept changing priorities and work flexibly to meet company requirements. Work effectively with others in a team whilst maintaining effective working relationships. Accept that in textile production, the expectation to complete tasks within the job role affects the customer experience.
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S7: Set up and configuration of weaving machinery to achieve specific parameters and understand all aspects of the weaving ticket/loom card (including warp plan, weft plan, weave plan, draft plan, yarn count etc) Contribute to achievement of desired production targets and quality standards.
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S8: Develop and operate plans for their own work area in line with business practice. Work with Shift Managers to produce specialist, technical reports and data to reinforce results and decision making. Identify priorities that affect the running of production whilst ensuring organisational policies are met.
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S9: Manage fault and diagnosis of fabric and loom faults (including short picks, stitching, weft and warp bars, machine lifting, temple marks and cuts etc). Use weaving techniques to minimise faults. Recognise when fibres, yarns and fabrics used in the pre-weaving operations affect the quality of the woven product.
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S10: Rectify machine malfunctions and replace machine parts to tolerance settings. Maintain supply of spare parts to ensure production continuity. Carry out scheduled maintenance to machine manufacturer guidelines and lubricant specifications. Plan and forecast using known periods of peak time and downtime to maximise production with appropriate colleagues.
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S11: Utilise production scheduling timing and accuracy to ensure changeover of jobs, staff and machinery are managed and maintained efficiently and effectively, recognising how to forecast and plan.
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S12: Set up and configure all types of finishing machinery in the workplace to achieve specific fabric finishes, utilising skill and knowledge of treatment methods to ascertain the best finish. Contribute to achievement of production targets and quality standards in line with business practice.
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S13: Identify when finishing treatments need refining by touch, feel, fabric rigidity and data analysis. Know how to diagnose faults in machinery and in process (water softening, temperatures etc). Undertake appropriate remedial activity to fix and redeploy personnel where necessary.
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S14: Manage and maintain finishing equipment in line with company policy. Recognise when maintenance is affecting the fabric outcomes and technical performance.
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S15: Manage raw materials (fabric) to ensure PH, water and chemical levels are exact and fit for customer requirement. Manage the input and output of fabrics to ensure services are maintained and monitored including environmental impact assessments.
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B1: Ensure efficient and effective use of time, especially at shift changeover and during textile machinery downtime or changeovers. Manage time to meet business priorities.
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B2: Recognise the value of the role within the organisation and the value of the role others perform, the drive and ambition needed to achieve in all aspects of work, including the importance of self-organisation and self-management of time.
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B3: Commit to maintaining the highest standards of precision and excellence as appropriate to mechanised textile production, a positive work ethic in line with the organisation’s core strategies and principles.
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B4: Appropriate communication techniques within a manufacturing environment, including patience, calmness, vigilance and appropriate communication styles when dealing with all types of customer.
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B5: Complies with statutory and organisation health & safety regulations and policies at all times. Accepts responsibility for their workload with a responsible approach to risk. Continually demonstrates a high level of motivation and resilience when facing challenges.
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Apprentices without level 2 English and maths will need to achieve this level prior to taking the End-Point Assessment. For those with an education, health and care plan or a legacy statement, the apprenticeship’s English and maths minimum requirement is Entry Level 3. A British Sign Language (BSL) qualification is an alternative to the English qualification for those whose primary language is BSL.
This standard aligns with the following professional recognition:
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this apprenticeship will be reviewed in accordance with our change request policy.
| Version | Change detail | Earliest start date | Latest start date |
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| 1.0 | Approved for delivery | 07/11/2019 | Not set |
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