INTRODUCTION

Cotton Incorporated’s Engineered Fiber Selection^® (EFS^® System) has earned the reputation of providing mills and merchants with the ability to rapidly process massive quantities of High Volume Instrument (HVI) data. This feature enables cotton to be selected so that all-important HVI measurements can be taken into account through the active control of averages, and statistical distributions of selected inventories of cotton bales.

Such control is economically important because cotton cost and related mill qualities, as well as processing efficiencies and associated costs, can be positively affected when cotton is acquired and used with the benefit of HVI data. The growers of U.S. cotton recognized in the early 1980 are the value of HVI data to themselves and to their mill customers. Their support led to the USDA’s undertaking the universal HVI classing program. To date, only the U.S. offers cotton on the world market that has been HVI classed in state-of-the-art facilities. The rooms containing the HVI lines and samples are air conditioned to tightly controlled temperature and humidity specifications. Cotton samples to be tested are then fully conditioned within this environment and tested on HVI lines that have been properly calibrated using USDA calibration cotton samples to insure the consistent testing results.

DETERMINATION OF COTTON SPECIFICATIONS

Cotton specifications are a function of end-product performance expectations and the machinery complement, including process flow design and related maintenance, settings, production rates, and the management philosophy of a given mill. The importance of understanding the technical requirements of cotton to overall profitability cannot be overemphasized. It has been demonstrated over the years that mills that buy cotton solely based on price and without regard for mill and product needs are not likely to be able to compete effectively in their markets long-term.

Specifications of the end-product should be determined and allocated into needed cotton attributes and intermediate product and machinery performance requirements. Various quality control reports and charts can be assembled to support this aspect of cotton management. Among other things, fabric quality measurements such as appearance, tensile, tear or burst strength, seconds, efficiencies, etc., of each process should be collected and analyzed on a daily basis. The control charts provided by the EFS^® - MILL Net program can be used to assist the appropriate manager in determining which process/product variables are correlated to cotton HVI measured properties.

Once such correlations are understood, then cotton purchasing can be conducted with a technical perspective that will likely ensure the purchase of cotton using HVI data with a profile that leads to improved mill and product performance. Depending on the customer’s relationships with his or her U.S. cotton suppliers, and willingness to pay a premium for this service, it may be possible to have the merchant supply HVI data on cotton the merchant wishes to offer for sale.