With knitelligence, STOLL, one of the leading manufacturers of flat-knitting machines, presents an innovative networking concept for the textile production of tomorrow.

As introduced, knitelligence combines all the software solutions from the German manufacturer and thus covers the entire value creation chain of flat-knitting production.

From the design idea to development and manufacture, knitelligence offers tailored solutions for every component. It comprises different software and systems, such as M1plus, APM, GKS, PPS, EKC, and autocreate, which interact with each other, automate processes, and network production stages.

In this way, customers benefit from more consistent and optimized workflows, shorter and transparent production cycles, cost reduction and an increase in quality, productivity, and, therefore, overall plant efficiency.

With the modern IoT technology from STOLL, customers can not only design their processes to be considerably more efficient, but can also react far more flexibly to the requirements of the market.

“Our aim is to always develop further for the benefit of our customers. Knitelligence is an important step in that regard,” says Andreas Schellhammer, CEO of STOLL.

The software and systems:

M1plus - pattern software

The STOLL pattern software M1plus ensures production benefits by generating patterns for highly optimized knitting processes. For even more flexibility and for individual knitting requirements, two editors are offered: Color Arrangement (CA) and Module Arrangement (MA). With these, individual knitting sequences and color adjustments can be made easily.

GKS - grading software

With the new GKS, STOLL presents software for creating and grading shapes. GKS integrates fully dimensioned and functioning shape templates for all typical pattern variants. Using these as a basis, a first prototype can be created quickly and afterwards changed as much as desired.

All shape parts of the entire garment are displayed and adjusted at the same time, guarantees right from the beginning that the linking edges of all shape parts in all sizes fit perfectly together. Much of the information necessary for pattern generation, such as the type of start, narrowing specifications, is already integrated in the shape and can be defined or changed for all sizes at once.

The important task of realizing size sets can be carried out swiftly and simply, grading then takes place with just one click.

Autocreate - pattern creation framework

autocreate is a powerful framework to automate pattern creation for mass customization or production of one. Using the power of color arrangements, it allows simple bitmaps to be provided along with a formalized "receipt" that controls their processing in M1plus without human interaction.

Sintral Crypto Tool - intellectual property protection tool

A knitting program represents a significant economic value for the issuer since it contains specific company know-how about applications, collections or fashion trends. By protecting knitting programs with the STOLL Sintral Crypto Tool, threats can be avoided substantially.

PPS - production planning system

STOLL Production Planning System (PPS) is a central platform and production planning tool, which enables the customer to control, plan and optimize its production. It gives a quick and transparent overview of all processes. Quality is increased and waste reduced. Response times and on-time delivery are improved.

It is a Web-based solution with a modern and user-friendly interface, which can be operated from any browser, including mobile devices such as tablets or smartphones.

APM - automatic production tool

After a production order has been sent and loaded automatically to a machine equipped with Auto Production Mode (APM) through PPS, the production process starts without any manual intervention. After completion, the next ticket is loaded and started automatically. Optionally, a routing slip with actual production information and feedback from the operator can be printed automatically. The content can be arranged individually.

The completed ticket is picked up from PPS so that ERP can track the completion. The production state can be monitored with database requests as well.

EKC - optimized operation procedure

The flat-knitting machines of the Enhanced Knit Control (EKC) generation are very user-friendly machines. They offer different skills to optimize and enhance the whole production process. The seamless integration of EKC and PPS results in very high productivity.

With the order-orientated and task-related graphical user interface, everyone can produce complicated knitted products after just a short training period. With the newly developed guided troubleshooting, everyone can handle every situation which occurs in production. By using these new features, the whole production process will be optimized and enhanced.