The Financial Times reported earlier this year that one of the largest clothing manufacturers, Hong Kong-based Crystal Group, proclaimed robotics could not compete with the cost and quality of manual labor. Crystal's Chief Executive, Andrew Lo, emphatically declared, "The handling of soft materials is really hard for robots." Lo did leave the door open for future consideration by acknowledging such budding technologies as "interesting." One company mentioned by Lo was Georgia Tech spinout, Softwear Automation. Softwear made news last summer by announcing its contract with an Arkansas apparel factory to update 21 production lines with its Sewbot automated sewing machines. The factory is owned by Chinese manufacturer Tianyuan Garments, which produces over 20 million T-shirts a year for Adidas.

It's hard to teach a robot to sew. Robots are good at handling materials that are rigid and easy to lift, cut and maneuver. It's why they're are widely used in auto manufacturing. There's some automation in garment manufacturing, but you still won't find robots sewing clothes from start to finish. "It has no corners and edges. It stretches and snags," said entrepreneur Jonathan Zornow, whose startup Sewbo has found a way around that.

When it comes to stitching together complex garments, dexterous human hands are still far superior to rigid robot arms. Much of the garment production process is already automated, from picking cotton to spinning yarn to cutting clothes. Some specialist machines can even sew buttons or pockets. However, no commercial robot had been able to piece together all the different materials to create an entire item of clothing, like a pair of jeans or a t-shirt. But last month, Jonathan Zornow, founder and sole employee of Seattle-based startup Sewbo, claimed a breakthrough: He says he overcame a common hurdle to clothing automation--the challenge of working with weak, flexible fabrics--and successfully used an industrial robot to sew together a t-shirt.

Zornow has created a process by which a robotic arm guides chemically stiffened pieces of fabric through a commercial sewing machine. Sewbo has used an industrial robot to sew together a T-shirt, achieving the long-sought goal of automation for garment production. Sewbo's technology will allow manufacturers to create higher-quality clothing at lower costs. It will shorten supply chains and lessen the long lead times that hamper the fashion and apparel industries, helping to reduce the complexity of today's intricate global supply network. Despite widespread use in other industries, automation has made little progress in clothing manufacturing due to the difficulties robots face when trying to manipulate limp, flexible fabrics.

Take a look at the tag on your shirt. If you are in the U.S., chances are it was made in a country like China or Thailand and then shipped overseas. Jonathan Zornow, the sole employee of a new startup called Sewbo, thinks the U.S. could bring garment manufacturing a little closer to home by automating the feeding of fabric into sewing machines--a step that to this day is done by hand. Zornow has created a process by which a robotic arm guides chemically stiffened pieces of fabric through a commercial sewing machine. Machines already play a large part in clothing manufacturing.