TOS13

Textile Opportunity Space 13 — a digital fieldlab for the Dutch textile ecosystem

Changing the Dutch textile industry.
Digitally. Together.

A fieldlab where textile SMEs, researchers and technology partners build a shared digital orchestration layer for the Dutch textile sector — from design and production to repair, reuse and end-of-life.

Take part

Why TOS13

Dutch textile SMEs have the knowledge, but no shared system to work together.

11,000+

companies registered in Dutch textile categories

50 / 50

split between retail & wholesale and manufacturing & production

€700M+

EU research funding in textile, leather, footwear and clothing with Dutch involvement over the past 10 years

  • Regional hubs work in isolation on their own issues.
  • No institutional memory: everyone reinvents the wheel.
  • Innovation stays in-house, out of fear of competitors.

“Everyone is talking about circular textiles, but in practice, the sector is still fragmented and often organized in a fairly analog way.”

— The TOS13 initiators, in the CLICKNL article on TOS13

Why now

Regulation, an ageing workforce and AI are hitting SMEs at the same time.

New EU rules

The Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR), with its Digital Product Passport (DPP), and Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR, in Dutch UPV) demand product and material data that most SMEs do not yet collect.

Ageing workforce

Production know-how lives in the heads and hands of technicians, and is retiring with them.

AI and digitalisation

New tools are arriving, but they are built for companies with data teams and proprietary systems.

Without shared knowledge, every SME faces these shifts alone.

What TOS13 is

TOS13 builds a shared digital orchestration layer for the Dutch textile sector that works with people, machines and waste.

TOS13 is a digital-physical fieldlab at the Textile Campus Tilburg, part of the NewTexEco programme and anchored in the Brainport ecosystem. Companies, researchers and technology partners develop practical digital solutions and test them directly in real-world settings — starting from the concrete challenges of the companies themselves, not from a theoretical model.

TU/e leads the fieldlab using research through design: designing, developing, testing and improving. The demonstrators, digital tools, frameworks and business cases the fieldlab produces are made available to other organisations in the sector.

Central knowledge question

How can we use data to create a sector-level digital orchestration layer that helps Dutch textile SMEs create impact and profitability, and collaborate across design, product, material, production, use, reuse and end-of-life?

4

work packages

1

integrated demonstrator

18

partner organisations

Four work packages

Four work packages follow textile data from design to production to second life, around four goals: connecting the sector, capturing what machines and operators know, extending the useful life of textiles, and building the machines that put that data back to work.

01 · Connect

Encode

Helping textile companies find each other and share DPP-ready data.

An orchestration platform that connects Dutch circular textile partners through the TELL data infrastructure. It maps partners to the steps of the Digital Product Passport and matches SME questions to the right knowledge and capacity.

Use case

Collaboration starts with finding each other among 11,000 companies.

What we deliver
  • Ecosystem map and manufacturer/capacity database
  • DPP-step mapping and a minimum data-field set
  • Orchestration prototype, built in 3+ test cycles with SMEs
  • Physical demonstrator at the Textile Campus Tilburg
02 · Capture

Distill

Turning the tacit knowledge of machines and operators into reusable data.

Getting information out of production machines and into AI that can use it. Machine settings, textile construction and the decisions operators make become data that plugs into digital supply chains and digital twins, instead of retiring with the people who hold it.

Use case

Reading settings and telemetry off working production machines, so that a run can be repeated without starting again from trial and error.

What we deliver
  • Tested design-to-production scenarios with SME partners
  • Data-enabled machine configurations with telemetry
  • Shop-floor capture of technician and operator knowledge
  • Workflow template for small-batch, adaptive production
03 · Retain value

Elevate

Routing every used garment to its highest-value next life.

A traffic-control system for value retention: AI-supported assessment decides between repair, reuse, resale, upcycling and recycling.

Use case

Automated intake and damage assessment from garment photos, smart job routing across repair hubs, and before/after quality control.

What we deliver
  • Intake and assessment data protocol for 5+ garment types
  • Labelled image dataset for damage classification
  • Validated routing criteria across the R-ladder
  • Evidence protocols for EPR reporting
04 · Build

Enable

Machines that put industrial processes within reach of small producers.

AI-supported design of modular machines, changeable like building blocks, that simulate heavy industrial processes at small scale. A process that normally needs a full production line becomes something an SME can run, test and adapt on a bench.

Use case

A bench-scale rig that simulates an industrial textile printing process, assembled from modules that can be reconfigured for other processes.

What we deliver
  • Modular machine architecture and a reusable module library
  • Working bench-scale rig for small-batch textile printing
  • AI-supported method for configuring machines to a process
  • Route for SMEs to specify and commission their own machines

Post-use data feeds back into design and production.

One integrated demonstrator

The work packages meet in one demonstrator at the Textile Campus Tilburg, where data travels from design to second life, and back into the machines.

  1. 01 · Encode

    Shared data model and partner capacity

  2. 02 · Distill

    Product, material and machine data from the shop floor

  3. 03 · Elevate

    Condition and repair data from second life

  4. 04 · Enable

    Machines built to turn that data back into production

Impact

SMEs gain value they cannot create alone.

Compliance

Less work preparing product and material data for DPP, ESPR and EPR/UPV.

Operations

Less information lost between design, production, repair, reuse and end-of-life.

Markets

New circular services: repair, remake, resale, reuse, recycling and data-backed transparency.

The whole sector

Shared standards, data agreements, demonstrators and playbooks that more companies can join after 2027.

From showroom to fieldlab

TOS13 builds upon WoTO and NewTexEco: from a showroom, to a network, to a national fieldlab.

  1. 01 · WoTO — the showroom

    BYBORRE's Window of Textile Opportunities: machine makers, suppliers, universities and creators working side by side.

    Started by BYBORRE
  2. 02 · NewTexEco — the network

    A national textile ecosystem. Its TELL infrastructure identifies who the Dutch textile companies are and where they sit in the chain.

    Started by ArtEZ, HvA/AMFI and Saxion
  3. 03 · TOS13 — the fieldlab

    The original plan outgrew its scope and became something bigger: an orchestration system for the Dutch textile sector.

    Led by TU/e

Where we are heading

Our textile future: a Textile Opportunity Space in every region.

Space in every region

Municipalities open shared places, like the Textile Campus Tilburg, where makers, machines and materials meet.

Shared research

Government funds knowledge centres that research with and for textile companies, and share what they learn.

Industry innovates

Companies build shared infrastructure and innovate in their own projects, on common data and agreements.

Local, regional and national investment pull in one direction.

The consortium

18 organisations, from global brands to repair hubs, form the TOS13 consortium.

Knowledge institutions

  • TU/e (lead)
  • HvA
  • Saxion
  • ArtEZ

Public

  • TextielLab / TextielMuseum Tilburg
  • Gemeente Tilburg

Industry and SMEs

  • Vlisco
  • EnhanceThat
  • Vodde
  • Fashion Tech Farm
  • Modint
  • Hollanders Printing Solutions
  • NewTexEco Partners
  • ValueSort.ai
  • Stichting TexPlus
  • United Repair Centre
  • VNYX
  • NXP Semiconductors

Supported by CLICKNL.

Take part

The fieldlab is open beyond the consortium. Here is how you can take part.

  1. Join us

    Fill in the join form, or email your questions to hello@space13.to.

  2. Become an associate partner

    Companies and organisations outside the consortium can join the fieldlab network.

  3. Bring your case

    Bring a practical question from your company that the fieldlab can work on.

  4. Visit the fieldlab

    See the demonstrator and machines at the Textile Campus Tilburg as they are built.

  5. Read the newsletter

    Monthly progress from the fieldlab, for the whole sector. Ask for it at hello@space13.to.

  6. Spread the word

    Follow and share https://space13.to and TOS13 on LinkedIn.

Join TOS13