The adverse effects of short fibers on yarn quality and processing performance have been well recognized for many years. Different sectors of the textile industry from fiber producers to yarn spinners have struggled with these effects and many practical efforts have been made to reduce their impacts. However, these efforts have often been hindered by a continuous trend to increase productivity. This trend has led the machine maker to place a greater emphasis on areas such as high speeds, automation, and transportation. Indeed, the 1980's and the 1990's have witnessed a sole emphasis by the machine maker on design features, which allow the machine to run faster, and to automatically handle the material flow. The axiom that supported these developments was that "automation can indeed produce a highly consistent product". In theory, this axiom is undoubtedly true. The problem, however, is that yarn quality has not significantly improved over those twenty years of development. Instead, it has deteriorated in many areas including appearance, hairiness, fly shedding, and yarn imperfections. On the other hand, the gap between the top quality levels (the 5% Uster Statistics), and the bottom quality (the 95% Uster Statistics) has progressively widened over the same period. These factors have resulted in a shift of emphasis, by machine makers, towards high quality yarn through an improved yarn structure. This shift was clearly witnessed in the last ITMA show of the century (Paris-1999).

In this paper, we provide a brief review of some of the new machinery developments devoted to handling the problem of short fiber content through improvement of yarn structure. These developments are divided into two main categories:

[1] The prevention approach in which short fibers are prevented from being represented in the final product; or
[2] The corrective approach in which short fibers are incorporated properly into the final product.