In the growth of the organised retailing in India, all the major brands, manufacturers and retailers are evolving in a competitive environment where speed, quality and price are the main criteria. In choosing an industrial partner, in the same way as in building client loyalty, players in the fashion retail industry must be flexible, quick-reacting and productive. Time and distance can no longer be obstacles to collaboration when creating a collection. To concentrate their energy on issues of brand image, renewal and costs optimization, fashion industrialists need to be able to have complete confidence in the solutions they choose.
Fashion brands, retailers, and manufacturers dealing with the pressures of a competitive environment and the high expectations of end consumers are increasingly turning to PLM applications. High-technology PLM solutions can be used to transform the biggest challenges of a trend-driven industry into sustainable competitive advantages.
The solution aims to enable the brands and the retailers to overcome their business challenges and face today’s testing economic conditions with confidence. PLM, as a technology solution is the most comprehensive and high-performance solution available for the brands and retailers. This state-of-the-art software solution is highly incredible for process optimization which contributes to overall growth and profitability.
The integration of business applications and collections and process management software enables action to be taken in key areas that lead to improved performance: capacity for innovation, brand identity, frequency and time to market, quality assurance, control of development costs for products and materials, management and synchronization of multiple processes, and decision-making about collection content.
Driven by retail, fueled by innovation
Consumers want it all. Whether it is apparel, footwear, or accessories, consumers expect a fresh selection of innovative styles with good quality and attractive prices – every four to six weeks.
To meet these incompatible demands, fashion brands and retailers collaborate with designers, manufacturers, and suppliers located around the world, which introduces complicated logistics, complex communication and unpredictable costs into an already difficult business scenario.
To cope, most of the brands and retailers now deliver up to ten collections a year, in limited quantities, to stay as close as possible to seasonal trends while minimizing the effect of sourcing cost fluctuations and avoiding markdowns, close-outs, and out-of stock situations. They also are beginning to seek consumer feedback, trying to discern new tastes and trends even earlier. Yet simply cutting costs or speeding up processes only worsen the existing stress on traditional fashion design, planning, marketing, product development, sourcing and manufacturing processes. The processes themselves must be changed to meet today’s critical business needs.
Brands and retailers particularly in fashion must be able to integrate business and financial planning processes with collaborative design and development processes – across all product categories that is across parallel development cycles, cultural and geographic boundaries which cannot be overcome simply by making things faster.
This is why PLM (Product Lifecycle Management) is becoming a fact of life for successful brands/retailers in fashion. However, while PLM promises to deliver substantial improvements, only PLM solutions built on actual fashion industry best practices and process knowledge can really deliver. In the pages that follow, you will learn what to look for in a fashion-based PLM implementation.
The PLM implementations
• Supply chain synchronization
A successful PLM solution creates a value chain where information and transactions are exchanged seamlessly – as if all members of the extended value chain were one entity. It should integrate design, planning, development, manufacturing, marketing, and retail activities into a unified process flow and support parallel integration across product development and sourcing.
• On-line global collaboration
All members of the supply chain must be able to see, create, and share true-to-life, virtual representations of all the products at any phase of the product lifecycle. Today, cultural barriers and a wide range of skill levels result in miscommunication and a high level of rework, – which increases the risk of missing delivery windows. All individuals and all departments must be able to access the latest relevant product information online and visually communicate with other individuals to minimize the risk of error and misunderstanding.
Fashion PLM: The fundamental difference
Traditional business and creative processes are no longer able to deliver the quantum leaps forward in flexibility and productivity that fashion companies need now.
The Fashion PLM solution supports the iterative creative and business processes of fashion design, development, marketing, and retailing. By enabling all participants in the product lifecycle to collaborate using virtual products and materials, the Fashion PLM allows multiple simulations of true-to-life products and fashion line plans. Virtualization reduces the need for physical samples while inspiring creativity and facilitating quicker business decisions in a multicultural environment.
The industry leading solution enables latest fashion design applications, as well as its dynamic storyboarding, pattern design, 3D virtual prototyping and other applications, provide the most comprehensive, integrated solution available for fashion. With the Fashion PLM, brands and retailers seamlessly manage and execute all activities in concurrent design, line plannin
