Research Rap: PLM for the Fashion Police (the anti-Metal Benders)

A quick peek into some
research on how PLM is working
outside of the metal benders. Who could be more different from
the benders than the apparel, footwear, and fashion
industry? I caught a peek of a TV show called “The Fashion
Police” last night, and I can tell you that I haven’t seen that
cast of characters in the metal bending plants before!

Earlier I talked about the history of PLM coming
from auto, aero, and industrial equipment oriented companies,
collectively known as the metal benders. That is the world of CAD
and engineering-centricity. Apparel is the world of design - fast,
fresh, creative, and … well, fast. A recent Aberdeen report on

PLM for Apparel shows the top pressures and challenges these
companies face have to do with speed (response to consumer demands,
shorter lifecycles, rapid changes in fashion, constant order
revisions). From what I have learned, if purple is selling you had
better get purple on the shelf. If low necklines are working, you
react or your products don’t move until they are heavily discounted
- if they sell at all. The other big challenge is globalization.
With the disappearance of a lot of trade barriers, design and
manufacturing are now spread across the globe (but admittedly most
of the production is spread around Asia).

So with those pressures, does metal-bending PLM
work for them? Of course not. But not all PLM was built for metal
benders, and an honest look at those industries shows that they are
increasingly struggling with “fast and global” as well. So PLM in
these industries focuses more on the integration of communication
between design and sourcing (internally) and between design and the
supply chain (externally). The research shows those actions are
exactly what Best-in-Class apparel companies have in common. To
support this, they are using four key capabilities - supported by
PLM:

• Centralized data
• Collaborative design
• Visibility across the team and the supply
  chain
• Integration of data with processes and
  calendars

Not too different than the enterprise-level PLM
capabilities that the metal benders are looking for. The report
goes on to detail how those Best-in-Class companies are in fact
using PLM more frequently than others and reports that those
apparel companies with PLM in place for greater than one year (a
reasonable amount of time to start getting some payback) are
showing some important improvements in the metrics that drive
profitability in the retail market.

So that was a quick peek into some recent
research, I hope you found it interesting.

So the Fashion Police may give a big “love it” to
PLM for helping support fast (and profitable) fashion. Does the
research reflect reality? Do you see it differently? Let us know
what it looks like from your perspective.