What is your background and PLM expertise area?
- I focus on PLM for the Retail, Footwear, and Apparel industries. Through the years, my work experience has provided me with broad exposure to Product Development, Sourcing, and International Supply Chain within these industries. I have over 10 years’ direct experience in international operations in the apparel and home furnishings sectors. It was in this role that I began to search for industry-focused sourcing and supply chain solutions to provide global visibility and cost control. I was then recruited into a Global Sourcing and Supply chain software vendor to lead solution design and development for Fortune 100 apparel and footwear manufacturers and global retailers.
- As an Industry Consultant I was able to work closely with some of the largest Brands and Retailers in the US and EU to help them leverage and improve their front end design, development, and sourcing operations. These experiences allowed me great exposure to a variety of eco-systems and business models and insights into the opportunities within PLM. Today, I provide industry domain expertise to our sales and marketing campaigns and work closely with Product Management to define and prioritise a solution vision for this emerging market.
Why is PLM important to the apparel industry?
- The apparel industry today works in a highly competitive and consumer driven environment. Market pressures for fresh products, innovation, and value are challenging brands to deliver new and exciting products and focused product ranges in shorter and shorter time frames. In addition to the “fast fashion” brands, lifestyle and performance brands are facing additional pressures on their R&D teams to develop and deliver highly engineered raw materials. And lastly, products are being developed in a complex environment of globally distributed sourcing and manufacturing, regulatory requirements, and compliance to brand standards and integrity. PLM can help organisations to align their product lines and respond to market requirements with speed and agility through visibility and collaboration. PLM also provides that single source of the truth that can be leveraged throughout the broader enterprise. To marketing and merchandising for brand strength, to logistics and supply chain for control and risk mitigation, and to partners to optimise knowledge and experience for innovation. These operational improvements are the basis for enabling a merchant’s mandate; right product, right time, right price.
What effects have you seen with companies using PLM within the apparel industry?
- The apparel industry is still relatively new in the adoption of PLM technologies. The companies who have or are implementing PLM today are often considered leaders in their categories and have a culture of continuous improvement and best practice strategies. These companies are achieving 25 to 40% improvements in their time to market, they are improving their development efficiencies for cost control and are achieving higher margins by increasing full price sales from on time deliveries. We are also seeing brands becoming much more collaborative in their early design cycles by incorporating internal and external partners to maximise input and insight for strong collections. Based on these early successes we are seeing growing momentum in PLM adoption across the US and EU.
What differentiates the needs of the apparel industry from other industries?
- Generally, apparel products are not a complex product to design or develop. They are rather simple in their build and manufacture. However, what separates this industry from the others is the complexity in the Line Planning and Product Assortment. Beyond the style or silhouette, there are the added complexities of defining these allocations by channels, by primary and extended sizing, by colour offering, by region or zone, by delivery, or even by how they will ultimately be merchandised – in a set, table top, etc. Managing the line from conception through to presentation and finalisation now requires real time visibility to the development status of all products. Merchants and buyers need to visualise these offerings in a variety of ways to assure the breadth and depth of offering, confirm pricing and margin accuracy, assure delivery of promotional items, fast track late additions, and to manage long lead time product. This level of line complexity does not exist in the traditional industries.
What do you think about the future importance of PLM? What trends are we seeing?
- I believe PLM will continue to play a strategic role in how brands address their competitive positioning. The ever changing market conditions will require an expanded vision of PLM. We already see the convergence of development and sourcing in the business models. Additionally, the emerging and mega trends of sustainability, “green” design, regulatory standards like Restricted Substances List and Proposition 65, as well as the requirements for visualisation and virtualisation earlier in the design cycle will change the bounds of PLM. I strongly believe PLM will become critical to brand strength, integrity, and growth. I fully expect change to continue, and at an increasing pace. This is a distinguishing feature of the fashion industry. Here within Dassault Systemes we are able to leverage multiple brand solutions to address design, business process, simulation, and experience. We have learnings from multiple industries that the apparel industry will soon adopt. This is a very exciting time to be in this industry.