Vendors and fashion companies are looking for more collaborative IT tools, said a top official from Lectra, a leading provider of apparel and fashion technology solutions. IT solutions should be user-centric, developed for the user experience and data-centric, permanently connected to big data, libraries and consumer inputs from shops and social media.
“Fashion PLM solutions are now modular and adapted to usages and processes, so that they can correspond to companies of all sizes. More and more companies are adopting it also because they are looking for efficiency. Moreover, they are now affordable, so there is no obstacle to the access to a digitised supply chain for any,” said Philippe Ribera, VP – innovation, Lectra.
He added that the fashion PLM market is now focused on delivering collaborative tools to connect processes, systems and supply chains; modularity to offer solutions adapted to each customer’s methods and issues; and scalability dedicated to all kind of processes (design to source, develop to source and develop to manufacture) for small and big companies.
Lectra is currently working on emerging technologies like artificial intelligence, machine learning, augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) through some proof of concept (PoC) to help design the next generation of collaborative tools for the fashion industry. It is also exploring new ways to enrich its offer through research on materials, data collection and analysis, concluded Ribera.
