TMD 402I - Innovation in the Textile and Apparel Complex

Lectra’s Innovative Technology Helps Build the Brands of Today

Jill M. Simmons

Summary by Lisa Ellington

            The Lectra Corporation is a world leader in its field— the design, manufacture, and distribution of hardware and software for the textile and apparel industries.  Founded in France in 1973, Lectra is now present in 100 countries, with 10,000 customers worldwide.  Their mission is “helping our customers overcome their strategic challenges;” the products and services they develop help solve the problems that designers, manufacturers, retailers, and more, are faced with today.  Jill Simmons is the Vice President of Strategic Business Development in Apparel at Lectra. 
            The extensive technologies that Lectra markets, including 2,300 design systems and 450 cutting systems, deal with three major contemporary issues: the textile and apparel design process, product development specifications, and mass customization.  Lectra’s Computer Aided Design (CAD) system, known as U4ia, improves the creation, development, and communication of a textile design from start to finish.  Their work with Datacolor, the premiere color management company, helps ensure effective color communication in the industry.  Fill’in is Lectra’s answer to visualizing colors and patterns on yet to be produced apparel. 
               

 In product development specifications, Lectra’s Gallery system is a tool that gathers all the information about a product from the different phases of its production and collectively manages it, effectively connecting the entire business and its partners.  Each item in the program has tabs on its design, fit, sewing, packaging, labeling, cost, etc., all centrally organized in an easily accessible format.  This saves immeasurable amounts of time, money, and effort by a company and its employees, and also prevents avoidable mistakes from miscommunication.
            Lectra Catalog v 2.0 is an electronic visual sales support tool for retailers with customizable apparel, featuring such options as draping 3D images, building and viewing catalogs, and selling items before producing.  3D Visual Merchant allows companies to create simulated retail environments prior to manufacturing.  It shows the user a populated retail floor, and allows adjusting of styles, colors, quantities, and fixtures, greatly increasing the efficiency of a company’s visual merchandising department.
            Mass customization is an issue growing in importance and demand in the textile and apparel industry.  Lectra’s Fitnet software seamlessly connects the production of custom fit apparel, from retail to manufacture and back to retail, using input measurements of a customer, adjusting the desired pattern accordingly, and cutting the garment specifically for that person.  Emerging technologies in this area seek to reduce cost and time of mass-customization, optimize the fitting process, improve pattern gradation, and more.  Lectra’s technologies and services are the answer to the advancement and improvement of industry processes, and it seems that there is much more to come from this impressive company.

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