The author offers a refresher on the benefits of product lifecycle management (PLM) in today's fast-paced fashion environment, and asserts that industry demands render manual development and processes unfeasible.

Fast fashion typifies the apparel, footwear and accessory (AFA) industry's need for speed. In just the past two years, the average number of styles introduced by apparel manufacturers has doubled. And that trend appears to be continuing, as the industry moves toward more rapid design, multiple seasons, shorter market windows and smaller quantities to lure consumers back into stores more frequently, and hedge risk by tying up smaller inventory investments in smaller collections.

Time is of the essence. The problem is that at some point, the speed needed to generate so many collections and styles becomes physically impossible if relying on traditional manual development processes and spreadsheets.

In that environment, global teams can't access product information easily or quickly or securely, calendars can't be shared or synchronized, and management lacks sufficient visibility to spot problems and address them in time to assure on-time deliveries.

Additional manpower doesn't solve these problems. The costs are prohibitive, and the problem really isn't people. The problem is that antiquated tools can't address today's fast-fashion requirements. This is where product lifecycle management (PLM) comes in.

What Is Product Lifecycle Management?

Product data management (PDM) solutions were widely adopted by the industry in the 1990s and early 2000s to enable sharing of designs and technical specifications. A similar adoption pattern is now underway with PLM. According to AMR Research, more than 90 percent of AFA companies are planning to buy PLM in the next three years.

In "PLM: Achieving Value Chain Orchestration," AMR defines PLM as "a set of enabling functionality to support an organization's NPDL [new product development and launch] process." These functionalities are set forth as PDM and specification management, line planning, collaborative product design, partner collaboration, development process management, direct materials source and calendar management.

How PLM Helps

PLM is essential to speeding collections from concept to store. The right PLM solution can enable apparel manufacturers to cut time to market by at least half.

PLM delivers tremendous efficiency boosts. It automates traditionally manual tasks and streamlines the process, ensuring that the entire team has access to the most recent consistent designs, product specifications and supporting documentation, and eliminates the redundant manual efforts that increase the likelihood of errors that lead to delays, increased costs and poor quality.

PLM enables collaboration. When all internal and external stakeholders work from the same information and the same calendar in a centralized, easy-to-access solution, and communicate in real time on a single platform that is designed to bring them together, they can collaborate, share information and ideas and ultimately accomplish more in less time.

When an AFA company has decided to adopt PLM, however, it is important to evaluate and select the right type of PLM solution, one that has been designed specifically to meet the unique needs of AFA companies.