Oxylane deploys PTC's FlexPLM for sports equipment designing

25 Jun '08

3 min read

PTC, The Product Development Company, announced that Oxylane Group - the new corporate identity of the Décathlon Group- the sports equipment manufacturer and retailer, has chosen PTC FlexPLM to accelerate development of its private-label products. FlexPLM is PTC's Product Lifecycle Management solution dedicated to the retail, footwear and apparel industry and will be used for the design and development of clothing items retailed under the sports retailer's “Passion Brands.”

Oxylane Group selected FlexPLM in order to optimize its entire development process, from product design through to supply. Consequently, Décathlon has decided to deploy this solution simultaneously in France and in the countries where its main suppliers are located.

This means that the head office at Villeneuve d'Ascq (north of France) will be linked up with the following sites: Quechua (mountain sports) in the Alps region, Tribord (water sports) at Hendaye and Geologic (hunting and fishing) at Cestas (near Bordeaux).

At the same time, the tool will be accessible to all production subsidiaries of Oxylane Group and their subcontractors in Europe, North Africa, Asia and South America. For Oxylane, interoperability and communication between the disparate groups were essential factors in their selection. Previously, some data was entered seven or eight times and translated three times. Now, it is planned for FlexPLM to reduce the process to a single operation.

“FlexPLM is a tool that has already proved its worth for a number of companies on the textiles market, such as Liz Claiborne and JCPenney in the USA,” said Hervé Lautier, project manager, Oxylane Group. “Additionally, the commitment of the PTC team to the success of the Décathlon project played a decisive role in the choice of the solution.”

FlexPLM will allow Oxylane Group to achieve the following objectives:
• Improve collaboration between the design and development teams and the supply chain partners around the world
• Reduce the design costs and lead times, allowing, for example, the number of prototypes to be reduced by half
• Improve product quality

In addition, FlexPLM will ultimately be used for designing sports shoes and bags bearing the Passion brand names.

Lastly, Oxylane Group chose FlexPLM since the solution stands out from the competition on account of a Product Road Map that leverages the PTC team's understanding of the key developments affecting retail, footwear and apparel industries worldwide. PTC's customers also benefit from PTC's dynamic Customer Council which meets regularly to review industry trends and allow customers to provide input into defining future functionalities of the FlexPLM solution

“PTC is excited by the momentum we are experiencing in the retail, footwear and apparel industry and delighted to be working with Oxylane Group,” said Kathleen Mitford, vice president vertical market strategy, PTC. “Oxylane Group is currently implementing FlexPLM in a project designed to develop the Passion Brands more efficiently, so that the organization is able to offer to its ever more discerning clientele products that ally innovation, quality and value.”

Parametric Technology Corporation

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