| [January 16, 2006] |
 |
TradeStone Software Automates Product Lifecycle Management for Apparel and Footwear Retailers and Manufacturers
NEW YORK --(Business Wire)-- Jan. 16, 2006 --
Solution Enables Retailers to Speed Production, Increase Quality and Add Millions of Dollars to the Bottom Line
TradeStone Software today announced that it has added Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) to its TradeStone Suite. The PLM for Retail module addresses the specific needs of the apparel, footwear and hard-lines community by providing the collaboration tools necessary to automate and more easily manage the product development process, from initial concept through delivery. It also provides the tools to enable a retailer and its suppliers to collaboratively develop new products, better manage the quality testing process, meet milestone deadlines, and rate each party's responsiveness with scorecards. All this enables products to speed through the supply chain and reach the sales floor faster.
The TradeStone Suite is a set of application modules, powered by TradeStone's Unified Buying Engine, which creates exclusive commerce communities of retail buyers, suppliers, agents and inspections. The Suite also includes Product, Sourcing, Logistics, Finance and Unified Order Management. Together these provide retailers with the technology infrastructure they need to manage all aspects of the purchasing process, from the concept design and planning refinement to the initiation of an order through production and shipment, while providing a real-time view into each step.
"PLM emerged as a tool for discrete manufacturing, but traditional tools do not translate well to fit the needs of retailers," said TradeStone CEO Sue Welch. "At TradeStone we have a unique understanding of the needs of retailers when it comes to product concept and design, global sourcing and order management. We've adapted the concept of PLM to meet the retailers' requirements and delivered a valuable tool that is a natural extension of our product functionality."
True Collaboration Saves Time and Money
The prevailing misperception is that garment development is a simple progression from an impulsive designer's sketch, to pinning muslin pieces together, to sewing the finished item together on the model before she rushes down the runway. Retailers understand that this idea is pure fantasy. In the real world, product design and development can take up to eighteen months, with iterative design improvements and changes communicated across time zones and languages. Samples are test marketed, fit specifications are modified, colors are refined, designs are constantly updated. The competition for product differentiation and increased profit margins that mark the retail industry mean that delays or missed communication can interrupt production, delay shipments, increase cost, impact sales and thereby pose serious threats to the viability of the company. In an industry where new collections make or break earnings, a company with $1 billion in revenues can save $1 million a year by shortening its supply cycle time by just one day.
Facilitating collaboration between designers, merchants, sourcing professionals and the factories is the first step for any product lifecycle management application. Moving from phone calls, faxes and email strings to a centralized collaboration environment ensures that all parties are in sync with the latest requirements. It is precisely the dynamic element of consumer demand, consumer fickleness and fashion trends that make retail so complex. With thousands of SKUs containing color, size and attribute options undergoing multiple iterations during their design and development, as well as numerous quality checks, it's apparent that the retail industry requires a specialized PLM solution.
TradeStone's PLM for Retail module addresses these industry-wide realities with a series of Vendor Collaboration Tools designed to facilitate the accurate communication of design iterations between the technical design group, merchandising, and the factory. The solution monitors the progress of a product and assures quality throughout the process, starting with the design concept, the product brief, the technical package, the RFQ, the order, all phases of testing, and continues right through delivery. These tools can speed the product design phase, while making the manufacturing and testing phases 30 percent more efficient, which can shave significant length off the supply cycle time. The tools include:
-- Time and Action Calendars--Quality Assurance and Control milestones are key to product design and production, so keeping tabs on those benchmarks is critical to the full process. TradeStone PLM for Retail enables alerting, thereby promoting real-time collaboration to resolve issues and keep product moving toward the store shelves.
-- BOM Aggregator--Testing fabrics and trims begins before garments are ever assembled and continues through delivery. By understanding where common components, such as fabrics, trims, and accessories, are used throughout the collection, retailers can quickly address any quality testing failures across multiple products.
-- Component Library--Retailers traditionally work off a base of approved configurations for a given season or for product families. The Component Library enables them to have a growing database of approved designs, as well as configurations or pieces, such as fabrications, buttons, zippers, trims, embellishments, etc. With bulk purchases of these key components, merchants can not only receive better pricing on raw materials, but also take advantage of left-over fabrics and trims to create additional items such as accessories or limited edition specials.
-- Packaging Specifications--All too often, packing specifications are left up to the supplier, arriving at the retailer's distribution centers only to be rejected. Now hang-tags, care labels, and inventory control tags can be specified in advance, stored in the component library, and used on multiple garments.
-- Party Scorecard--Retailers and manufacturers want to build their relationships with confidence in the quality of their raw materials and finished goods even when their trading partners are across the globe. The Party Scorecard enables retailers to pre-qualify suppliers for a particular order based on their previous work and certifications and grade them on the quality of new orders received. The Scorecard is also a tool for suppliers, enabling them to rate retailer timeliness with feedback, problem resolution, and payment information.
-- Integration with Google Earth--TradeStone PLM for Retail integrates with Google Earth, a geospatial locator application, so retailers and vendors can easily identify their network of approved testing facilities to speed product through the rigors of testing. This also reduces travel expenses by auto-assigning resources based on commodity expertise, inspection locations and resource availability.
PLM for Retail is Focused on Quality
Product Lifecycle Management was first adopted by discrete manufacturers who needed to keep track of product specifications in CAD designs, where-used information for standard components and subassemblies, as well as simulation testing. Retail, however, is still a very tactile industry, focused on the hand, drape, and durability of fabrics and trim. Designs are still sketched on paper and pinned on size models. Planning allocation for the various pieces which comprise a collection is still determined by budget.
In the Retail Industry, collections are defined by their attention to quality - quality that cannot be simulation-tested as in discrete manufacturing. Apparel and footwear buyers need to touch, see and feel their components and are uniquely involved in every step of the product lifecycle. Designing and planning for a season's collection typically begins at least nine months in advance with 90 percent of product designs never seeing the light of day due to the lack of communication between merchants, product designers, and vendors.
While both discrete manufactured items and apparel can devalue rapidly, apparel operates on an environment of rapidly changing consumer trends and more competitive margins. The consequences of a poor product selection and delivery can result in a lack-luster selling season and be disastrous on Wall Street. In order to take advantage of the price differentials associated with global outsourcing, retailers need to be extra vigilant about design changes, where-used implications, and quality issues and require a PLM system to alert them to key milestones, updates and results. This information and quality resolution keeps production on track and moving toward the store floor.
"Apparel, footwear and hard lines retailers and manufacturers associate Product Lifecycle Management with collaborative design iterations, sampling, quality testing and product refinement. The retail environment for PLM is very different and much more dynamic than traditional PLM for discrete manufacturers," stated Ann Diamante, senior vice president and chief product officer of TradeStone Software. "In the retail industry, component materials, work-in-process, and finished goods can undergo a battery of sampling, rigorous testing and re-work up to the last moment before in-line production starts. In order to keep deliveries on schedule, they need a comprehensive process and alerting system to capture and communicate specification changes, test results and potential production impacts and to provide the visibility to manage materials and resources effectively."
Typically, retailers try to take advantage of product data management solutions to organize their production specifications. But these systems were designed to integrate with cutting and piecing machinery, not to track quality testing, manage sourcing activities, unify the buying process nor maintain the official transaction details, making it difficult, if not impossible, to produce "one version of the truth" for financial reporting and Sarbanes-Oxley and C-TPAT compliance. Nor are PLM packages for discrete manufacturers the right fit for Retail PLM, as they are not built for the diversity of attributes, rigors of quality testing or the inherent relationship with global sourcing, order management and supply-chain functions.
Monitoring Product Testing on a Global Scale
In the apparel, footwear and hard-lines categories, retailers must test for quality at all stages of design and production, something that is increasingly difficult when operating on a global scale. TradeStone PLM for Retail provides infrastructure and functionality to manage the process to keep critical milestones on track and move the right product effectively from design concept to the selling floor.
TradeStone's PLM for Retail module is in development testing now with key customers. For more information, please visit TradeStone Software at booth #555 at the National Retail Federation Convention, January 15-18, 2006, in New York City.
About TradeStone Software, Inc.
TradeStone Software enables retailers and manufacturers to plan, design, collaborate on and purchase goods from across the world as easily as from across the street. TradeStone's Unified Buying Engine uses Web services technology to layer across an organization's existing infrastructure while its modular software fills in buying process gaps to provide a single view, access and interaction across the entire procurement process. The first and only complete solution for global sourcing and unified order management, TradeStone's intuitive, "No Training" technology helps people throughout the supply chain to collaborate globally, enabling users to focus on speeding innovative products to market. Marquee customers include American Eagle Outfitters, The Children's Place, Deutsche Woolworth, Ocean State Job Lot, Pacific Alliance and Federated Department Stores. TradeStone Software is based in Gloucester, Mass. and can be found on the Web at www.TradeStoneSoftware.com.
[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
|
INDUSTRIES
Activate Email 
Find Solutions for Enterprises, SMBs & Service Providers at the INTERNET TELEPHONY Conference and EXPO East, January 20-22, 2010. Miami, FL.
