“Sometimes, I feel frustrated at work—there is a constant conflict between my department and others and it never stops.” – A product developer at a fashion company

During the process of building the request for proposal (RFP) template for fashion product lifecycle management (PLM), I spent some time talking with some relatively large fashion goods manufacturers and retailers to gain a better understanding of how the fashion business runs. As I learned more, I realized that the conflict between the two major driving forces (pushing and pulling) behind fashion products is causing frustration, unachievable sales targets, and missed sales opportunities. Let me explain these two forces briefly. Read the rest of this entry »

Within the product lifecycle management (PLM) arena, there is a category of solutions with a very specific industry focus: fashion and retail PLM solutions. For example, Lectra calls its solution Fashion PLM; at PTC, its FlexPLM solution is created for retail, footwear, and apparel; TradeStone Software names  its solution Merchandise Lifecycle Management (MLM)  (instead of PLM) and focuses on helping retailers to design and develop private label merchandise. No matter how vendors describe their solutions, it seems certain that now PLM manages not only “trees” but also “grass.” Read the rest of this entry »

PLM Boot Camp ’09 is coming in one week. As one of the committee members for this event, I’m delighted to provide three tips to those who are planning to attend this two-day virtual conference.

Tip #1: Prepare to See a “Different” PLM

PLM Boot Camp ’09 is obviously focused on product lifecycle management (PLM). However, it also has vertical foci: the fashion and consumer products industries. If a couple of years ago I had been told there would be such an event, I wouldn’t have believed there would be a large enough audience. However, things are changing significantly in these specific PLM fields. In the fashion sector alone, there are over 40 software solutions that serve specific PLM needs from this vertical. Although the methodology of PLM stays the same, when it comes to applying PLM in the fashion and consumer products industries, the business cases, adoption strategies, and functionality priorities are likely to be different than in industries such as aerospace and automotive. Read the rest of this entry »