soft materials—textiles, leather, industrial fabrics and composite materials—,is pleased to announce that the new version of its unique fashion specific product lifecycle management solution, Lectra Fashion PLM V2R2, will be available in early July.

Lectra Fashion PLM pushes back the limits of product lifecycle management by covering all the necessary steps for the creation of collections and bringing together role-based applications for product design, pattern-making, and physical and 3D virtual prototyping with tools for the planning and management of collections (line planning, product specification, costing, strategic sourcing, and flexible workflow management).

Modular and scalable, Lectra Fashion PLM meets the needs of medium-sized companies just as well as of large international groups.

An enhanced solution to serve a global PLM approach

Lectra Fashion PLM V2R2 provides simplified, automated costing capacities, right down to the level of individual items created in all sizes and colors. This unique, flexible costing module helps companies control margins throughout the development cycle, enabling managers to check the profitability of designs earlier in the development phase, and facilitates the decision-making process.

A new ordering module facilitates order progress monitoring by allowing for mass updates to be made.

Records of all sample orders placed can be kept within the system, and reports can be generated quickly and simply. Centralized order tracking eliminates data re-entry tasks and helps users monitor orders more closely, ultimately enabling them to anticipate delays due to late deliveries, resolving problems before they become bottlenecks.

Lectra Fashion PLM V2R2 facilitates the monitoring and review of projects through enhanced mark-ups management features. This “snapshot” function enables users to generate a contextual report—it is, quite literally, a “snapshot” of the collection in progress, providing an archive of iterations. This allows users to go back and see on the basis of which information decisions were taken, improving communication and collaboration along the entire value chain.

To accelerate the migration of data and thus facilitate the implementation of Lectra Fashion PLM, the data load capacity through Microsoft Office Excel has been enhanced. A user-friendly tool allows companies to fill spreadsheets with data to be loaded into the system; users can also fill through queries on external systems. This is a highly flexible way of gathering data and allows for a large range of information to be loaded (libraries, pick lists, materials, trims, etc.).

Lastly, Lectra Fashion PLM V2R2 will be made available in Chinese and Japanese in order to better serve the Far Eastern markets and facilitate exchange between Europe, the Americas and Asia.

Integrated design and development—key for successful fashion PLM

By aligning individual processes with the company’s wider priorities, Lectra Fashion PLM supports companies as they seek to deliver cost-effective, on-trend collections in a timely manner, season after season. Consumers now have more choice than ever about what, where and how they buy, so a key differentiating factor between brands is their design.

Lectra Fashion PLM’s design tools represent a shift in fashion design solutions by enhancing the creative aspects of the profession and reducing repetitive, administrative and labor-intensive tasks. Created specifically for fashion professionals, Lectra Fashion PLM offers a collaborative design space to maximize the expertise pooled, speed up processes, and secure information, which ultimately improves designs.

Concept validation is also considerably faster, as everyone has visibility into the process—this accelerates time-to-market.

This flexible, shared collection development space also optimizes the interactive and iterative processes of product development, including the development of technical instructions, 3D virtual prototyping, sample creation, fitting and quality testing. As the development stages of collection creation are cyclical rather than linear, Lectra Fashion PLM has been designed with this in mind.

“With its solution for streamlining the complex business of collection management, Lectra is the ideal technology partner for fashion companies looking to enhance their productivity and their competitiveness,” said Mario Boselli, Director of the National Chamber of Italian Fashion.

For more information about Lectra Fashion PL