How apparel industry can exploit the potential benefits provided by PLM ICT solutions. Seeking competitive advantage through closed-loop product lifecycle management

Statement of the Problem Recently, the fashion industry has changed into a knowledge-creation industry of intensive high values through the upgrading and differentiation of designs, brand marketing, utilization of hi-tech materials, the development of advanced functions, and so on. In recent years coupling new business model trends and technology enablers has brought up many disruptive market scenarios and the creation of brand new value added processes. Nevertheless the opportunities are not yet exploited entirely in every corner, especially in apparel fashion industry. Many IT-related technologies, such as 3D body scanner, 3D avatar (cyber physical system), virtual try-on, virtual fitting, RFID (radio frequency identification) communication, digital information display, digital textile printing, etc have contributed to enrich the data gathering and information flow in fashion industry. Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) as a combination of technology advancement and best practices deployment which is referred to a series of application designed for managing products across their lifecycles has also help many industries to exploit the potential knowledge (e.g. as a feedback) by tracing several kind of information produced during the entire product’s lifecycle. Due to technological advances, new opportunities for PLM have appeared in areas such as: Big Data; Smart Products; the Internet of Things; Knowledge Management; and SMAC (Social, Mobile, Analytics, Cloud) that each can enhance the market with new prospective. In fact as the technology advances, the PLM applications get richer. However it is to note that meanwhile the PLM applications are proving their significance in various industries, still they have an almost complex environment and though new ways are needed to handle this complexity in accordance to the specific sector needs and customs. That may conclude that in parallel with the technological advancement it is to appreciate the actual methodologies and best practices. A recent approach introduced in the PLM field is the closed loop product lifecycle management with the focus on the entire product lifecycle (not only the product’s beginning of life, but also the middle and the end of life) in view of increasing the material efficiency or normative reasons. Obviously as the application get more complex and specific to the context, more technology enablers are needed to support any industry to have its own tailored Closed Loop PLM. Therefore in this study a specific closed loop PLM is studied focusing on peculiarities of an apparel fashion market player to find the proper look to its intrinsic flow of information, and suitable means to transform this information into value adding form of knowledge.