Retailers Seek New PLM Standards
High-profile retailers and information-technology executives have been working on an initiative to standardize different functions and applications for product lifecycle management systems, some of the most heavily used computer programs in fashion manufacturing and retailing.
Executives from Macy’s, Kohl’s, Urban Outfitters and Pacific Sunwear, as well as information-technology companies TradeStone Software and New Generation Computing, have been meeting every month since March 2009 to create PLM standards. They have been working with nonprofit The Association of Retail Technology Standards, a division of trade group National Retail Federation, to reach an industry standard for PLM. The standard is scheduled to be unveiled at ARTS’ annual convention in Orlando, Fla., in September, according to Richard Mader, executive director of ARTS.
An industry standard is crucial, according to Mark Burstein, vice president of New Generation Computing, who has been active in ARTS’ Product Specification Committee, which has been leading the standardization effort.
More than 15 companies develop and sell PLM programs, and the various programs often don’t work and communicate with other popular fashion-industry systems such as enterprise resource planning. The result is lost productivity and time. People working on the current non-standardized PLM often have to input similar information from one system to another.
“Imagine if you could not copy from one Excel spreadsheet onto another one? You have a big chance of making mistakes,” Burstein said.
With industry-standard PLM, fashion designers and retailers would be able to use typical PLM functions: change garments’ line drawings, make purchase orders and communicate with ERP systems with a mouse click, and do away with the repetition and extra steps many people using PLM must currently take, according to Burstein.
The industry-standard effort was applauded by David Dea, an instructor of apparel-management technology at the Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising. “They will speed up time [merchandise] goes to the market,” Dea said of the standardization effort.—Andrew Asch
