How to build in agility and sustainability with PLM

Kubix Link

From sketch to sale and design to delivery, the fashion industry is an increasingly complex business.

In today’s connected, digitally driven world of global supply chains and demanding consumers, fashion brands and retailers need to efficiently harness the power of data to increase agility, achieve visibility and, importantly, drive environmental awareness and sustainability initiatives throughout their supply chains.

This is where fashion product lifecycle management (PLM) software comes into play. The technology helps streamline product development, from planning to sourcing. Through digital innovation and the use of data, it enables smooth collaboration across the supply chain to help fashion companies deliver on-trend, profitable collections within increasingly tight time constraints.

However, with the quantity and variety of data that brands and retailers need to manage increasing exponentially, and today’s turbulent times deepening the complexity of a product’s lifecycle, a new approach to PLM is needed.

Lectra is one company leading the way. Launched more than 50 years ago, it is an innovative industrial intelligence solutions provider that facilitates digital transformation.

Kubix Link is its cloud-based PLM software for fashion. For fast-decision making, it ensures structured collection planning, and connects with design and CAD applications, enhancing workflow integration.

With PIM, DAM and fashion data management, Kubix Link covers the design-to-sale process. Its cloud technology promises speed and agility, supporting any number of users. More than 300 fashion brands have already adopted the technology, alongside other Lectra software.

PLM – and Kubix Link in particular – are playing a part in fashion’s shift to more sustainable practices. Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is now essential for successful businesses.

Kubix Link

Driven by more conscious consumers and government-led legislation, fashion businesses need to integrate sustainability into their strategies. As a result, growing numbers of fashion companies are setting public goals and targets around sustainability to drive progress. To set and track these targets, fashion brands and retailers first need visibility over their end-to-end product lifecycle processes.

Lectra believes that digital technology is the cornerstone to help achieve this, and Kubix Link delivers this through its cloud-based PLM offer, which gives real-time visibility into the supply chain.

As part of this, Kubix Link also acts as a “single source of truth”: an open platform to manage and understand supply chain data, thereby bringing teams together on one, collaborative platform, creating transparency and visibility at several levels.

By integrating this data, Kubix Link also makes it possible to calculate the environmental impact of prospective textile products, producing impact assessments at the design stage. This allows brands and retailers to evaluate the pros and cons of making items using different fabrics, for example.

This can be done with Kubix Link using a direct API (application programming interface) connection to the French government site, Ecobalyse – a simulator for ecological impact calculation based on 16 major impacts.

This allows Kubix Link to provide a detailed environmental impact assessment by analysing material types, energy usage, transportation distances and production methods.

It can also assist businesses in tracking sustainability targets from the product-development stage – for example, setting how many products should include organic or recycled materials. Once targets are set up, the solution can help compare these with the products being developed.

The approach assists brands and retailers in selecting more sustainable materials, as well as enabling automated, precise PEF (European Union Product Environmental Footprint) score calculations aligned with evolving regulations.

The cloud-based PLM also creates a digital workflow throughout the collection development process, incorporating digital mood boards, tech packs, and digital prototyping.

Kubix Link

By taking the product-development process online, brands and retailers can reduce the need for physical samples, which in turn can minimise material waste and over-production, as only approved designs go into physical production.

The Kubix Link platform also helps brands and retailers to comply with regulations such as the French anti-waste AGEC law and the European Union’s Product Environmental Footprint by integrating this data into its systems.

It can store and share certification documents and audit results, and score suppliers based on specific CSR criteria.

Furthermore, Lectra has extended its software offer with the acquisition of TextileGenesis. This means that the group can now offer a reliable and secure digital mapping of textiles – from the fibre to the consumer – to guarantee authenticity and origins.

Customer voice: The Bally case

Known for its leather shoes, handbags and accessories, Swiss brand Bally wanted to improve its collection management and distribution. The company chose Lectra’s Kubix Link and Retviews – its competitive intelligence solution – to spearhead this digital transformation. Thanks to both, Bally has optimised each stage of its collection lifecycle, from product development to merchandising.

Access to data is now available in real-time, which has helped streamline internal collaboration, facilitate communication and accelerate decision making.

“Our goal was to create and share all the information from our historical archives, as well as data on the current season and competitor activities, with the entire supply chain,” says Alessandro Ponti, Bally’s global IT director. “Kubix Link helps us to digitalise and archive all these elements, supporting collection development, while Retviews enables us to automate our benchmarking activities.”

Bally has also implemented Lectra’s marketplace tech solution Neteven to boost its online sales by improving its product distribution on some of the world’s biggest marketplaces.

“The compatibility of these Lectra solutions is a real plus, and enables us to manage our collections and their sales process from A to Z,” says Ponti.