California Apparel News

Getting insight into Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) has been challenging for the crop of companies exploring the emerging technology, but that was not the case during an April 17 conference in Carlsbad, Calif., where representatives of Quiksilver, Gap Inc., REI and Guess? Inc. spoke candidly about their experiences with PLM.

“PLM: The Fabric of Innovation” was sponsored by industry consultant Walter Wilhelm Associates (WWA) and Westford, Mass.–based PLM developer Enovia MatrixOne and was held at the La Costa Resort and Spa. WWH and MatrixOne’s clients were the featured speakers.

PLM is a hot subject because it has proven itself to help companies streamline their production pipelines by organizing the many steps between concept and design through quality control by using an electronic, manageable database and the Internet. Some surveys show it can cut an average of 30 percent off of production costs.

“There are a lot of challenges that are forcing retailers and manufacturers into a different dynamic,” said Tamara Saucier, director of retail solutions for MatrixOne. “There are more channels, more stores and more lines, but a smaller customer base. Having just a spec pack is no longer enough. You have to manage the calendar, the work flow and hand-offs,” she said.

That’s where PLM has come in, added Derek Jones, managing director for WWA.

“PLM’s predecessor, PDM (Product Data Management), failed to meet promise. It was hard to access remotely and was, for the most part, underutilized,” he said.

PLM meanwhile has come in an offered 24/7 access via the Web and a “single version of the truth”—in that all steps and processes are located in the same file.

Jones, citing a recent survey, said that about 75 percent of mid- to large-size apparel companies are either installing PLM or exploring it.

Companies such as Los Angeles–based Guess are going into PLM to manage their growing international-based businesses. Aside from its sourcing, Guess’ own business has been growing in Europe, Asia and other overseas markets. The company also launched a new retail concept, G by Guess?, opening its first store recently in Escondido, Calif.

“We wanted a global repository,” explained Michael Relich, senior vice president and chief information officer for Guess. “We had lots of information, but it was stuck in the C drives at our offices across the globe.”

Relich admitted that Guess’ productionmanagement platform was kind of a mess, and it would sometimes take a couple of days just to get certain spreadsheets for vendors.

The company has an internally developed PDM system, which it integrated with its ERP (enterprise resource planning) system, but there were no opportunities to collaborate with vendors because of its closed-end configuration. Its new PLM system aims to change that.

Guess is still in the early stages of its adoption of PLM and plans to roll out a number of initiatives over the next two years. As part of its plans and goals, Relich employed the “What if?” scenario at Guess, asking staff members questions such as “What if the company can improve final production decisions with 10, 30 or 60 days of deliveries?” The initial feedback has been strong, he said. “It was very well accepted. Usually, you get resistance to change, but it has been so much like that.”

Wesley Reinsch, PLM business functionality lead for Gap Inc., took a four-year path to adopting PLM. The reasons to use PLM were obvious—the San Francisco–based retailer, which operates Gap, Banana Republic, Old Navy and its new Piperlime online footwear stores, has an extensive supply chain with six sourcing hubs and vendors spread out over 50 countries.

Managing such a diverse supply chain amounted to “one giant pile of Excel,” described Reinsch. “It was a huge nightmare. Our vision of PLM was to pull it together in one box and manage the individual pieces. We viewed PLM as kind of a spaceship.”

But in between exploring PLM in October of 2002 and going live last summer, there was a major learning curve between expectations and reality. A few things the company learned during the process were to focus more on the how than the why of PLM and learning how to adopt the technology rather than taking it right out of the box. Reinsch said companies need a proof of concept and the ability to test the configurability of a PLM package before selecting it.

“We had a huge problem when we went live. People were complaining that they didn’t have time to fill in the fields, but we had to shift the mindset that if you do it once, that’s it. Production thought it was a design tool and vice versa, but then they would see ’There’s my coat.’ The value of having it all together became more apparent, almost in an anecdotal way,” he said.

At Quiksilver, PLM is being developed to capitalize on the company’s growing influence in its surf markets in the United States, Australia and Europe, where it has made a number of acquisitions.

“We see PLM as not being just a robust filing cabinet but, in the long-term, a collaboration tool which we can leverage through our various groups and collaborate on some great ideas,” said Chris Schreiber, vice president of technology services.