PLM in unconventional sectors: evidences from the apparel luxury industry

Abstract: PLM is already a well known acronym in leading and traditional manufacturing sectors, like the aerospace and the automotive industries, where ICT has been widely adopted to support the NPD/NPI process. In the last 30 years, CAx tools have successfully evolved from 2D to 3D modeling techniques. Within this context, the present paper aims at investigating the declination of the PLM concept (and also market) in an unconventional manufacturing sector, the so-called “fashion sector”, in order to understand the main commonalities and differences with more conventional manufacturing sectors (i.e. aerospace, automotive and mechanical). The paper shows the differences that exist among these industries first reporting the apparel NPD process structure and then describing PLM tools adopted in order to support this process. In the end, some results of an empirical research, conducted by the authors between January and April 2010 among the apparel fashion Italian industries, are reported.