During its 65 year history, Italian menswear manufacturer GFT (Gruppo Finanziario Tessile ) has become a major industrial concern. It supports a workforce of 6000, a turnover worth $670 million (USD), 14 plants located worldwide, annual output of 15 million garments, with 31 subsidiary companies.

GFT owns widely renowned trademarks in the menswear sector, like Armani, Valentino, Feraud, Ungaro, Montana, along with Calvin Klein and Abboud in the U.S.A. Both in Italy and abroad GFT also markets its own labels such as Dalton & Forsythe and Profilo. During 1995 a restocking service was established in Italy based on the on screen management of customer relations. In practice this involves building partnerships relationships with retailers with the aim of optimizing stock rotation in an innovative manner by using E-mail to combine data transmissions with other promotional and marketing aspects.


The GFT Technology Modernization Program

In 1998, our design room at Divisione Donna del GFT Spa embarked on a technical and technological modernization program. Deep changes in terms of both machinery and area and space dedicated to it, as well as the level of work security, launching and control methodology, and cost derivatives of use and maintenance, and finally also the type of plotting technology.

When we began, our company worked with 12 horizontal mechanical plotters with a usable surface area of 2.4 x 1.8 yards, which had a pneumatic ink refill mechanism. They worked in two shifts of 16 consecutive hours. This remarkably high level of mechanical use required an average of 4 hours of maintenance intervention per day. In periods of high seasonal demand, the company would have to depend on outsourced plotting located at different locations.

Today, at the end of this process of technological renewal, GFT Women operates with only six ink jet plotters with raster plotting in a physical space which takes up less than half of the original space, without changing the amount of designs plotted out per season. Fewer resources are employed. In fact, the machines work continuously for the whole working cycle, right until the printing line up is completed, and without any monitoring whatsoever. All this while the factory is closed. It also uses rolls of paper twice as long as before (500 yards, 130 lbs), which allow for a high level of autonomy. The mechanical technician has reduced the amount of maintenance time spent on all the machines put together to all but less than half an hour daily. The costs of having downed machines are practically nil.

All designs are now plotted internally (an average of 2500 linear yards of paper are plotted per day) and high output levels are managed by taking advantage of the autonomous capacity and reliability of overnight productivity without supervision.

The cost of consumables, including ink, as well as the price of mechanical and electronic replacement parts has been reduced by approx. 30%; and equivalent savings value in electricity costs used while the machines function. The level of noise pollution in the workplace (with all machines working), has been drastically reduced to those levels typical of an office equipped with basic printers.

We chose the Classic Jet 180 plotter from Algotex after several functionality trials. We chose this printer for the following reasons, indicated here in order of importance:

• Elevated unitary productivity (from 22 linear yards per hour to approx. 40)
• Low space requirement per unit
• Total respect of security norms for machinery and therefore very low risk for operators
• Complete compatibility with Lectra file management software (Vigiprint) with HPGL operative language format, and thus readable according to international standards
• Silence while running.
• High level of dependability both mechanical and electronic. Absence of mechanical movements which are too fast or abrupt
• Quality of raster plotting is high, with segmentation of designed curves practically insignificant, well under the acceptable levels of the cutting room
• The cost of consumable products reduced. (One cartridge guarantees 2000 linear yards of paper, which is the equivalent to 15 cents per linear yard
• Direct assistance from the manufacturer, with specialized high level technical interventions
• Favourable cost to output ratio
  

A History of the Changeover and Some Considerations Thereof

The process of renewing our CAD software started the scenario in which GFT Women’s Division had to find and select this machinery for design. The company integrated Lectra’s Modaris software, while abandoning that same software company’s own hardware in favour of an environment where the hardware would be universally compatible. In this context of the design and marking and grading operations with dedicated system terminals made the installation comparable conceptually to installing office printers.

GFT’s technicians searched first for an efficient machine that would cut cardboard, and thus the introduction of the company’s first Zund M1600S plotter. They next demanded that the CAD supplier, Lectra Systemes, create a plot driver for this plotter, collaborating thus with two supply partners in order to resolve the problems of interface. The satisfying result of the operation gave birth to the second phase, which was the choice of plotters that satisfied the expectations and demands of the company.

GFT, Algotex and Lectra collaborated in resolving the eventual problems. One difficulty after another would be overcome, such as plot quality, mechanical and electronic reliability and upkeep cost. Additionally the paper roll loading system was refined due to the elevated weight and size of the paper rolls to fully respect legislative norms.

GFT Women’s Division recognizes there can always be further possibilities for technological developments, and in this vein, the company is working together with their technical partners especially those for machines that are more and more productive for the realization. A new version of the Algotex Power Jet plotter with 4 superimposed inkjet heads is presently being tested as well as capacity to plot barcodes and to read them, remote monitoring from one terminal of the state of each machine by a central control in real time.