Cutting Edge
Customised Clothing Tool for the Digitalisation of Textile Supply Chain

F. BORGA1, A. SAVOLDELLI2, A. VEZZOSO3, C. KATAPODI4
1,2AIP, c/o Politecnico di Milano, P.zza L. da Vinci, 32, 20133 Milano, Italy
Tel: +39 02 2399 2796; Fax +39 02 2399 2720;
Email: francesca.borga@polimi.it; alberto.savoldelli@polimi.it
3Beta80 software e sistemi SPA, via Socrate, 4,1 20128 Milano, Italy
Tel: +39 02 25202610; Fax:+39 02 24956262; e-mail: vezzosoa@beta80.it
4Emphasis systems SA, 36, Ionias Aveneu, 17456, Alimos, Athens, Greece
Tel: +30 10 9949690; Fax: +30 10 9937334; e-mail: cutting_edge@hellenic-net.gr.

Abstract. Cutting Edge is a trial application project funded under the 5th Framework Programme of the European Commission, IST Programme (Information Society Technology). The European Consortium is composed by textile companies, consultancy companies and IT providers from Italy, Greece, Belgium and France. Cutting Edge main objective is to re-design the order management process within a textile supply chain, exploiting main advantages of digital printing technology. The digital printing allows to strongly reduce production costs (even for little stocks of product), improving the whole productive system efficiency.

1. Introduction
The supply-chain generally identifies the whole of processes and actions from the product design to the selling. Processes laying on this path are usually characterised by information flows implemented through the use of different Information Systems. Slowness and inconsistency of information transmitted makes the “time to market” too long for the needs of rationalisation and optimisation imposed by the market.

In this context, the ability to circulate information in an efficient and quick way by the mean of integrated and homogeneous infrastructures, the possibility to easily extract required information from the system, and the necessity to efficiently manage the processes even remotely, are requirements ever more highlighted by business users.

The so called “e-chain” is a value and supply chain along which information flows are circulated from the selling sites to the companies’ production departments, involving marketing functions logistics and planning, practically in real time, thanks to the possibilities offered by Information and Communication Technologies (ITC). The objective of the whole system is to extremely reduce the time to market, such to produce nearly on request. This imposes a new conception of the company, which becomes ever more structure integrated and “intelligent”.

In the light of previous considerations, the “e-chain” is an e-business opportunity which companies willing to play a competitive role in nowadays markets can not postpone any more. This is particularly true for the European textile sector, which is usually considered a “mature” sector and which is facing strong attacks from lower costs countries competitors.

European companies are thus called to a new challenge: to provide the markets with quality products alongside better services. Better services mean possibility to produce directly on market requirements, with high quality standards, but still maintaining low prices or even reducing them. In this perspective, the opportunity to strongly reduce time to market and fixed costs not strictly linked to the textile core business, gives the European textile sector a new competitive advantage in regard to new competitors, which are not able to produce items with high quality standards [1].

But another factor engraves on textile companies: the ever more reduction of average order. Clients prefer to order little lots of products and, if necessary, reorder them. This is mainly due to the floating of fashion markets. This trends implies for textile producer willing to keep high competitive standards, great abilities both in terms of “just in time production” and quick response to clients’ requirements.

Cutting Edge has been specifically designed following the requirements of a textile supply chain, facing the above defined market threats.

2. Objectives
Cutting Edge aims at developing a new e-business solution for textile sector, exploiting main advantages of digital print in textile sector. Digital print on fabrics can be defined as a method to transfer in whatever point of a fabric piece precise quantity of liquid ink, in order to obtain a desired design and colours printed on the textile base, following the instructions given by electronic files [2]. As long as it is possible to keep data on products in digital form, the easier and the quicker it will be to make adjustments in order to respond to changing trends in the market place or individual consumer preferences.

Cutting Edge develops a set of e-business tools allowing to re-engineer process related to printed fabrics selling, reducing time to market and production costs. The processes involved will be:

- sample collection sale process without modifications/with variants modifications;
- collection sale process with drawing modifications;
- reordering process;
- exclusive selling process.

The solution will allow to manage the orders in a computerised format, from the selling phase till the production.

The Cutting Edge platform will be integrated with a software tool for images search and retrieve, developed in a previous EU funded project [3]. This software will allow to search and retrieve the closest image to client requirements in a database of over 25.000 images, by the use of different algorithms. This will further reduce the time required for the order process.

3. Method
Cutting Edge business idea started from some of Cutting Edge industrial partners, which are part of a real textile supply chain: in particular, user companies are located in the Como textile district (Italy), which represents a perfect industrial context for testing the Cutting Edge idea.

Within the Como textile district it is possible to identify all the key actors (converter, photoengraver, printer) involved in the textile supply chain, comprehending all needed steps to transform raw materials in finished products [2]. In this context Cutting Edge will develop an e-business solution for printed fabrics selling, involving both internal selling process of a textile producer (the converter), and external processes linking the converter with another relevant actor of the involved supply chain, the printer (i.e. the producer of the printed fabric).

The converter is a particular actor of Como textile supply chain playing a key role in co-ordinating other actors role along the whole production cycle [4]. In doing that, supply chain relationships are characterised by strong trust, common business visions and long terms relationships. The importance to have trusted relationship with suppliers is due to the fact that managing many processing phases, converter can not be skilled in all the activities to be performed and it is absolutely necessary confidentiality of artisans working on new products.

In such a context, where a partnership relation already exists, e-business solutions can contribute in creating a more efficient and fast information exchange allowing to obtain better final results and reducing the time to market for the overall sector. For doing this, it is necessary to note that the introduction of e-business solutions should be supported by proper organisational changes.

From the analysis of competitive forces and of the evolution of the market demand results that the most important competitive dimensions in textile sector are:

- the time to market, i.e. the quickness in introducing news and betterments in the market;
- the order fulfilment lead times, that is the ability to fast respond to clients requirements;
- the flexibility, in order to respond to the high variety of products, and to sudden peaks in demand;
- the quality level, that is necessary in order to keep the competitive advantage versus Far East companies;
- the costs, both in production and in support units.

The improvement of this overall (external) performance dimensions can be achieved through the improvement of the performance levels of all the involved internal (both repetitive and “lump”) processes. This, in turn, can be achieved modifying the way in which single activities are performed (and their output), and through a re-design of the overall processes. For doing this, it will be necessary to act both on the procedures (formalisation), and on human resources and technological supports.

The relevant processes to be analysed in the Cutting Edge project can be encompassed in the category of “order management” processes but, due to the peculiarities of the textile sector specifically concerning market relationships and new product development, it is quite difficult to distinguish between the classical “product development” process and the subsequent “active cycle” (or order generation and fulfilment) process.

The overall result is a “make to order” production scheme, where the orders are often customised, if not designed completely ad hoc for a particular customer. In this context, three basic kinds of processes have been identified:

- the exclusive new collection definition;
- the customised/non customised catalogue order definition and management;
- the re-order management process.

All the processes have been analysed from the beginning till the production order release, thus the phase of production and delivering of the product are not included, since they do not appear as interesting as the previous ones, given the purposes of the analysis.

In redesigning these processes, the trial application focuses firstly on the improvement of some of the above listed firm performances, namely time (both time-to-market for new collections and order fulfilment lead time), costs, and flexibility.

3.1 tThe Extranet solution
Concerning the identified textile supply chain, solutions aimed at strengthening client-supplier relationship seem to be the suited ones to be implemented. Since these technologies allow to share information, data and knowledge in a safe, easy, and time-saving way, they can be used to increase co-operation between companies. In particular the collaborative tools are solutions that provide a shared environment and a set of tools for co-operation. They are usually focused on specific functions, such as co-ordinated planning, collaborative design, document sharing, or joint engineering. About the same results could be reached by the introduction of an Extranet linking suppliers and clients. Basically these tools allow to reduce duplicate activities in the supply chain and better allocate available resources, and are aimed at creating a strength and lasting relationship between suppliers and clients.

The matrix reported in figure 1 shows as, considering the complexity level and strategic importance of relationships within Cutting Edge textile supply chain, the best e-business solution to be implemented will be the Extranet. Printed fabric production requires high standards of integration between the converter and the printer, at the same time the Extranet solution is more flexible and less binding that other collaboration solutions, offering near the same advantages.

Figure 1 – The positioning matrix of e-business solutions

Concerning the selling side, the more the products selling processes will be sped up, the more will be reduced time to market and production costs (i.e. warehousing costs). This implies an high level of integration among all the involved supply chain main actors (selling department; production department; administrative department). The Cutting Edge objective will be to provide the supply chain with a package of tools allowing to evolve a traditional textile supply chain in to a digital one.

4. Technology
From a technical point of view, the Cutting Edge System consists of an Extranet having the purpose to digitise all the phases of the selling process (see figure2).

The system could be logically divided in to two parts:

- e-Commerce Functionalities;
- Image Functionalities.

4.1 E-Commerce functionalities
Through the Cutting Edge system, the Sales agents will have the possibility to access the system and to compile the order form directly from sale site together with the Customer, requiring all the possible features of the drawings.

By submitting the order, the information will be send to the Back office that will analyse the order, correct it and complete it with all the technical data eventually missed or mistaken by the Sales. After this complex operation the order will be inserted in the information system and sent to the production. Also the Customers will have the possibility to directly order the products, but, due to the complexity of the process, the Customers will be able to re-order only products previously ordered.

Figure 2 – Scheme of the Cutting Edge System functioning

The Cutting Edge system will be also a secure system in order to protect the data from any external intrusion. The security will be mainly based on:

- user name/password;
- Server Authentication;
- SSL3 128 bit encryption.

4.2 Image Search Tool
The Image Search Tool allows the user to search and retrieve a specific drawing from the available stored in the system. It basically consists in a user interface able to accept any combination of the following data types:

- Image Code: it is the code identifying the image in the database;
- Image Keywords: keywords are those words that describe the image. They are usually colours, or objects. Examples are: ‘yellow’, ‘flower’, ‘bird’, ...
- Image: starting from an image, the system is able to evaluate its fingerprint and to match it with the ones stored in the database. Images, whose fingerprints have less distance with the one of the image inputted, are returned. User can input the image by sketching it through the user interface or by using an image selected from the file system (for example from a CD or a floppy disc) or by the results of a previous search.

The search and retrieve process is enabled by a set of searching algorithm (extraction algorithms), which transfer the data-rich pixel representation of an image into a compact representation of visual characteristics (features) that can be compared algorithmically in terms of their similarity. However, there is no feature that generically covers all visual aspects of a textile pattern image. This calls for the simultaneous usage of a number of different features, all of them representing different visual aspects. Therefore, features that describe the global colour distribution and the local colour distribution are quite popular for content-based image retrieval systems (the same applies to features that are closely related to colour such as hue, saturation, and luminance).

The image features do not have a clear verbal description (like the images themselves) that enables users to immediately perceive the nature of the visual characteristics they represent. The only satisfactory way to describe an extracted feature is the mathematical equation for the generating algorithm. The other difficulty is that there is no method to evaluate the performance of a specific feature other than the subjective judgement of a specific user. This essentially leads to fuzzy criteria for the selection of appropriate features that depend heavily on the subjective view of each single user.

The trial Image Search Tool application will include features that describe the most apparent visual characteristics of an image. This includes the following features:

- global colour histogram;
- local colour layout;
- coarse level colour distribution of homogeneous regions;
- large scale colour texture.

As a result, the user will be able to get a feeling about how the Image Search Tool works and how the specification of a query request are processed. The Image Search Tool contains a set of features covering a very broad bandwidth of visual and non-visual aspects.

5. Business benefits and future developments
On the whole, the Cutting Edge System can be considered as a complete and powerful instrument for supporting one of the most critical process in the textile sector: the order process. Moreover, the use of the Image Search Tool allows to efficiently store and retrieve enormous quantity of data (up to 25.000 images) in electronic format, and the integration with digital print solutions further improve the flexibility of the production process. In conclusion, it is possibly to say that the Cutting Edge solution allows to transform the whole supply chain in a real e-chain, leading to the improvement of some fundamental competitive advantages, and in particular:

- reduction of the costs of the order management process: reduction of the documents printing and distribution costs; reduction of communication costs (telephone, fax, mailing, paper costs); reduction of space needs to archive order documentation; reduction of transaction costs;
- higher productivity of personnel (due to the elimination of redundant, not-value-added activities); the time saved can be used for other, value added activities, or can lead also to personnel cost savings (through a redistribution of tasks);
- improved production scheduling, with effects on WIP level, cost of capital employed, etc.; reduction in production errors, due to the higher degree of standardisation and completeness of the production order, which, in turn, leads to reduced spoilage, reduction of re-working activities, duplication of sample production, etc.
- increased product quality level;
- reduction of time needed to perform the processes: in particular, the time needed to produce a sample of the new design required by the customer is extremely shorter using digital printing technology and digitised information.

All these benefits result in an improvement of the overall “quality” of the output of the network of firms (in terms both of inherent quality characteristics of the product, and of compliance to customer’s specifications), a reduction in response time (both for new product codes and for simple re-ordering), and a reduction in overall costs along the value chain, both in production activities, and in support units.

These results can be even higher, if the functionalities of the proposed technological solution will be enlarged to exploit all its potentialities. In particular, possible developments include the full integration of the supply chain, in order to enlarge the benefits of e-solution and processes integration to other steps of the production chain. This could allow to further reduce activities duplication and downtimes, improving the overall efficiency.

Another possible development direction is the introduction of co-operative solutions with other firms operating in the textile district, in order to manage demand fluctuations and share common services, again starting from the Cutting Edge solution.

References
[1] Stengg W., The textile and clothing industry in the EU: A survey, European Commission – Enterprises Directorate General, Enterprise Papers No 2, 2001.
[2] Tie Print project: Life 99 ENV/IT/00122.
[3] Formula project: Esprit 4-22246 start 7-1996 end 5-1997.
[4] AA. VV., Andamento economico in provincia di Como - Anno 2001, CCIAA Como, 2002 (in Italian).

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